Wilhelm For President

The medical manual was pulled out and looked at again by my oldest. The nine year old (almost ten). He came to me and asked me if King Solomon battled depression because in Ecclesiastes he says that "life is meaningless". My oldest claimed that people who say such things must be depressed because it says so in the medical manual. I told him that King Solomon was wise and with much knowledge comes grief.

He later also asked me if I ever had Schizophrenia---you know, hear voices and stuff. I think he thinks that I am crazy.

He told me yesterday that I am probably not the best mom in the world, but I am the best to him! I was so relieved to know that he will not be disappointed in me when he is old. At least he does not have the skewed idea that I am perfect or something. I definitely display my sinfulness to him on a daily basis and he knows it!

My youngest (the girl) asked me today what I was going to do when I growed up to be like Daddy. I about spit out my coffee laughing and kissed her and told her that I am grown up and I love to be a mommy. Mr. Wilhelm interferred as well and said that "mommy has the greatest job of all". My daughter said, "Well, when mommy gets older she can be a library girl and I want to be one too! And I want to be a mommy too!"

I absolutely love the honesty in children. I used to hate children. Babysitting was not the most fun thing for me to do. I realize how selfish I was in my heart. I remember acting like I loved children on the outside and then really disliking them on the inside. I had no patience. I tried, but I didn't really like them. I don't get it either because people would flock to have me as their reliable sitter. I hated how honest children were. I remember one time a kid I was sitting told me that I was not nearly as pretty as his old sitter. I was so mad! How vain could I be?

So, I have grown to love the blunt honesty in kids. It is something that adults do not do, and probably should not do (to a certain extent). It is acceptable for kids to do it because of a certain innocence they have. I think that if we get offended by them, we are being children ourselves!

I was up late last night trying to "jump" our immobile VW with my husband. He is not very mechanical and I am a little more than he is, but I wanted nothing to do with it. Usually I am the type that will try my best to take over and do something, but I envisioned something blowing up in my face because I had no clue what was the engine, a spark plug, an engine block, (what the heck?) or anything. The car just would not start yesterday morning. We thought perhaps a battery issue, but it probably isn't since it would not work last night (with jumping the thing). So Wilhelm stayed home for the morning to get the car stuff figured out, a tow, a trip to the shop, etc. He let me sleep in. I woke up seeing my youngest daughter on the edge of my bed smiling. Later my husband comes to me and says, "I wanted her to come in the bed and snuggle up with you but she wouldn't do it." I come downstairs all crabby like I usually am and see that school has already started without me, everyone is chipper, etc. My husband is amazing. Because he got us off to such a good start school ended at 11:30. The kids were begging him to stay home but he had to go to work---meetings, meetings and all that writing he does. When I grow up I want to be just like him.

Truth

I take comfort in the fact that God can see me. I know that I can not see Him, so if I know that He can see me I feel loved somehow. I remember a few times in my life when I have cried out to Him to look on me, to take pity on me and give me a "let up" from some present pain. What I was asking for was a miracle.

I feel that my own wicked self---my sinful heart---gets in the way of so many things. ---So many sanctifying times I pass by because of my wicked heart. The fact that I can swim to the surface of all the blackness and the Spirit can triumph is beyond me. It is not me. It is literally like trying to swim to the surface of quicksand. Thick, heavy mud.

So naturally, it must comfort me that God can see my struggle. That Jesus is in prayer for me at His right hand, that the Spirit is moving through me to cause the light to shine where blackness has been.

Truth is so paramount. God is truth. Jesus is truth. The Bible speaks of truth and lies so much. It is a real struggle that is in this world that we normally don't think of all the time. There is truth and there is not truth. I know the truth will come out, so I don't bother lying. I know that truth is the only thing God accepts.

The truth is, God can see me. The truth is, God is in me. The truth is, Jesus saved me from hell.

George the Deist

I am really sick of this. I know our past Presidents like Washington and Lincoln talked like they were Christians, but they were not. I hate how some of history lies. My youngest boy, in his curriculum, is fed lies all the time. Look at this sentence where he has to fill in a few words: "He (George Washington) became a brave soldier who prayed and trusted in God." My kids are obsessed lately with asking if this person or that is a Christian. So, naturally, my youngest son asks if George was a Christian. I certainly didn't think so, but I thought I would look it up anyway so I could see for sure. I looked it up on Wikipedia. Here is what I got: He was a Deist. Basically a deist believes that there may be a God of creation, but He does not interfere in our lives---miracles do not happen, reason is paramount. You guys probably know all this. He was an occultic Freemason nut as well. Apparently George went to church with his wife and did not take Communion. In fact, he would step out before Communion would be served. When the preacher noticed this, he mentioned in a sermon that local leaders need to set an example to others by taking Communion and not leaving early. After that George just stopped going to church period on Communion Sunday. He died without a pastor at his side (although that was offered him) and the Freemasons performed his funeral service.

Apparently good ol' George was a strong believer in pluralism as well. That is what we have become a country of, after all. Everything is great, tolerate, and don't offend anyone. Al Qaeda has us all wrong. They think we are a Christian nation for some reason. We really aren't. We never were.

Don't let me go on about Lincoln. I pretty much have nothing good to say about the man. I need to hit the books and get all my ammo right for that one. He was definitely NOT a Christian. Lets just put that to rest right there.

Look at the Washington Monument. What the heck is it? We drive by the thing every week on our way to church, and it just looks weird and Egyptian-like. It is like a Freemason torch. Look at our money full of pyramids and eyes and weird mason malarkey. "In God We Trust"---in any "god", apparently. Wilhelm and I were at the National Cathedral and it was really gross. There was a statue of George in the sanctuary and it was just scary looking. There was a bunch of mason stuff on the statue and what the heck is a statue of George Washington doing in a cathedral? The religion of America is America. I am so sick of Christians trying to Christianize the founding fathers and America. Sure, we are free here to worship Jesus Christ. We are also free here to worship Allah, Buddha, ourselves, rats, elephants, dogs, cats, whatever makes us happy.

I guess the whole curriculum thing makes me a little mad. I need to get new curriculum next year. I don't hate America, I just hate how America is ignorantly viewed as something it is not: a Christian country.

Interruption Note

School started a little tiny bit late this morning. A dear friend called and the children were doing fine on their own. I took about twenty minutes to talk to my friend and during that my youngest son (the second one) decides to be a booger. He starts antagonizing his sister and older brother. Finally my oldest son,T--, brings me this note in attempts to not interrupt while I am on the phone:

"Dear Mom,

Please understand that I am trying to tell those kids named L--- and E--- something. I am telling them that I should be respected but not as much as you should be. And when I say something bad, then they should not do it, but they are not listening and they are making fun of me. Please tell them about it. They will listen to you, though you should talk to Dad about this.

Sincerely,

T--

p.s. They are NOT doing school."

I thought this was kind of funny. He tries so hard to be good. I suppose with my forgetfulness and all the help I need to just function sometimes he feels a responsibility. What a cool kid I have.

C'est la papier

I just finished a little light reading that I found amusing, French Women Don't Get Fat. I'd link you to Amazon, but for some reason since we got this ridiculous Mac I can't understand how to work anything. I thought it was fun to read because I like to see what foreigners' view of Americans are. I have always heard that French don't like Americans, maybe they don't. I am not sure, I don't want to be rude and say that they all hate us. Every one knows that Evian backwards spells "naive". That is my favorite water. Nothing else tastes like it. Maybe it is not really from the French Alps but French tap water mixed with bleach. It tastes good though. I took almost three years of French but can't speak a word of it. I know fenetre (if I spelled it right or even have it right) means window and fenestra in Latin means window. Wow. Cool. I don't know anything. My heading is probably wrong. That is the whole point!

I think that the lady that wrote the book has a funny view of Americans though. She is married to an American and lives in America so it must not be that bad--she must like us some. She goes on in the book about how we always "hit the gym" and avoid the stairs whenever possible and always take the elevator. She talks about how we never walk places. How we eat standing up (I am always doing that and it drives Mr. Wilhelm crazy) and eat in the car (Mr. Wilhelm always does this and it drives me crazy). She talks about how we overdo exercise and lots of times we do it too much and therefore get a huge appetite and think that we can just eat because we burned so many calories. Everything with moderation and everything with the deepest enjoyment would be the motto here. It is sort of hard to take on a French way of life when you live in America. We don't have open-air markets that one can go to every day after work, and one can not walk to work all the time when the roads are all dedicated to cars because we love cars here.

If you want to enjoy food the way God intended, I think this book helps you do that. It is much better to sit down and really enjoy the food you are eating instead of standing up and scarfing it down so fast in attempts to pretend that you didn't just consume 500 calories!

REM

I have trouble sleeping. I am never the kind to get up when I can't sleep. I just don't give up. I try and try and it is fitful and a bad experience. Sort of like dreaming of the same song over and over when you have a stomach virus. The same old piece of chewed up gum. Old lady perfume you can't get away from. This has been a problem for me since I have had children. It has been a problem with me also because of my gradual forgetfulness. I will wake up with a start some nights remembering something I have to do and get a sick feeling in my stomach.

Any suggestions?

Heart Shaped Box

I hate Valentine's Day. I think everyone does if they want to admit it. Every guy has to hate it. It is the holiday where the guy *has* to get his girl something. A box of chocolates, a dozen roses. Hey, maybe even two dozen. You gotta get the card too. It is attractive because red, white and pink look kind of nice together. Every one I am sure has a Valentine's whine story. I probably have plenty. I hate the forced romance, the kids getting cards for other kids, and the eventual heartbreak of it all. I don't know how to fix my hatred of this holiday. I don't even know if it is a holiday. Mr. Wilhelm and I would go out every year for it and I really don't know why. Everyone else is out too and everyone else knows you are out just like they are for Valentine's Day. Big whoop.

This sounds crazy (and it really is) but a good while ago I worked with this Mexican girl who was really close to her family. She spoke fluent English (her parents would not allow them to speak Spanish at home) and she was just over all a cool person. She told me one day at work how her family had a "family meeting" and they were planning on boycotting Taco Bell because of their "Run for the Border" slogan. (This was of course, the reason why she would not go to Taco Bell with me to lunch that day) She said that Taco Bell insulted her heritage. In this same vein, Valentine's Day insults mine. It assumes that I am not romantic any other day and it is" high time I am romantic on February 14". It tells every woman that she deserves something on that day and if she does not get it she has been cheated. I am stupid because I actually did buy things for my husband on Valentine's Day. I know, I am a hypocrite. But (hopefully) it stops this year. I would like to turn a new leaf and boycott Valentine's Day.

Let's not forget that I was always the ugly girl in elementary school and I didn't get Valentines from boys like the other girls. Maybe I have some past issues!

Snowy Time

Lots of snow out there this weekend. The kids went out with Mr. Wilhelm as he shoveled the driveway. They went nuts playing and making forts. My oldest is convinced that all days that have snow will be as entertaining as a Calvin and Hobbes. It is funny. He actually thinks that he would have the ability to create a graveyard of snowmen or something. He declared war on all of us and then when he finally had to retreat he yelled, "Retreat!" (holding that same banner I mentioned in another post) and ran to the woods. By himself. The funny thing is that he is always yelling some threat like, "I will beat you yet!" And he utterly fails.

Everytime there is a lot of snow I am further impressed with the easy manner Mr. Wilhelm shovels it. He does it in some graceful way that looks more like a dance than manual labor. I know that sounds weird, but he is from Minnesota so he had to somehow get good at it. It is fun just watching him. The snow always lands in the proper place too. I kept bugging him to let me do it because he made it look so fun and easy. Let's just say my back hurts and his doesn't. I am just some chick from California who doesn't know what to do with snow.

So now I am contemplating a snow day for the kids. They are already in my face about it.

The Letter A is a Boy

Does anyone else out there classify letters and numbers according to gender? I don't know what happened to me in my childhood. Maybe it was the government schooling. Maybe in Kindergarten the teacher had paper letters up on the wall that looked like either boys or girls. I don't know. I never thought much about it until I really thought about it. I mean, I noticed that I did this in my brain a few years ago. I am writing down a letter or two and here I am thinking of "J" as a boy and "K" as a girl. They aren't in any particular order either. Let's see..

A,C,E,F,G,H,I,J,M,N,O,S,T,W,X,Z are all males.

B,D,K,L,P,Q,R,U,V,Y are all females.

Some letters are sort of a little more neuter than others, like, P, L, E, O, and Y. But of course I can regard them as more male than female or more female than male. Weird, huh?

Here are the numbers:

1,2,3,5,7,10 are all males

4,6,8, and 9 are all females

It is almost silly of me to confess this, but I almost feel inside that this is common knowledge and I am not telling anyone anything else that they already don't know. Notice that the letter R is a girl. I bet I think so because my name starts with R.

Ok, I am thinking about this way too much. I need a shrink.

I told this to a close friend of mine about a year ago and I asked her if she thought I was weird. She hesitated and then said, "Well, yes, that is a little odd. But I do some weird things in my head too. The brain is just weird." She was being kind. But she did proceed to tell me that ever since she has taken jobs transcribing (she is a very swift typist) she thinks of conversations with her fingers. She literally has conversations with people and in her brain she is thinking about the placement of each letter on the keyboard with her fingers. Sometimes she finds herself slightly moving them.
She told me of another person she knows that has conversations with people and as she is talking to them or they are talking to her she is thinking of the words backwards. So, for example, if she were listening to someone saying a sentence to her like, "I walked the dog this morning" she would think of how the whole sentence is pronounced backwards, like backward masking or something crazy like that.

Hey, in many languages like Latin and French there are masculine and feminine (and neuter) words. Maybe I am really a genius!

Pink Pet Delight

Yesterday when I was teaching my youngest son I noticed that he was chewing on his eraser. As he would interact with me he would have a bit of eraser in his mouth and then it would never be seen again. I have noticed that he does this, but all I would say is, "Stop biting on your eraser!" He would stop for awhile and then the next day it is the same thing again or maybe just the next minute.
Finally I had an idea. I looked at him in a different sort of way so that he really noticed the change in my demeanor and said, "I have a surprise for you. Wait just a minute!" I proceeded to grab a piece of computer paper and a marker and my son said, "O boy, you are going to draw something for me..."
"No...you will see..."
I wrote "L--- eats erasers" on the paper nice and large, in a neon color. I held it out. My son raised his eyebrows and smiled with the dimples. He laughed. Then he couldn't stand it. He tried to get the paper from me, giggling. My oldest looked at what I wrote and laughed saying, "yeah, I guess he does eat erasers! Gross!"
My youngest son said, "I don't eat erasers!"

"What?" I said. "You take bites and swallow them! You do it to every eraser you have!"

"Ok, so I eat erasers!" He finally said.

I took the paper and hung it up on the frige, smiling.

Later in the afternoon I noticed that the paper was gone. I asked my youngest son where it went. "In the trash, mom. I don't want people knowing I eat erasers!"

Mad Fit

Yesterday I walked the kids about half a mile to the government school park. They brought all their sticks and cardboard shields and a battle banner (a very long stick with a paper flag hanging from it) and marched down there. It was cold, a bit windy, and when we got there a plethora of kids were playing. There was about 20 minutes or so of playing and then my oldest "somehow" hurt his foot. At first he said it was his knee, and then it turned into his foot. He could not even tell me how he hurt it. He did not hit it, he did not twist it, he just jumped up and bam, that is when it started to hurt. On disembarkation from the slide/platform, he would yelp out in pain and then say that he could not walk. I somehow got him to hop over to the bench where I had put all of our stuff, so he sat there while I checked out his injuries. No swelling, nothing. He was crying on the bench telling me that he would "never be able to walk again" and "playing just isn't (his) thing" and how he has "ruined (his) foot for life". He further said, "I am NOT walking on this foot, don't make me, don't make me!!!"

A handful of months ago he got really upset while I was gone (a sitter was watching him) and he went to his room and kicked the door as hard as he could. He did the same thing. He would not walk on the foot, he was hobbling on one leg, and stationed himself on the couch and read and watched tv. Eventually we took him to the doctor (I was embarrassed to because I knew he just sprained his foot) to get an x-ray. He explained to the doctor that he "threw a mad fit" and that was how he came to be in his condition. The doctor smiled and told him that he must have learned his lesson in kicking doors. He got crutches and everything. It was almost comical.

So how did we get home? Good question. The only thing I could think of doing as he said to me, "I am NOT walking home! You will have to carry me mom!" (Since I would have NONE of that) I walked the kids home (my two younger) and left my oldest there on the bench. Just for good measure I said to him, "Stay here, don't get up!" I had to laugh inside. But to be honest, I was a little worried because I have never just left him somewhere before on his own. The minute we went through the trees and the bench was out of sight, the younger children were whimpering about him and saying how much they missed him. Finally I got the car, pulled it up to the playground and as I walked up to the ground, I could see my oldest hanging out on the bench with forlorn face holding up his battle banner like he lost the battle and he is surrendering. He looked pathetic. I think he said to me when I approached, "Let's just face it. I'll never be able to walk again!"

Give me a break.

So, he is still hopping around and I am not taking him to the doctor. First of all, he didn't even hit it against anything. He just jumped. Second, he can hop around. Maybe now he won't be so eager to leave the dinner table or get up in the middle of school. I am sucking this for all it's worth.

Eleysium Made Me Do It

I was tagged (whatever that means) by eleysium.

Four Jobs I've Had:

- demo person at Albertson's
- Sales Associate at The Bon Marche (now Macy's)
- Merry Maid (I can clean very well!)
- Caregiver for mentally disabled adults

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over:

- Lord of the Rings Trilogy
- Anything by Masterpiece Theatre (namely Our Mutual Friend)
- The Breakfast Club
- What About Bob or Moonstruck

Four Books I Could Read Over and Over:

- The Bible
- The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
- Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
- Anything by Lewis (non-fiction)

Four Places I've Lived:

- Southern California
- Greenville, South Carolina
- Toledo, OH (I was born there)
- Nampa, ID

Four TV Shows I Watch:

- Masterpiece Theatre (when anything good is on)
- whatever Mr. Wilhelm is watching (which usually consists of two or three different shows in attempts to skip commercials)
- I like cooking shows but don't watch them
- nothing

Four Places I've Been On Vacation:

- The Oregon Coast
- The Atlantic Coast
- Santa Barbara (camping)
- Sun Valley (but I did not ski...I don't know how and would not if one wanted me to!)

Four Websites I Visit Daily:
Do Blog's count?
- Ann's blog (americanspark)
- Gatsby's blog (proverbs3)
- pretty much everyone on my blogroll (which is not a whole lot of people)
- Last but not least, Eleysium

Four Favorite Foods:

- kung pao chicken
- everything raw I can't eat
- salmon
- hamburgers and Bertucci's pizza

Four Places I'd Like To Be Right Now:

- the UK
- in bed
- England, to be exact
- Some rolling hill in Ireland (I would run on it)

Four Bloggers I'm Tagging:

- Jeannie
- Ann
- Liz Tacket
- Molly

I just caught a bad case of blogger's block. I shouldn't have kissed that guy last night...someone bring me some chocolate!

Good Books

The other night my oldest son (who is nine) wanted something to read. He is almost done with this HUGE book on Sherlock Holmes (some complete collection or something) and he wanted something else to read in the meantime. He got these books on Misty of Chincoteague for Christmas from his Grandma, so he plowed through those in a day. I pulled out a small book on Edgar Allen Poe that I had sitting around and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He did not seem so interested in the latter. I have not read much of Poe, I can't even remember if I have fully read The Tell-Tale Heart. I flipped over to that one since it is famous. My son seemed really interested, so he started reading. I left him there and soon he came upstairs declaring that he finished and said, "I wanted to know what would happen next so much my hands were really shaking!"
Mr. Wilhelm gave me a look. He said he wanted to read another and started on that right there in our room. Soon he put the book down with a forlorn look and said, "That one was boring."
Now he is reading (again!) The Lord of the Rings.

Since I am such a literature fanatic, I can't wait to get my literature claws on him. I have sat and told him about Dracula and Frankenstein and some of The Invisible Man. He really wants to read these books, especially Dracula, but I believe it is too scary for him. That kind of stuff does not scare me much, but I remember I read the book (for the second time) at a bookclub I used to be a part of and some of the ladies could not finish because it scared them too much.

Which reminds me of the book I just finished: The Historian. I really enjoyed it. If you want your fill of scholars going nuts over ancient manuscripts, crispy vellum, moody librarians, leather and velvet bound books from 1500, quest after quest, yellowed letters containing various clues, silver daggers and bullets, record after record, monasteries and monks, this is the book for you. I have read a couple of Anne Rice novels (this was when I was just coming out of my teens) and have enjoyed them. I think that the reason I do not read them now is because there is a certain sort of following that goes with them and I am not interested in that. This book, however, is a marriage of sane fans of folklore, and academics.

I read a review the other night about it and someone said that throughout the letters, documents and narration, the same voice was speaking. I agree. That was the only real downfall of the book next to the rather quick ending. The cool thing about the book is that you never knew a lot of what was going on or where it would lead to, so all the "same voice" documents you are reading and all that don't really matter to you so much at the time. You just want to read the stuff.

With all that said, it is really cool. Godless, but cool. In the novel Dracula says something like, "True goodness in a human being can never be perfected but evil can."

There is one perfect human being.