Oh you fancy huh?

Gadgets, gadgets and more fancy gadgets!  That's what the Harrington household is full of!  The Harringtons are the family I am currently nannying for, they're great!  They're house is also great, so great that I can't figure out how to work ANYTHING!  Let me just give you a few examples...

I go to wash our the baby's bottle, can't find the dish soap.  I'm looking under the sink, in the pantry, the fridge.  No luck.  When I ask mom about it, she points to a spout attached to the sink, a built in dish soap dispenser eh?  Funny thing about this one is, when I get home to my own sink, it has one too and I had never seen it.  Genius I tell you.

The washer and dryer are like trying to fly an airplane, not that I've ever done that, but all these buttons are what I imagine flying an airplane to be like.  There is a button for everything, your normal wash, kidswear, gentle, 2nd rinses (for skincare, it actually says this), I'm still looking for the bartender button.  The dryer is no different, it even yelled at me to put the clothes in.  Geez you bossy dryer.

Today's adventure was vacuuming and steam cleaning the floors.  A vacuum seems simple enough, plug it in, turn it on.   Wrong! I plugged it in and nothing happened.  I'm going crazy looking for a different power button, nothing.  I look up and see on the table this bucket time thing that says max water line.  Water???  Yes, you have to fill the bucket with water, put it under the vacuum, then turn it on.  Vacuuming, check!  Next, a Haan steam cleaner, I felt fancy just saying that.  I added the water, plugged it in and waited.  I'm not sure what I was waiting on, it to grow legs and steam clean on its own?  I'm not sure. Well, it didn't do anything, so I started pushing it around and it just left these little streaks and wasn't cleaning anything.  What I realized is that it has a specialized pad that you attach to the bottom, let the cleaning begin!

Now that I've figured these things out, I want to be just like Mrs. Harrington when I grow up.

The Mom Window

There is a sacred, precious window of time in each mother's day.  It's those minutes, or if you're lucky, hours where your child is not around, whether playing by themselves or again, if you're lucky, napping.  Precisely 3 hours after my little one awakes, I put her down for a nap.  But during those 3 hours she's awake, I meticulously plan out what shall happen during my mom window. And I'm always usually conflicted.  A few hours of mind numbing television and eating a bowl of something extremely unhealthy for me (without tiny pinchers invading my unhealthiness) sounds tantalizing. But if I do that I'll be resigned to doing the laundry, dishes, blogging and even showering with a 25lb growth on my leg.  This is where I become thankful the Lord has blessed us with the gift, or should I say talent, of multitasking. 

My mom window today:

Bath and devotional (why is it so difficult for me to keep books out of the water)
Blogging and laundry (let me move my underwear off the keyboard so I can type)
Dishes and eating junk (seems counterproductive)
Cleaning and mind numbing tv (not my fault if the cleaning doesn't actually happen)

NPR and a Root Canal

Never thought you'd see those two gems paired together now did ya.   Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against NPR, all newsy and such.  But there's a time and place.  Lying in the dentist chair with your mouth held open by prying old hands holding deadly weapons is not the time, nor the place.

The unfortunate series of events that led to my needing a root canal is an entirely different saga, which I've had to tell umpteen times and will not be telling here. The fact is, I had to get a root canal on Monday. And it was supposed to be JUST a consultation, until crafty ol' endodontist whom I still do not know his name, decided a root canal was in immediate need.  Fine, whatever, just get it over with.

After several canons of novocaine get blasted into my gums, I'm feeling just fine, minus the open flame next to my head. Maybe the blow torch should have given me a clue I was to be tortured.   I think the worst is over when out of the up until now silent tiny speaker above my head screams "and then I got menopause and started sweating..."  Excuse me?  Who said that?  Ol' crafty says "NPR, never know what you're going to hear."

For the next hour and a half I heard, above the roar of the drill, about radium pellets being shoved up someone's nose to fix headaches and three old guys laughing about the name Virginia Slim.

Survival finally comes into view and I begin to tune back into the conversation happening between Ol' Crafty and his hygienist.  "I can't believe we are required to go to this thing. I mean its on a Saturday..." Ol' crafty wraps ups his work and hygienist takes all the nonsense out of my mouth. "I mean it's from 8-5 and nothing but lectures."

I sit up all woozy like and say "I'd rather have a root canal."

Cookie Doh!

Just burnt the cookies again!  Forget this baking process, next batch I'm just eating the cookie dough.  

I often wonder why we try and try to make things better when we should just stick with the way they were originally.  I mean isn't cookie dough just as delicious, if not more than the finished product?  And if we do decide to try and make things better, why do we rush, why do we get side tracked and forget about the path we set out on? Things end up burnt.

God is no different. He loves us in our original raw, doughy form.  And as we veer from that, and he needs to bake us, doesn't he take his time?

The ingredients must be precisely measured, the oven must be the exact temperature, and timing must be perfect. Just like a baker and his dough, God has created in me a life that is simply not done baking.

I welcome you to join me in my journey to hear the "ding" of the oven and see how God can bake the "perfect cookie."