Might I plead my case as to the unusual nature of my week. It began with a Sunday at church whereby me, my husband, and my son -- all of us regular attendees at our small but powerful place of worship for eight years -- made our grand entrance through the front doors of the place, smiles high and proud over our promptness, only to discover an entire congregation of heads turned toward us, a knowing expression on EVERY SINGLE person's face, the young and the old. "Hi, Valdez'!" chirped our worship/music leader. Stop me if you've heard this. I suddenly have a niggling suspicion that you have. Anyhooters, we had shown up at 9:30, believing that to be the giddy-up time, only to sit and realize that 9AM is when the praise team fires up the guitar and microphones. And it has been thus since January of this year. And 2 weeks prior to this, we were well aware of when our church started its services. And I'd been working diligently to break my tardiness habits and pass that particular tarnished crown to another amongst our spiritually-attuned body of believers. All I could figure was that we had pulled the most perfect of April 1st Fools jokes on ourselves: an entire family forgets, en masse, when church starts, deluding themselves into attending late but believing they were on time. (It's better than the rather pathetic, more realistic alternative!)
The two pastors of Church @ Cross Point.
One of our famous joint services.
Our even MORE famous joint service meal,
marked by a very long but patient line.
A thing of beauty: the dessert table.
Let me just say the grouping of flan was fabulous!
A handsome shot of the Valdez couple.
Look! We are happy because we were ON TIME!
Our pastor refuses to eat until EVERYONE has been fed -- consequently, he's ravenous and must be
hand-fed by his wife in his weakened state.
But it could be far more sinister, and simple, than that. I've attained TMI-in-Life status! My daughter got married. She's moving to Germany in a few months and will be overseas for a few years. Adjustments to parties on both sides of the fence have been ongoing and a bit adventurous, to say the least. (Not the newlyweds.) We bought a new car. My brother has a girlfriend at ye olde mental hospital. I've fried, wrapped, slapped cheese onto, and sold more grilled hamburgers and hot dogs to tuckered-out parents and tired high school baseball players than I care to recall in five volunteer sessions for our club totaling roughly 17 hours of my life since March 27th. My sleep patterns would make a hospital intern weep. Someone oiled the hamster wheel of my brain with enough silicone to lubricate 5,000 sliding screen doors. Everyday finds a new excuse as to why I can't cut out sugar just yet. An unusual allergy season has added extra gravitational pull to my days and nights recently. We experienced two weeks of high-speed summer where the opening to spring should have gently marched in. My checkbook awaits my undivided attention; my house maintains a similar status. To say the very least, I'm a tad overwhelmed. And feeling disorganized, discombobulated, in disarray.
I recruited Sarah for hamburger duty.
These boys, relatives of the opposing players, were spent after spending all of their cash at our concessions!
A fellow baseball parents working hard at the end of a very lo-o-ong shift . . .
So, when I hopped online to plunge headlong into a blog entry, I first reminded myself that uploading my pictures from the camera might be a good idea. Maybe there was something memorable on there for the blog. Then, I reminded myself that my photo files were jumbled and unlabeled and hard to wade through. (I've kind of given up on remedying dangling prepositions; it's second nature for me to affix where they properly belong, but it sounds bulky to readers long used to a relaxed practice in that grammatical arena.) So-o, I consolidated iPhone photo files. Along the way, I discovered that before Hank, I recorded life with far less gusto on the ol' smartphone. And far less pixels! There were more than a few great Earth Diva series. Including a gastronomically delightful visit we made to the good ol' Pig In A Pit BBQ establishment! Prolific purveyors of all things porky. Or is that porcine? And several gorgeous and casual shots of my beautiful little sis that I can only share with you via description. Shots where she is relaxed and happy and at ease. Shots which cause those very same feelings to bubble up in me when I lay my eyes on them.
Yes, the Earth Divas must be prepared to have their restroom privacy interrupted by my probing lens!
Doesn't this just say it all?
Earth Diva daughter swooping in on her mother's most delightful banana pudding at our haunt and hangout, Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah, Georgia, which has finally released a cookbook that you simply must purchase!
Another famed Savannah eatery: Paula Deen's restaurant. I only took pictures. My thighs grew simply from that action alone!
I happened upon this entire tuxedo series of shots I snapped off of my son after he returned home from a formal sorority dinner with a female friend he had escorted to the event. He's so danged cute, that boy of mine. And I've done absolutely nothing with the shots. But that's the danger of digital photography: the hoarding of photos. Friends and family and significant events and trivial happenings all locked up in files upon files on the home computer. This particular blogger, folks, definitely falls into the category of digital hoarder! I'm sure my friends would stage an intervention if my shots didn't fill a few of the voids in their own photographic histories. And evidently, the mere fact that I regularly upload my photos and delete them from the camera puts me a bit ahead of most in the snapshot-taking crowd.
Testing the limits of the tux!
Handsome even while chowing down on a bowl of
mac n' cheese, this kid!
Boy! Those braces sure paid off!
But all of that to say this: the purposeful task of organizing all of those picture files, including deleting numerous shots I never intended to keep from the beginning, restored a small segment of my inner calm. I made a bit of headway in straightening up the clutter of our lives in the midst of our suburban busy-ness. Though it kept me from blogging for an hour, it did me a world of good. And after the week I've had, I'll TAKE that!
And if the purpose of this blog is to keep me writing, it is fair to state that though my BLOG entries were low this past week, I did do a fair amount of writing in other forms, including a lengthy and detailed personal letter to someone with whom I needed to clear the air and be clear in my intentions and expectations regarding the friendship. That has value to me. That's important. To me.
I hope I'm back in the saddle as this week gears up. It looks to be packed. Just like all the rest. Starting out with a plumber tomorrow and a 5-day trip with 3 out of 4 Earth Divas in attendance this Wednesday through Sunday. My husband is a true gem to encourage me to take this time away from my responsibilities to family and home. In truth: I can't WAIT! Stay tuned for those stories.
Until, get some sleep for me. And yourself. See you here. Later.
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