Last night I heard yelling from my bedroom. “Hey! I accidentally paused the TV! How do I fix it?!” I couldn’t believe it was my husband asking this ridiculous question, but I went ahead and answered him. “Push play” I said. “It’s not working, I tried;” he carried on and on until he said “come fix it!”
“UMMMMMM NOOOOO! I’m pretty busy in here!”
“What are you doing?” He asked me, as if he was completely puzzled- as if he couldn’t detect a fury of things going on down the hall. So I answered him “I’m folding four baskets of clothes, cooking a giant pot of chicken and dumplings, and helping KK and Jordan with their math homework, while making sure the baby isn’t dancing on the table. Surly you can figure out the remote control.” I’ve only showed him this a thousand times, so I thought he could spot the little triangle that means PLAY. I don’t expect him to setup the DVR or to turn off the closed captioning whenever some kid accidentally hits that button, but since he paused it, surely he can UN-pause it? RIGHT?
So here we’ve got quite the pair- it’s Multi-tasking Mom with Fix-the-TV-for-me Dad, and just when I started to fantasize about wringing his neck with the towels that were fresh from the dryer, I started thinking about the email I got today.
I thought I would share this sweet paragraph Jayden included in his Halloween Expository we wrote in class last week..
“I love spending time with my family because it makes me like trick or treating. My family makes me feel like there is no bad in the world. My family is great when I go trick or treating. My family is the best thing in the world and that will never change.”
I thought you would like to know what he wrote! He has such a sweet heart!
I love it that his teacher took the time to send me this message. “My family makes me feel like there is no bad in the world.” Where is that kid? I need to hug him, right now! It’s true, sometimes Daddy doesn’t realize just how much Mommy has going on. He forgets that even when it appears that I am watching TV, I am never just watching TV. I’m folding clothes or organizing assignments or planning grocery lists. (Note to self: We need body wash, q-tips, and light-bulbs, and yes, the q-tips are going to clean out our ears, and no, I don’t care about the article you read about how dangerous it is to stick them in your ears, I’m still going to do it…)
I love the idea that we can somehow make him feel like there is no bad in the world, because the older I get and the more I turn on the evening news, the more I see the bad in the world.
It surely is out there. This morning I turned on my phone and within moments I saw the news of an East Texas girl whose body was found in a well, missing for days, presumably murdered by her uncle. Then I saw the story of a toddler from Killeen, TX- where my father spent many years as a firefighter. This baby was caught in the crossfire and died when two females let an argument escalate to include gunfire. My own children suffered their share of bad in the world before we adopted them and as much as I’d love to pretend I’ve given them the perfect hunky dory childhood, it hasn’t been without moments of failure, so to know he feels like there is no bad in the world, well folks, that just melts my heart like a Hershey’s kiss left in your pocket all day long.
For the record, he was absolutely right, our family is great when we go trick-or-treating! We take a hayride through town. We all dress up. Dyl Pickle has been driving us since he was about 14. This year the grand-baby was eating her candy as fast as she was getting it. She actually fell asleep trying to eat a tootsie roll, wrapper and all. I took it to unwrap it, and she zonked. I think the kids all scored about a pound of candy. There was some bobbing for apples and a cake walk involved; and there were friends- best of friends. The kind of friends that feel just like family sitting next to you on the itchy hay that Daddy didn’t forget to go get.
So, he can’t work the TV, but he does take us all Trick-or-treating, so I guess it all evens out in the wash.
_________________________________________________________________
If you like this blog, please give a little click! No form, nothing else to click on, just click once (Or once a day if you’re feeling kind) and it will register a vote for Life With Blondie!
Life With Blondie 