the things you choose to be

My mother-n-law made a comment about my last post referring to a Seinfeld episode where they deal w/ low flow showerheads.  Behold the genius of youtube – if you love Seinfeld or just appreciate a shower with sufficient water pressure enjoy the next 5 minutes.

The shower in our bathroom has been losing pressure over the last month.  It had gotten to the point where it felt like people were just spitting on me.  I began to detest my time in the shower.  Don’t worry, I continued to take showers:)  But I wasn’t happy about it.

I often thought about looking at the problem myself, but I haven’t had much success with past plumbing problems.  You can read about my last adventure here.

Thankfully our landlord sent a plumber over yesterday afternoon who fixed the problem.  Strong water pressure is a beautiful thing.  My shower this morning was great.  Who knows, I might even take another one today:)

Carey and I were invited to a prayer retreat last month.  Since we almost never say no to a couple of nights away by ourselves, we agreed to attend.  Debby came up to stay with the kids while we were gone.

When we arrived at the retreat we suddenly felt a little out-of-place.  As we entered the building and scanned the room we realized that we were the only people present under the age of 70 (okay there might have been 2-3 of them that were 65).

It was a weird experience.  They were all very pleased to have us there and made us feel welcome.  But senior citizens just do things differently than 32 yr olds.

We did have a good time laughing at ourselves and the unusual nature of the situation.  The highlight of the weekend was our nightly escape to Wal-mart – our home away from home – for snacks and a Redbox movie

My mom came to town last weekend.  She gave us a free night at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown OKC and she stayed with our kids!

Yes it’s only a few blocks from our house, but anytime someone offers to keep our kids overnight – we’ll stay anywhere – even at the “It’ll Do Motel” (which is a real place near Amarillo, TX).The thing that caught my attention was the soap and shampoo at the hotel.  It had rosemary and tea tree oil in it and the smell reminded me of my childhood.  As a kid we didn’t use Irish Spring and Suave – it was all natural soaps and shampoos.

My mom was 25 years ahead of her time and only now is corporate America catching up.

O useless scone why do you torment me?

You appear as an angel of sweetness,

A distant cousin of the cinnamon roll perhaps.

Yet you offer nothing but bitterness.

I name thee dry biscuit and worthless calories.

Go back to the oven from whence you came.

Trouble me no more.

I’ve seen some talented marching bands, but they’ve got nothing on these guys.

I know I’m easily entertained.  But this is brilliance.  Notice how the text is identical rightside-up and upside-down.  Once I discovered it, I stood there and flipped the DVD case for at least 10 minutes.

For years we’ve had people telling us that we needed to watch the TV series LOST.  With this fall being the final season – we decided to start watching the old episodes this summer and be in a position to finish out the series with the rest of the world.

Sat down to watch the first episode and I was done.  The two things I can’t stand in entertainment are 1) blood and 2) tense situations.  The first episode was nothing but those two things.

Even though I backed out, Carey and Debby have continued to watch and are now to Season 3.  They talk about it regularly and because I was curious  I decided to read all of the episode summaries.  That way I knew what was going on without the tension and the blood.  Here’s my theory as to what is going on.

It is indeed a social experiment – however not for the people on the island, rather for all of the people in front of their TV’s each week.  What the producers of this show want to find out is “How many random, off-the-wall elements can we introduce into this story line and still have people trying to figure out how all of the pieces connect?”

It reminds me of the way I tell stories to my kids.  I’ll make up a story where they get a new chapter each night.  Sometimes these story arcs last for 3 days, sometimes they go on for weeks.  I don’t ever have an ending in mind when I begin.  I just talk about whatever pops into my head.  But I always fit it into the universe or the character’s past as if I planned it that way from the beginning.

I challenge you to look at all of the random elements in the LOST series.  “Oh-no!  We killed a character we still need.”  No problem, he didn’t really die.  “Oh-no!  We’ve backed ourselves into a corner with the story line”.  No problem, just introduce time travel – that will fix everything.  And so on.

As my friend Tommy would say “I guess that’s your theory”.