Is it already Tuesday?

Other than a decent shower the night before Independence Day, it hasn't rained here in forever.  And I really didn't think it would any time soon.  Which is why I planned a photo shoot Saturday evening and a pool party at our house Sunday evening.  It came a downpour both nights.  Really??  It hasn't rained enough to fill a thimble and it chooses to rain buckets on the only two nights I have something scheduled?  That is just my luck.  However, I will only whine momentarily because we really need the rain.  REALLY need the rain.  The ground is hard and dusty, and if it doesn't get better anytime soon, we're all going to be rolling to California in broken down trucks and going by the name of Joad.  And I do not look good in flour sack dresses.  Sister mercy, it's dry. 

We managed to squeeze in enough portraits in my makeshift studio in the house for the beautiful young couple who came over Saturday night.  We just didn't get to traipse over to the sunflower fields for one more round of pictures.  And we got an hour and a half of swimming in Sunday night before the clouds opened up and stormed on us.  When the wind started blowing our chips off the plates, and it started to lightning, we thought it was best to seek shelter, and we now know that the Man Cave can hold at least thirty people if some of those are little people.  We ate and visited and continued to have a large time and eventually busted up the party when it became obvious the rain had settled in and there would be no more swimming.  The party wasn't as long as we had anticipated, but that just means we'll have to try it again before the kids go back to school.

It was a fun start to a busy week.  We have vacation bible school every night this week at church.  And ya'll know I love a good bible school, but it sure does wear me out.  I have this theory that the good Lord gives us temporary amnesia about things like childbirth, surgery and bible school.  We forgot how exhausting it is until it rolls around again and we're in the midst of it, but by then we're already committed and there's no turning back.  This year, my job is to teach the kids the songs and the dance moves, which is a bit ironic since I couldn't carry a tune if I had a bucket and a helper, but I am a veteran of high school AND college dance squads, so I guess it all evens out.  I had told them to assign me to whatever job needed to be filled, and I got a text late last week asking me to do the music room since they were having trouble filling that job.  I now know why.  Everyone else has already done it and knows how tiring it is.  Ha!  It was like a two and a half hour zumba class.  I danced and sang nonstop with the exception of about two minutes when we sat down to talk about prayer about two thirds of the way through the evening.  And while it was meant to be meaningful, it was really my way of giving myself a two minute break from shaking my wiggle.  I was certainly feeling closer to age fifty than age forty last night. 

The schedule for the week will be to go to work, race home, throw together something for my peeps to eat, run to bible school and then come home around 9pm to prep a meal for the following night before falling into bed.  Did I mention I have to shoot a wedding this weekend?  That means a rehearsal on Friday night and shooting off and on all day Saturday.  Whew.  I'm tired just thinking about it.  It's all in fun, though.  I love working with the kids, one of whom told me last night the only thing she ever prays for is an iPad.  Not to give thanks or ask for guidance or ask for healing for someone sick.  Just an iPad.  Gotta love the honesty of a six year old.  I'll be shaking my wiggle every night, and if I'm lucky it will put me two pounds closer to my fighting weight.  If I'm really lucky, the laundry fairy will visit my home while I'm shaking that wiggle.  

Jam Masters

"I won't be a rock star. I will be a legend."

Freddie Mercury

These two?  Legends in the making...every night.  They just crack me up.

Breaking News

Our top story tonight? I’m glad this week is winding to a close. It’s been a hectic one, but good. We will wrap up bible school tonight and tear down everything, but I think we can safely call it a rousing success. A few observations:
-Parents, you have no secrets. You have no idea what your children share with their teachers when you’re not around, and you really don’t want to know how much we know about you or what we know about you. It’s best not to ask.
-This Little Light of Mine is the best church song ever. Why do we quit singing it when we become adults? It’s got a good beat, and it’s easy to dance to. I like the jazzy version we’ve been singing all week, but I LOVE Bruce Springsteen’s version that I downloaded from iTunes this week.
-We’ve managed to make it through this week with no major casualties. However, we have had an issue with people sticking pipe cleaners, fingers and other items in their eyes. Every night-an eye injury. What’s up with that?
-We are adding that magic puke dust to the budget next year. It’s that stuff you sprinkle on vomit that absorbs it so you can clean it up easily. It may be $40 for a small container, but in my opinion, it’s worth every penny.
-On that same note, vigorous games right after snack time are risky.
-The other item to add to our list? Bug spray. I sat down in the grass Monday night to take a few pictures of the kids. In the ten minutes I was sitting there, 16,981 bugs invaded my shorts and my shirt, apparently, in search of my underwear. I am the proud recipient of twenty something chigger bites, some of which are in places I can’t mention. Benadryl Anti-Itch is my new best friend, and if you happen to catch me scratching my backside, please let it pass.

In other news around the world:
-Special Delivery is now walking. Ha! His parents will never rest again. We have the cutest picture of him in Teen Angel’s phone. If I were smart enough to get that picture out of there, I’d show it to you.
-Papa T. has a machine from the Bureau of the Blind that plays books on tape. He uses it all day long and gets a little antsy when he can’t use it. Well, his old one broke, and the new one came in the mail yesterday. Hubby couldn’t get it to work either. He resigned himself to returning it, but Papa T. insisted that I come over after bible school last night to look at it. He believes that my seventeen years of working in radio and television makes me capable of fixing any electronic device. I had my doubts but was surprised to find that I fixed it. Turns out, Hubby had forgotten to plug it in. I would have looked like a genius if it hadn’t taken me about fifteen minutes to figure that out.

Well, that’s all the news for this evening. Join us back here tomorrow when we take a look at the latest economic figures and how they’re affecting our grocery bill, and we check the weather forecast to see if Hula gets to get in the pool. In the meantime, have a good evening and watch out for those bugs.

Pass the Macaroni and Watch Out For the Plague

Bible school oh, bible school. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. We are headed into evening three of vacation bible school at church, and we are having a grand time. We’ve had a great turnout so far, even though we had a frog stranglin’ rain last night. It didn’t dampen the kids’ enthusiasm, and they’ve come from all parts of our community to participate. Janjanmom and mia sent their youngin’s over to party with us Methodists in the bayou, so I get to see Mookie and Lilly every night, and there are lots of other new faces this year. And cute little feet. Ya’ know, I’d wear those flip flops if they made them in adult sizes.

We’ve had no mass casualties so far. Just the usual mayhem that follows children. Little Brown Eyes poked himself in the eye with a pipe cleaner last night and Sir Jumps Too Much After Snack vomited The Plague snack mix all over the Pharaoh’s floor. There was the incident Monday night when Mr. Divulges Too Much stopped in the middle of gluing the wings on his glow stick firefly to look Teen Angel in the eyes and blurt out a rather graphic fact about his hee-haw. The best moment yet though, was last night when Mr. Giggles A Bunch pulled out his partial plate, showed us his three false teeth and proceeded to accidentally fling them across the floor. Imagine our surprise. He had no interest in washing them off before he put them back in his mouth, so I’m guessing he has a habit of doing this. He seemed very pleased that we laughed hard enough to wet our pants. Oh, the joy! Oh, the fun of working with children! I can’t even begin to count the number of times they’ve made me smile already. The fun should really ramp up tonight because I’m in the preschool room. Pray for me brothers and sisters.

All of this reminds me of the times I attended bible school as a kid. I won’t tell you how long ago that was, but let’s just say we sang Kum-Ba-Ya and made tie dyed shirts. We also drank a lot of Kool-Aid. My favorite craft was an oval Chinette paper plate that I glued shell macaroni to along the edges, painted gold and attached a cluster of red rubber grapes in the center. I remember thinking that was the coolest art ever. Oh, the joy! Oh, the fun!



Trailboss mentioned one of her favorite VBS moments in the comments here earlier this week, and I love hearing that kind of stuff, so I’d like to hear from more of you. If you are a bible school graduate or worker, tell me brothers and sisters, what is your favorite memory of bible school?

And by the way, is it wrong that I managed to sandwich a post about panties in between two about bible school?

Hey Hula! Where Have You Been?

Well, I built a swamp, got a little older and ate my weight in crab legs. In my spare time, I executed a survey, did some research for a project and visited the merry land of odd known as insurance paperwork. I did not float in the pool. I did not make margaritas and I did not take a sunny nap in a lounge chair. Frick. Double frick. Double frick with two snaps and a swirl.

The last couple of weeks have been insane. Work has been unusually busy, and family life has been more hectic than usual. Throw in a little bible school preparation and my birthday, and I managed to create the perfect storm of exhaustion. I was so busy last week that I kept forgetting my birthday was drawing near. When Mama J. handed me her credit card and told me to buy something nice for myself I said, “What on earth for?” “Uh, isn’t Saturday your birthday?” “Great googly moogly, it sure is!” For a brief moment I was giddy. Then the power steering went out on the van.

Thank goodness, Teen Angel’s weekly chores include laundry, otherwise, the Hula-gen’s would all be going commando by now. When a teenager takes it upon herself to wash her own bed sheets because thinks they’re long overdue for a wash, they are looooooong overdue. And we haven’t been to the grocery store in three weeks. For a family who cooks most of their meals at home, that’s a long time. The milk in the fridge has an expiration date of July 14th. Every morning, for about week I have said a little prayer, given it the sniff test and poured it on my cereal. Fortunately, it’s skim so it’s watery and slow to spoil. Any day now it should be turning into cheese. The up side to not going to the grocery store is that we’re doing a fine job of emptying up the cabinets. We’ve managed to eat just about everything but some Lipton onion soup mix, a stray can of beets and an old gingerbread house kit. And frankly, those beets are looking better every day.

In the last five days we have boxed up the remaining contents of Sissy’s house and sent them to the auctioneer, loaded up some of Mama J.’s stuff she wanted sent to the auctioneer, spent about three of those days decorating for bible school and negotiated several standoffs between the cat and the dog. I completed a couple of labor intensive projects at work and started planning for another. I ran a race Saturday morning and had to move up an age category. I was a full two minutes slower than I was the previous Saturday, which I found highly amusing. Saturday evening we took time to eat at my favorite seafood restaurant, where I poked down more crab legs than should be legal and yesterday Mama and Daddy visited with birthday cake in tow. I finally sat down last night at 9:15pm and marveled at how fast the weekend went. When I woke up this morning worrying about the week ahead, I said “Hula, something’s got to give. You need to make some changes, girlfriend”, and I did.

I did some list making and some prioritizing, set a few immediate goals and let go of a couple of items. I worked through my short list today and hope to work a little farther down my long list tomorrow. And while that list looms large and long, I expect this will be a good week, and I will greet Friday renewed. Ya’ know why? It’s bible school week, and I love bible school.

Heading up the decorating committee is usually my job, which I enjoy, even though it’s labor intensive. It’s always the one time of year I can justify to my parents all of those theater classes I took in college. I like to create an atmosphere that wows the kids when they walk in the door and makes them excited to be there. My wonderful, tireless partners in swamp building have prepared a set that I think the kids will like.
And the bayou theme looks like it’s going to be really fun. It’s been a while since I’ve had a little one in bible school, but I love to help because the kiddies make me smile, smile, smile. And somebody with sticky fingers is always trying to give me a hug. And somebody with a peanut butter grin will say something funny and blow milk through his nose. And somebody will wait until the last minute to pee and make me dash with him to the potty. But most of all, they will remind me time and time again how good it is to dance and laugh and sing off key regardless of whose listening or watching. They will teach me how to see wonder in the smallest things, and they will warm my soul for five full days. And that my friends is worth two snaps and a swirl.

Where in The World is Ramona

I’ve been emailing back and forth this week with my old grade school chum, G., and we’ve been swapping memories about our childhood years. It’s fascinating to get each other’s perspective on that time and remind each other of different things that happened back then. Like the time the class mischief maker left his lunchbox at school all summer and it stank to high heaven when we came back in the fall. Or G. inviting all the neighborhood boys over to ogle his Farrah Fawcett swimsuit poster since he was the first boy in the region to order it from TV Guide. Growing up in a small town in the early and mid 70’s really was a great experience. We weren’t exposed to drugs, gangs or school violence. The only weapon at Franklin Elementary was Mr. E.’s paddle, and boy, could he swing it. Those really were the Wonder Years for us, but I realized today I can’t say they were perfect because it wasn’t a perfect time. The times they were a changin’, but not fast enough for some folks, like my friend Ramona. This week’s stroll down memory lane left me wondering where she is now.

Ramona was the first black person I ever got to know really well. The minority population in my little hometown in the mid 70’s was pretty small. There were few faces of color in my school photos. Since the Civil Rights Act was signed the year I was born, and the Watts riots and Alabama voting clashes occurred when I was a baby, as a grade school student I was ignorantly unaware of the race struggles that had occurred in the first decade of my youth. I was conscious of color back then because adults talked about it, but I didn’t really care or think about it, until I became buddies with Ramona. I remember her in kindergarten with her pigtails and colorful barrettes. I can see her now riding a tricycle during recess. This picture is from 7th grade when she and I played on the basketball team. Well, she played. I warmed the bench.
It’s ironic that she isn’t smiling in the only photo I have of her, because she always smiled. She had a giggle box that worked overtime and an infectious laugh. She made me laugh from the very beginning. We often sat beside each other in class, but didn’t become really good friends until 7th grade. Because we got along so well, I assumed she was just like me, and she was except for the fact that she faced issues I didn’t have to worry about. I didn’t know it then, though. We passed notes, shared jokes and talked on the phone for hours. She laughed at me because I was so naïve and taught me things about her culture I’d never heard of like Soul Train, Jeri Curl and hair food. She opened up a musical world outside top 40 pop radio when she introduced me to Teddy Pendergrass and Barry White. We had many good times at school and over the phone, but we didn’t visit each other’s homes. We would have needed transportation, but we didn’t ask our parents. It was like we had some kind of unspoken deal that we wouldn’t cross certain societal boundaries. We never discussed it, and I didn’t think about it much until one day when she showed up at my house. Her older sister had driven her there on their way home, and she stopped to show off her new baby nephew. It was the only time she ever came to my house. I grabbed her nephew and took him inside to show my parents. They welcomed her inside, but I could tell she felt really awkward, like she just didn’t belong. I never understood why, but I could see it in her eyes. She didn’t stay long that day, and we never spoke about it. It was my first clue that things were different for her in a way that they weren’t for me.

After 8th grade graduation she and I went to separate high schools. We drifted apart, but I never forgot her. Occasionally, I would run into her mom in town, and we would chat for a little. Over time, I lost track of her. During my high school and college years my little world expanded, and I learned much more about the racial divide in this country. Many times I have wondered what it was like to be in Ramona’s shoes back then. I can only imagine how tough it might have been to be one of those few faces of color in a very pale community. I wonder how many times she had her feelings hurt by unkind words or felt like a second class citizen because someone told her she was. I will probably never know. I am ashamed I didn’t ask her those questions back then. I feel like I let her down by not looking farther into her heart and mind. I wish I had been smart enough to look beyond my Wonder Years bubble. I sometimes wonder where she is now. I wish we could sit down and chat for a very long time over a drink and a piece of pie. I wish we could belly laugh and giggle together again. I would tell her I’m sorry I didn’t ask THOSE questions. I wonder if she ever thinks of me.

Bible School Continued

Words you’re not surprised to hear from a preschooler: “I have to go potty.”
Words you’re glad to hear: “I don’t need any help. You can wait at the door.”
Words you’re surprised to hear: “I’m going to try to poop while I’m here.”
Words you know are coming but don’t want to hear: “Miss Hula, will you come wipe me?”
Words unspoken but relayed with a big hug instead: “Thank you.”

The B-I-B-L-E

Many years ago when Teen Angel was on a traveling cheerleading squad (and let us please stop here to thank the good Lord that we’re not doing THAT anymore. Don’t get me started. That’s a whole other post.), we went to a competition in Chicago. As her squad, a pee wee group of rambunctious little girls, was about to take the floor, I overheard one of the workers say, “God bless those who work with youth.” He really meant it. His voice came drifting back to me last night while I was helping with bible school. Near the end of the evening as my energy flagged and I stumbled through another round of the hand jive, I looked into the exhausted faces of fellow adults who had wrangled kids for nearly three hours and thought to myself, “God bless ‘em.” And my next thought was, “Holy crap. We have four more nights of this.”

Bible school is great fun. I love working with the kids and trying to give them the same experience I had when I was a kid, but it’s like childbirth. Your mind has a way of blocking out how much work and energy it takes to pull it off until you get into the middle of it. I guess that selective memory loss is the Lord’s way of making sure we have enough volunteers for next year. Our church holds bible school at night, so you’d think the kids would be kind of tuckered out from a full day of activities before they arrive at the church. Not so, Kemo Sabe. They are rarin’ to go. The adults? Not so much. I’d give my right arm to have the energy these kids have at six o’clock in the evening. Our largest class this year is preschoolers, and there is only one girl in that class. It is one wiggling, squirming batch of boys, and they are so stinkin’ cute you almost can’t look at them. And boy, do they all make me laugh. There was the little boy who belly laughs at everything. The little girl who was so into our alien theme that she tried to convince us she had stepped on a space rock and could hardly walk. And a little boy whose pants kept falling down around his ankles. He wasn’t concerned about pulling them up. Every time we turned around someone was shouting, “Pants down!” We finally constructed a Jethro Bodine belt out of some twine we pulled from the decorating supplies and prayed he wouldn’t need to pee (or worse) before he went home. There were lots of smiling faces with milk and Kool-aid mustaches and sticky fingers from munching on asteroids (round Rice Krispie treats made with Fruity Pebbles). The space station lift-off (fog machine) was a big hit. We had only one injury accident that resulted in a bloody nose, and one non injury accident if you count Sissy’s butt in the air tumble over a traffic cone during space station tag. We’re off to a good start, and there’s more fun and frivolity planned for the rest of the week….if the adults can hold out. God bless the people who work with youth. They’re gonna need it.