Tuesday, August 12, 2008

What's the deal with fart jokes?

Special came up with a new joke yesterday:

Q. Why did the elephant run away from the rabbit?
A. Because the rabbit farted!

That was the funniest thing I've heard all week.

Monday, August 4, 2008

These pinenuts are making me thirsty

Yesterday Batman and I celebrated 17 years of marital bliss. And the fact that he didn't die the night before.

We had planned to go out to dinner Saturday night at this restaurant, then go out for dessert here. When we arrived at the restaurant, we told the waiter that Batman is "deathly allergic to pinenuts," and asked him to make sure our food didn't contain them. He forgot. Long story short, Batman ended up in the emergency room, the waiter lost his job, and the manager has to foot the hospital bill.

It's rare in life that we get a do-over, but Sunday night we went out for a do-over! We skipped the meal--had our traditional Sunday-night family pizza night instead--but after dinner we dropped the kids off at GrandMom & GrandBob's and headed for Chocolata. We each ordered a crepe; mine had Nutella and strawberries and Batman's had bananas, strawberries and a dessert wine sauce.

Here's what his looked like:
And here's mine:

Happy anniversary, Batman! Let's have a less eventful celebration next time, okay?

In other news, Special lost her first tooth at day camp last week. The days before the loss had been filled with much drama and weeping and moaning over the looseness! And the wiggling! And the sheer awfulness of teeth in general! So we were all greatly relieved when she pulled the thing out.

And speaking of toothlessness, I have to show this picture of Batman and I at a redneck-themed birthday party last weekend:


I found that top at Wal-Mart--it says "True Love" and has a heart with a knife through it. I thought it was the perfect redneck top, and I'm not sure what it says about me that I plan on wearing it again with a denim jacket. I will not, however, layer it over a red bra like I did here, nor pair it with a denim mini-skirt and 4" heels. In true redneck fashion, Batman left the tags on his Miller High Life hat and returned it to the store the next day. We had lots of fun at the party, and I even got Batman to dance a little. Very little. (rim shot)

I think we've had all the excitement we need for a while now. Here's hoping that my next post will be about how boring life is!

Friday, August 1, 2008

A rare serious moment

I haven't posted an update on Number One's tummy troubles in a while, and thought I would let everyone know how she's doing. She had been symptom-free for several months, and then in June she suddenly started having problems again. Last month they put her on a steroid, and yesterday they added a second steroid. She sees her doctor in two weeks, and hopefully by then she'll be all cleared up, but I've been hoping that for weeks now.

Please pray that we can find ALL her trigger foods. We know that dairy hurts her, and we avoid things like broccoli and cabbage and nuts, but obviously something started this in June and we just don't know what. And please pray that we can get her off the steroid soon--we just don't want her to get all puffed up like she did last summer, and long-term steroid use isn't good for anyone.

I started thinking yesterday, spurred by a post on another blog, about how it's easy to get angry with God when your child or another loved one is suffering. But God didn't do this to Number One; it's just part of life, and bad things happen in life to EVERYONE. It would be so easy to say, well, God isn't answering our prayers to heal her, He must not care. But that would be ignoring how He has given me a job with fantastic health insurance--something we didn't have until very recently. He has also provided the money to pay for her care beyond what the insurance covers. He has provided a school for Number One where they care about her, where the teachers and students look out for her. We live in a place with one of the best pediatric GI specialists in the country, and he knows Number One by name and responds to each and every one of my phone calls. We are blessed, is what I'm saying, even in this.

Shortly after Batman and I lost our jobs in Florida, I read a quote by Dana Reeve, wife of Christopher Reeve, who at that time had just been diagnosed with lung cancer. She said (and I've lost the quote, so I'm paraphrasing): "You can't stop bad things from happening. But what matters in life is how you respond to those things." I found that immensely encouraging; that is how Batman and I tried to live after being so shattered by our own situation, and that is how we try to live now. We want people to see how we respond to our circumstances--good and bad--and be encouraged. We're not perfect, and we never will be, but God's grace will fill in all our gaps, and hopefully others will see Him reflected, however imperfectly, in us.

And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming: Anyone watch Project Runway last night? Did you hate the winning dress as much as I did?