My Mom, the Hothead

Remember him?   He has flames for hair.   Super-important to our story.
Hope my mom still talks to me after this post.  

Back in the day, when my thighs did not touch each other when I stood and the worst sentences in the world was "I'm gonna tell Mom,"  my mother had dark red hair.   Along with her dark auburn hair, she had the temper to match.   Far be it from any of us to cross her.  All she had to do was give us "The Look"  or even worse,  one of her infamous one four hour long lectures over every transgression we had ever committed IN OUR LIVES, and we quickly were back on the straight and narrow.     In those days during her lectures, somewhere around hour three or four, I would stare at her until my eyes glazed over, my pupils unfocused, and her face morphed into some strange-looking monster.   Don't tell her I wasn't listening.

I can't sit through another lecture.   Please.

That fiery hair always matched her temperament back then.  Quick to anger, quick to laugh.  

Yesterday, however, that once-fiery, now-grey hair was just fiery and quick to burn.

As I wasn't there for this incident, I'll just have to piece together with first-hand accounts from my sisters. brother, and mom, herself, to figure out exactly what happened.

According to Mom, she was bent over,  just about to take the turkey out of the oven when the bag burst, causing a waterfall of turkey juice and fat to cascade down onto the heating element and the ensuing fireball to encase her head.   She quickly moved her head out of the way, but the damage had been done.

Half an eyebrow gone and a patch of hair about the size of your hand singed to a funky, dirty-ferret yellow.  With lovely black, crispy tips.
The skin on her forehead was a little pink and shiny....kind of like a day at the beach.

But not.

An attractive look to be sure.

Mom called in a panic. Her hair was burnt, the sink in the bathroom was clogged up, my dad had just put his hand through a rusty pipe, and Thanksgiving was quickly becoming ruined.  

You know.  Just a typical day around the house.

According to the kids, mom and dad kept opening up the oven and checking on the fire's progress, ensuring that the fire got just enough oxygen with every opening for it to whoosh out several feet from the oven door.  Eventually, my brother* had to leave the room after watching Mom, with  her burnt hair and pink skin, continually opening the oven, because he couldn't quit laughing and didn't want "The Lecture" to befall him.    My sister* said Mom would open the oven and call my father's name, the fire would spring out, and she'd slam the door, with a shocked look upon her face. My sister, too, had to leave the room, laughing.

Eventually the fire went out, mom got a surprisingly moist and unburned, but slightly smoked turkey out of the oven, and Thanksgiving proceeded as planned.

Oh, the Thanksgiving memories.



Happy Birthday Mom, burnt hair and all.  This post is for you.


*Name and sex of my siblings may have been changed and or omitted to protect the somewhat innocent.

I'm Sure I'm Wrong....Maybe

I have a habit of getting bored very easily.

I also have a very active imagination.

Two great things that mean I could either be a genius OR a Jack Russell terrier who's energetically barking in the corner at nothing.

When I'm in line at the grocery store, I have created a game to keep myself entertained.    I like to look at the products in someone's cart or on the grocery belt and try to figure out what people are about to eat or do.

If  the person in front of me is buying crackers, Kleenexes, and some chicken noodle soup, obviously someone in their house is sick.    Flowers and a card, it's a birthday or an anniversary.  Super easy, and it helps to pass the time.

The other day, however, my imagination ran wild.  

There was a woman in line in front of me at Wal-Mart.   She was an older woman, probably mid 60s, dressed well, prim and proper. Pink two piece suit dress.  Sensible black shoes and handbag.   Pursed lips.  Lipstick slight askew.  Crinkly blue eyes.  Creepy Grandma looked like she baked cookies, had a cat, and sent you five bucks in a birthday card for your birthday or like she had someone chained up in her tool shed.

It puts the lotion on its skin.

Something was.... *off* about her.

Creepy Grandma had placed several interesting items on the grocery checkout belt.   She had four enemas, some Ex-Lax, and toilet paper.  Okay.... Obviously, someone has a stopping up problem and needed a little help with excavation.

She also purchased two douches, some plastic sheeting, three rolls of duct tape, super glue, and some breath mints.    That's where my imagination starting freaking me out a little.

 Maybe she wasn't feeling Springtime Fresh.  Okay.  I can deal with that.   Breath mints?  Apparently the breath needed a little freshening up too.

Plastic sheeting and duct tape made me think of serial killers.   Was Creepy Grandma planning to off someone?  Did she have someone locked away in her chintz covered guest room?

Then  I began to wonder if perhaps, she was a planning a very messy night.   Perhaps a colonoscopy was ordered and she's worried about a trek to the bathroom?   Plastic sheeting and duct tape to protect the carpet?  If that was it...bless her little pea picking heart and I hope she's okay.

Maybe it was a combination thing.  Maybe she's got the colonoscopy thing  (toilet paper, enemas, ex-lax) going on and then she's going out on date (douche, breathmints) and then she plans on killing him (plastic sheeting and duct tape).

I couldn't figure it out.   I played the scenarios out in my head for 10 minutes, trying to use all the ingredients. I never could get the superglue to fit in, though.

I truly contemplated asking Creepy Grandma what was going on, but there was something about the crooked pink lipstick that put me off.

Watch out, guys.  She's in North Texas today.....she'll be on the news tomorrow.

Remember you heard it here first.


******* A gazillion bonus points to the first person who names the movie that's quoted in this post!

Michelle and Mandy Better Watch Their Backs

In one of my very first posts, I told you about how annoying entertaining my family is in the wee hours of the morning.

Based on what happens at night in our house, *occasionally* I am grumpy in the daylight hours.

Sometimes, I sleep really well, but I just wake up super pissed off, though.  I don't know if it's bad dreams I've had that I just don't remember.  I don't know if the magic sleep fairy sprinkles me with angry dust.  I don't know if actually I'm just an angry, hateful person down deep, but sometimes..... I just  wake up mad.  Not little mad, either.  Great, big honking, if-you-speak-to-me-wrong-I-may-ask-for-a-divorce kind of mad.  I never wake up mad at The Kid...it's always Big Daddy I'm mad at, bless his  little sleep-talking heart.

Several years ago, I was awakened to the sound of Big Daddy, moaning and whispering the name Michelle. Just in case, you guys have gotten confused like he did, my name is Kristi, not Michelle. At three in the morning that night until sunrise the next morning, I fixated on the fact that my husband, lying in bed so peacefully, snoozing away, a smile on his face, was dreaming about some girl named Michelle.  

I wanted to strangle him.

The next day was not pretty in my house.  I asked him, in no uncertain terms, what exactly he was dreaming about, who in the hell Michelle was, and why in the HELL he was dreaming of her, because it sure did sound like HE was having extra-marital fun.  He genuinely looked perplexed.   He told me he didn't know a Michelle. Since Big Daddy is the truthful sort, and since I had checked his phone,  his Facebook contacts, his twitter feed, knew his coworkers, and knew that at his core, he is a rather antisocial guy who never went anywhere without me or our child, I believed him.

Sort of.

It was a good thing, we didn't actually meet any Michelles in our social circle until years later, because I would have had to cut them.

With a rusty disposable razor.

Soaked in salt water.

And battery acid.

Wrapped in a towel infested with chiggers.

Wow.  I sound violent.  

Whatever.

Girls and Big Daddy, remember THAT in case you decide to play together.

So last night, I was awakened at 4:06 A.M.  by the sound of every demented, demon-possessed ghost doll in a horror movie ever howling in my ear.   Big Daddy was keening in the creepiest way. It didn't even sound like his normal voice.   He was howling in this high-pitched banshee voice and moaning.

"Hurts!  Hurts!!   No!  No!  Tell Mandy!  Hurts!"  Then he dissolved into more moaning and indistinguishable words.

He honestly sounded like he was in pain.  I hesitated, though.  Are you supposed to wake up people having a nightmare or not?   My sleepy brain remembered that it's sleepwalkers you're not supposed to wake up, so I quickly started shaking him.  He began to moan and make worse noises.

"Hurts!"

"Wake up!   Wake up!  You're okay.   It's just a dream.  Wake up. Wait... Who's Mandy?  Seriously, wake up, now.  Who's Mandy?"   Big Daddy had woken up just in time for the realization to hit me that we don't know a Mandy.   I have a cousin named Mandy, but Big Daddy's never met her.   

He blinked at me a couple of times, confused. 

"I didn't say Mandy."   

"Oh yes, you did!"

"I would know what I said."

"You were asleep, screeching like a prepubescent girl.  You don't know anything."

Then he started telling me his dream....

He was in an apartment and Anthony Edwards, the tall doctor from ER, was there.   The door to the apartment opened, and a group of Hispanic construction workers came in.  With them, came hundreds and hundreds of red wasps.  They began to sting Big Daddy on his face. Half of his face became paralyzed, so he started calling  out of the side of his mouth for help. The wasps weren't stinging anyone else, but no one moved to help him.  

 "Hurts!  Hurts!  No! No!   Too many!  Hurts!" he cried.  Then he became totally paralyzed by the venom as the wasps stung him over and over.   

As I laid there listening to him recount his dream, I was trying to piece together the sounds my woken-from-a-dead-sleep ears thought they heard and the words he had actually said out of the side of his face in his demonic jack-in-the-box voice.  

Too many. Tell Mandy.   

It was the same.  

Damn good thing too.   'Cause Mandy better watch her back.

I'm on to her.

A Pair of Work Boots

I wrote this last year after participating in Operation Care in Dallas, the largest Christmas Party in the nation for the homeless.   We give our guests clothes, sleeping bags, hot meals.  We wash their feet and give them brand new shoes and socks.  We pray for them, give them hair cuts, and a chance to call home.  We have a petting zoo for kiddos, facing painting, and entertainment.  All for free.  

 It is the most wonderful experience I have ever had living out God's love.    I have participated for the past two years in Footwashing.   People who know me know I hate feet, but I knew that was where I was supposed to work.   I signed up, and because I was obedient to the Spirit, God gave me the opportunity to be support staff, a problem solver.   I don't actually wash feet, but if a problem comes up for the footwashers.... I'm who they grab.  If I can't fix it, I go up the chain of command.    I'm good at it, and I love the opportunity to serve both our guests and the servants.   

I like that I get to truly DO Christmas.   I get to be Jesus.  I get to be His hands and feet.   I get to love on the people who most people avert their eyes and try not to see.   I get to SEE them with His eyes.   

This is my story......

My time spent yesterday at Operation Care Christmas Gift 2011 was as meaningful as it was last year.      This year God was all over the event just as He was last year.   Last year, I didn't write about it.  This year I will...

I met a man named Willie who was on 14 medications and was actually supposed to have reported to the hospital for heart surgery.  Instead he chose, in his words, "to chance it" because he needed a sleeping bag and some new shoes.  He said the hospital might be able to fix his heart, but he needed something to be able to walk around in and be warm in when he got out.   He had already had nine heart attacks.   He was feeling faint yesterday, dizzy, with left arm pain while standing in line for an hour to get shoes.   When I met him and found out his story, I gave him a place to sit.   He refused medical attention saying, "When you have had one heart attack, the next one ain't so scary."  He promised, pinky swore because I made him, that he would go to the hospital after the event.   His friends agreed that they would take him.  They were just as worried about him as I was.  

I met Rodney, a huge, giant of a man, who was frowning while waiting in the footwashing line.  When I walked up and asked what the frown was for, he told me that last year, he waited in the line for almost 2 hours, but after he had his feet washed and needs attended to, it was discovered that we were out of his size 17 shoes.  He lifted up a beat-up, battered tennis shoe-clad foot.  The sole was hanging off and missing in other places.  His sock was exposed.   He said, "I'm hoping you have some now.   These aren't so good.   Don't know if they'll make it another year."  While he waited in line, I went to where the shoes were, looking for his size.  There in the box marked 17 sat one pair of tennis shoes.  I gave them to the ticket taker and went back to Rodney.  When I told him that there was ONE pair of 17 and that I had them reserved for him, I have never seen such a smile.   He laughed such a huge belly laugh people stopped and stared.   The sound of it reminded me of the man from the old 7Up commercials except  his laugh went on and on.  I know my own face was mirroring his.    I waited in line beside him, until it was his turn, and gave him over to one of my close friends, Liz, who was washing feet.  I knew he would get the special treatment he deserved.

I also met John.  John had a pair of boots that the heel had broken off on.   John had on two pair of socks and  had stuffed a huge wad of toliet paper into his shoes.  You see, the nails from the bottom of his shoes had cut a hole into the bottom of his foot the size of a dime.  A bleeding, gaping, infected  dime.   He also had another puncture wound the size of a pencil.  He asked for a couple pair of extra socks.  He said with some socks and tennis shoes, he would be fine.   I had a nurse look at his foot, and we got him over to medical. 

I also had the pleasure of meeting Maffia.  I teased him about giving me a fake name, until he pulled out his old driver's license.   It was his last name, and we joked about a blond- haired man being Italian.   Maffia had been hit by a car while he was walking across the street and had a traumatic brain injury.  Any of you who know my family's story knows that my husband also suffered one from a car accident.  Maffia had held down a job for 15 years and had a house and wife and family.   He lost it all due to medical bills. His wife couldn't deal with the stress, divorced him, and moved to another state with their daughter to be closer to her family.  Maffia touched my heart greatly.  He had suffered from several strokes during his recovery and his left hand was drawn and he walked with a cane.   Just like my grandfather who had suffered a stroke did.     There but for the grace of God, go me and mine.

The one who still brings tears to my eyes and touched my heart the most I don't even know the name of.    I had just told Bill, my leader, that I was leaving for the day.  My husband was tired and ready to go.  I had already put him off twice and kept helping people, and I knew that he was getting irritated.

As I was literally turning to leave the area, a footwasher brought someone to me.   I wore a blue shirt, and that meant that if a volunteer had a problem, I was there to fix it.   She explained to me that the young Hispanic man who was with her needed work boots.   I explained we didn't have any work boots.  Only tennis shoes.   She said he had just gotten a new job and desperately needed work boots.   I explained again that we only had tennis shoes.   The man watched me intently throughout our exchange and I wondered if he spoke English.   He reached into this pocket and pulled out a bright, shiny new ID badge from a construction company.   He explained to me, in accented English, that he needed work boots for his job.   He had just gotten it last Monday, and they had given him a week to get work boots.   If he didn't have them by this Monday, he would be fired.   If he was fired, he wouldn't be able to stay at the place he had been staying.  He had to have boots, he said.    I explained that I understood, but we didn't have work boots.   He told me he had heard we did.   I told him I had been back there 9000 times today, and there were definitely no work boots.

 Then he showed me his shoes.  They were leather high-tops...light work boots, and they were in deplorable condition.  There were pieces missing from the side. A part of the heel was gone.  I could see why they weren't safe.   I pointed to my tennis shoes and told him we only had shoes like these.    He shook his head no, and repeated work boots.   I told him again, we only had tennis shoes.  He said that God told him there were work boots there for him.   Would I just go look?? I relented and looked.  High and low.   He wore a size ten.  We had five huge boxes of shoes for size 10.   I dug through them all.  NO work boots.   I asked my leader.   He said we didn't have any work boots, but that I might look in the donation pile.  You see, we only give away new shoes.  Not used.  Some people had donated used shoes though, and those shoes, while not given away at the event, are distributed later by another organization.

 I walked over to the box.  It was about three feet tall and full of shoes.  I dug and dug and dug.  On the very bottom was a single work boot.

My heart began to beat faster.  

I dug a bit more frantically.  

Could there really be another work boot in there?? Please, let there be, please... 

And there it was.

 With a pounding heart, I looked at the size.  Size 10.  The only pair of work boots in the 200,000 square feet of the convention center, and it was the perfect size. 

Of course, they were.  God had told him they would be. 

I almost ran back to him in my excitement.    As I showed them to him, and explained that they were used, not new, his eyes began to fill with tears.  Mine did too.  There shouldn't have been a pair of work boots there, but there were.   

They were there for him.  

If I had left earlier, he wouldn't have gotten them.   If he wouldn't have gotten them, he wouldn't have a job.   If he didn't have the job, he'd lose his spot at the mission.   I have no doubt that God has great things planned for that man.

Everything for a purpose, everything for a reason. 

  

There were so many others who I had the privilege of helping, but I'm crying too hard typing this.  I had to share this story while it was fresh and new.  I've had several people ask me  how can you go work there? How can you work with "those people?"  How can you volunteer? 

I ask, how can you not?   I got to see Jesus in those smiles.   The Bible says,  "What you do for the least of these, you do for me."  Not only did I get to see Him, I got to show people His love today. 

I got to be like Jesus.

Will I be back next year for 2012 Christmas Gift?  Just try and stop me.


*** If you're interested in volunteering you can check out their website for more information on ways to volunteer or ways to donate.  We always need jackets, kid-sized, toddler sized, adults.   We always need shoes and socks.   Money, of course, is always welcome.    We also would love to have you.  Check out the areas where you could help out, see if there is one that speaks to you.    This year the event is on December 15.  We would love to have your help!