The Fight for $5.00!!

I realized today that I am now officially in the frugal living club. I began inching my way into the frugality club last fall when my husband took a position that, for now, pays a salary that is about half of what we've grown accustomed to. Knowing that it may be a year or so before we're back to the salary we're used to, I decided to take on the intense mission of cutting our grocery, gas, entertainment, and utility bills.

So, today I'm at Wal-Mart making my bi-weekly shopping trip, which by the way is an accomplishment I am very proud of. I used to make weekly trips for my "supplies" as I call them, for about the same as what I spend in my by-weekly trips.

But today, as I'm loading up all my junk into the truck, after I've already strapped Kaydn Rye into his seat, I look at the receipt and realize that the clerk lady forgot to deduct my coupons. But as I'm digging through all my bags I can't find the coupons either. I thought, "Not only did she forget to ring up my coupons but she took em!"

I thought about it for a millisecond and decided that was $5.00 I was going to fight for, so I told my already sleepy Kaydn Rye that we were going back in for another round.

He reluctantly agreed that we needed that $5.00 for our train set, swing set and sandbox fund.

So we tromped into the store and very politely asked the lady what happened to the coupons. With about ten people waiting in line for her services, she handed em to me and said, "Just take em over to the customer service desk, they'll give you your money back."

I look over at the customer service desk, and what do ya know, The line is three miles long. So we tromp over to that line.

So we wait. And we wait. And we wait.

Finally, praise Jesus, it's our turn. Yeah!

But the journey is not over.

We wait. And we wait. And we wait for the lady to type the latest edition of Webster's Dictionary on her little Wal-Mart computer, and then all of a sudden, magically, the lady says, "Thank you, have a good day," and hands me five bucks.

It was a good day.

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Boys vs Girls

Today I ran into an old friend from high school which has become more and more of a regular occurence. Now don't get me wrong, running into old high school friends whose main goal at the time is to look you up and down to see whether or not you've let yourself go after a few years of catering to a husband and a child, can be a joy, but I'd rather forego the experience.

Actually, after such a traumatic high school and even traumatic grade school experience for that matter, one of the reasons I went to college 10 hours away from home, with no intentions of ever coming back, was to start over, with a totally clean slate. I shed all the old perceptions my family had of me, that my friends had of me, and that I had of me, I even shortened my name in an effort to start a whole new existence.

And one of the great things about living in Minneapolis, and about living in Memphis when we transferred there, was the fact that I could make a 15 minute trip to Wal-Mart to pick up some egg noodles and cream of mushroom soup for a last minute dinner idea without having to worry about running into anyone that I know in any way, shape or form.

But now that we've moved back to my hometown, making that quick trip to the store is a whole other story.

So anyway, back to my story, so I ran into High School Friend in the aisle of Wal-Mart and we're having a nice little chat in the soup section.
She has two girls and a litle boy, and while we're talking, the lightbulb goes off in Kaydn Rye's little head, and he knows this is his opportunity to play spiderman with someone other than his mother. So he and the little boy proceed to shoot their imaginary spiderwebs on each other and anyone else who passes by, for that matter.
I say, "Yeah, Kaydn Rye is all boy," as I think back to a conversation earlier in the week with a another friend who parents a little girl and a little boy. While my child wants to wrestle everyone to the ground and have web-shooting fights, her children want to play vet with their stuffed animals.
Her explanation, "Yeah, when you have the girl first, you can powder-puff your boy a little bit."

But back to Wal-Mart, so High School Friend proceeds to tell me about how she had her two girls first and how life was peaceful and predictable with all the estrogen in the house, but then her boy came, and life became rife with all the wonderful things testosterone adds to life.
I agreed, but thought about how if I ever have any more children, (and by the way, that is still up for discussion) I hope and pray that it is another boy.
I prayed the same prayer when I was pregnant with Kaydn Rye because I guess I just didn't feel ready to parent a girl. I just think of all the extra stuff that is involved in raising girls, and how I still have some of those issues in my life even in my 20s. I guess I just don't feel qualified to handle all the extra things that go along with raising girls - like boys, and self-respect, body image yada yada yada - you know the rest.
And while I know many mothers of boys who, while they love their boys, wish in their heart of hearts for a little girl and all the tea parties, dress-up and easy bake ovens that eventually follow.

I guess I'm just not one of those people at this point.

But on the other hand, I could just be a lazy parent. With boys, I say, give em some swords and some protective eyewear and you're good to go. And another plus - when you leave the house they're maintenance free - a little spit on your hand and a good rub over the kid's head and you've got a well groomed little boy ready for Sunday service.

Family Reunions

Well I just got back from the hospital, another round of grandfathers in the hospital. Just a few months ago, my grandfather, who is probably one of the most influential persons in my life, went into the hospital with I think what was a small heart attack of some kind. Just a week prior to the call I received from my mother letting me know that they were all on their way to the hospital behind the ambulance, I somehow knew it would happen, so I was prepared. I knew then that over the course of the previous weeks his arthritis was getting progressively worse, but it was that morning that Yah revealed to me that I would receive a phone call letting me know he was going to the hospital.
But this round took me totally by surprise. The current grandfather in the hospital is my father's father, and I can probably count on one hand the amount of conversations I've had with him. While my mother's family can occasionally be the passively-aggresive-kind-of-dysfuncational, my father's family is a whole other kind of dysfunctional.
So a few weeks ago I get the call from my mother that my other grandfather is in the hospital, that his cancer has come back, it's lung cancer, and it's terminal. After atleast 40 years of smoking like a chimney, the lung cancer should not have been a surprise, but it was.
Most of my life, my grandfather lived hundreds of miles away in Minnesota. I remember the ocassional card coming from him for birthdays, other milestones, ect. And then when I moved to Minnesota to pursue my degree at the University of Minnesota, about that time or before he moved about 45 away from my parent's house, the town I now live in ironically enough.
We've lived here for about six or seven months now, apparently a few blocks away from his house, and I still do not know where he lives.
I guess because of the awkwardness of getting to know a man I haven't been able to carry on a conversation with for 26 years, now on his deathbed, I put off the inaugural trip to the hospital unil almost a week after I got the news. And I off course went when I knew my parents and Brandon would be there.

But I will never forget the joy in his face when we walked into the room, which was important for me to see. It was like somehow this man didn't forego being a part of my life because I wasn't important enough, but simply because he didn't know how to.

But Brandon is rarely home during the spring planting, as my father guilts him into putting in four or five hours of work on the farm after a full day's work at his office. So I knew that I wouldn't be able to wait for Brandon to get home and escort me to the hospital everytime I felt lead to visit.

So Kaydn Rye and I proceeded down the hallway of the hospital on our own and walked into ICU on our own. We get there and of course, the uncle I have barely had a conversation with in my life, despite his living about five miles away from my parents, is there, along with my crazy (literally, I think she has an emotional disorder) aunt that I had not seen in probably 20 years.
My grandfather looks up, says my name, and then proceeds to fall into what seems to be a comatose state. The scene was much different than the nurse's statement at the check in desk that went something like, "Oh, yeah, he looked like he was up to having visitors a little while ago I was back there. He's been sitting up and talking." He sure didn't look like he was ready to have a dinner party, as she suggested, he looked on the verge of death.
So as he slept I stood there wiwth my uncle and my crazy aunt, who about a third of the way into my visit said with her hand over her chest, "Oh, you're Katie. I haven't seen you in so long I didn't know it was you."
She obviously has a flair for the dramatic.
But to be honest - she's a twin - to my aunt who does stay in contact and is halfway normal -so when I walked in, I thought, "I hope that's Jamie and not Jodie. I hope that's Jamie and not Jody." But when I figured out that it was indeed Jody, I figured I'd have to make the best of it since I had already walked into a G-d mandated family reunion and there was no turning back.

The visit went fine, with Jody yacking away and asking a million questions, which I assumed was actually out of wanting to maybe get to know me and my family, despite the fact that we are Jesus-seekers, which I know she has come to find absolutely disgusting.
But I now know that I will need to get past all the petty discomforts that will inevitably accompany all of the family reunions that the future holds and atleast show my grandfather the life-giving power of Jesus before it is too late.

Odd Tales from the Night

Do you ever think that there's something odd going on in your house?
Just the other night, I think it was maybe last Friday or Saturday night, I'm getting out of the bathtub, and as Brandon walks into our bedroom, he thinks he smells smoke. I walk into the bedroom and tell him it's probably coming from outside, since the smell of smoke isn't unusual in our neighborhood. Quite a few people have outdoor grilling pits in their backyards, and on the weekends it's not unusual for people to fire em up.
So I go outside to see if something smells out there. Negative.
And when I go back upstairs in to the bedroom we both start to realize that it smells like something is on fire, more specifically, it smells like old, musty wood, which is alarming since our house was built in oh, somewhere around 1915. The smell seems to be the strongest in the corner by our bed so we think maybe there is some wood just smoldering in the wall, or in the attic. So Brandon hoists himself up to the crawl space to get into the attic but see no signs of fire. We feel around in the walls for hot spots and find nothing. I tell Brandon to call the fire department, which he thinks is ridiculous. I tell him he'll feel real bad in the morning for not calling them when our house is burning down and we can't get Kaydn Rye out of his bedroom, which is just on the other side of ours.

And, yes, I am aware that's not the nicest of thoughts, but I don't want to the be person thinking for the rest of my life that I could have foregone the experience of my son burning in a fire if only I had checked into the smoldering wood in the wall.

So Brandon goes downstairs, to call the fire department I thought, and crazy enough, I fall asleep in bed. He comes back, I don't know how much later, since I'm still asleep, and it turns out he went downstairs to use the bathroom down there, and then he went to sleep. How crazy is that? But the house is still here and I have no idea what that smell was.

Part II of Crazy Happenings
Just a few nights later, Brandon and I are laying in bed about to fall asleep when we hear a really loud bang, like someone just slammed into the side of the house. I rule out that it was Kaydn Rye falling out of bed, as he never made a peep, and Brandon grabs the shotgun, in his underwear, and proceeds downstairs in his best James Bond stance. He's wandering down there for quite awhile, making sure to check all three levels of the house, and comes back emptyhanded - no rapists or murderers in sight. He says, "I think it must have been a squirrel jumping on the roof."

Part III of Crazy Happenings
Just last night, I hop in the tub, and as the water's running I think I hear the phone ring, which is nothing new since I usually think I hear the phone ring when the bath water is running. I don't know what it is, my ears must get confused with the sound of the water because I always think I hear this ringing in the background when the water's running.

So, I ruled out the phone ringing and then I start to hear thumping, like someone coming up the stairs, which is pretty much impossible since Brandon is away for the night and Kaydn Rye is in bed. It could be Gertie but it sounds more like a two-legged creature than a four-legged mutt. At first I ignore it, still soaking in the bubble bath, and then it keeps happening, so I shut the water off, grab a towel and look out the windows of the bathroom and the bedroom. There's not even a car parked on the street, so it isn't a slamming car door. There's nothing more I can do about it, and if someone was trying to break in, Gertie would be going wild downstairs, so I sit back in the tub, still in the dark from shutting off the lights to look out the window.
Once I get out of the tub I go downstairs to shut off the television and turn out the lights, when I decide Jay Leno is worth watching for ten minutes before I go to bed. As I'm sitting there I hear distant thumping noises, and then Gertie starts to perk up. I think, praise G-d, I'm not the only one who hears this. She continues to listen, and then gets up and faces the door. But after a couple minutes of uneventfullnes, Gertie plops herself down on the rug again. I come to the conclusion that I will do the same and I plop myself in bed.

The Dialogue of a Three-Year-Old

It's just about time to take a soak in a nice bubble bath, but I thought I'd first rewind some of the day's dialogue.

Kaydn Rye, who by the way has never set foot in a McDonalds, to my knowledge anyway, loves to play with McDonalds toys, which originate with everyone from my grandparents, who love to eat kid's meals, to the ladies who work at the jewelry store with my aunt. So Kaydn is playing with some of his McDonalds action figures, one of which happens to be the fire guy from the movie Fantastic Four, you know, the guy who starts on fire whenever he feels like it. I'm still not sure why that's such a great skill, but whatever.
So anyway, none of us has ever seen the movie, so we tell Kaydn that we do not know the guy's name when he asks. Instead, Kaydn makes up his own name and says, "Here's my Mr. Hotpants."

Later on in the day, he's laying in bed, just recently awaken from his nap, and as I'm standing outside his door listening to the conversation he's having with his action figures, he says, "No, Mr. Hotpants, you can do that, it hurts us. Don't do that."

Apparently even Mr. Hotpants needs discpline every now and then.

Approximately an hour later, after Kaydn Rye has gone through the house like a tornado, he comes into my office, and says, "Where are my mans at. I can't find my mans."

From just plain repetition in hearing that phrase over and over I say, "I don't know, where are your mans at?" Seconds later is when I realize I just said, "I don't know, where are your mans at?"

Two hours later, during pick-up time, I say, "You need to go upstairs into the bathroom and clean up all of those toys that are all over the floor up there, right now."

Kaydn Rye bellows, as he's stomping up the stairs, "Dang it. I don't want to."
I let that one slide this time, pretending like I didn't hear it.

About a half hour later, Gertie (the dog, for those of you non-regular readers) all of a sudden turns around and starts biting her butt, because apparently it itched all of a sudden. And with a wrinkled up nose, Kaydn Rye says, as he's pointing at the dog's butt, "She has an itchy butt." I turn and say, "Yeah, that happens sometimes." He says, with his still wrinkled-up nose, "Yeah, itchy butt happens sometimes."

That about sums up the day right there.

I could have HURLED my lunch.....

I heard the craziest thing the other day, and I couldn't believe what the world is coming to. I sound like my grandfather, I know, I know.
So I found this crazy thing on some news clip on Yahoo or something like that, all about how with the "horrendous" economic downturn in our country people are now selling their possessions on Craigslist and Ebay and other such sites, just to live and put food on the table.
Well, first of all, that is not a new concept, in college I was selling my possessions just to feed myself on the weekends when the cafeteria was closed.
But when I saw this news story I thought, oh my word, gag me with a spoon.
People are selling the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of possessions they own, which they never needed in the first place, to actually pay off their credit cards and pay for their groceries with cash, and that's a tragedy???
Hallelujah that finally people are coming to their senses and realizing that if they hadn't bought all that junk in the first place they would have the money in their checking accounts or in, heaven forbid, a savings account, to pay for the things they need now. And just think about what the economic forecast for the country would look like today if just a couple of years ago thousands and thousands of people had purchased homes and cars they could actually afford.
So needless to say I was having a hard time shedding a tear for the economically downtrodden middle class in America. Just think of how many millions of starving people in the world would love to have a single solitary possession to sell to buy clothing and food for their children. So no, there is no sympathy from me.
I think it is about time that we learn some hard lessons on the value of a dollar and actually scrimp and save just to buy the necessities. Now isn't that a concept???
And just think about it - we are in wartime - have been for four or five years now, and think about the American mentality, even in wartime, as compared to, oh, say, the 1940s when the greatest generation was in Poland fighting maybe the greatest war ever in the history of the world. We have no concept of what everyone was sacrificing at that time.
And in our time, crazy enough, we're getting $1000 economic stimulus packages from our government - during wartime. And the even crazier thing is that we actually expect this kind of thing. We expect that everyone, especially the government, will do whatever it takes so that we can live our lives of comfort, of recreational shopping on the weekends, of consuming everything in sight like nothing has an end, and of always needing more.
My prayer and hope for America is that we come to a place of brokenness and actually choose to get off of the roller coaster - the roller coaster of buy more, get more, shop more, spend more ....

Day of Prayer

This last Thursday was home to the National Day of Prayer, and this was really my first time participating in anything to do with the yearly event. I have always thought that being a Jesus seeker isn't all about the number of "Christian" events you attend in a week but more about how you live your life both in your home and at say, Wal-Mart, when you feel like sitting on your couch drinking lemonade but instead you're fighting soccer moms for the best deals on cream of chicken soup.

So, I've never frequented a whole lot of these kinds of events. We have always been extremely involved in the church body, even at one time being on staff as youth leaders, because I believe that no matter what crazy things go on in the church, it is still the long-awaited bride of Christ Jesus.

But I decided to take Kaydn Rye to Thursday's National Day of Prayer function here in our town because I guess it just hit me how great it is to live in a country where I can join on the county courthouse steps with others who believe in the healing power of Yahushua and praise and pray. I find that amazing, and you know what, who knows who long we may have that privilege. Ten, or even five years down the road we may not have that privilege. Is there any other country in the entire world where the entire nation celebrates a day of prayer? I don't know, but I doubt it.

And you know, our country may have a lot of problems, mainly because humanity has a lot of problems. But we still live in a country where you can say anything you want about the government and worship whatever you want in whatever way you want, and not get hauled into a jail cell, fearing for your life and the lives of your family members. And while I may think that Americans are so materialistic, uninterested in anything really of value of life, and desensitized, this is still the greatest country in the world. Why else would we be trying to put up a fence on our border? And while we can say what we may about the shortfalls of our government, this is still the nation that will not only exhaust its resources to help when one of its own is suffering from a disaster, but will also travel across the world to help with the world's disasters.

And there was something powerful that happened during that community-wide prayer service. Because of the crazy wind that day, which is a pretty regular occurence here in the middle of the prairie, the service was moved into a lutheran church across the street, and pastors from all different denominations across the city took turns praying. I just thought it was amazing that methodists, baptists, pentacostals, catholics, lutherans, you name it, could all come together, putting aside their doctrines and man made rules and regulations and worship the same G-d.