God has a sense of humor.

You want to know how I know that God has a sense of humor?

It's pretty easy, really.

He created four-year-old little boys. And He allows life to imitate a bad comedy movie sometimes.

See? I know these things.

I have a small tale to tell. A tale of 24 hours. And it started yesterday.

Yesterday started out great, actually. Since I have been on a big sewing kick, I one-upped myself and got to work on yet another Wee Wonderfuls "Olive" doll. Remember, "Esperanza" was the first doll I made, merely weeks ago, so I figured it might be easier the second time around. And I was right!

This little gal came together in a matter of a couple hours or less. We had a three-year-old birthday girl in need of a present, and since I already had most of the materials needed in my stash, I knew exactly what to make. It is a very fun project to sew, once you master all of the tricky parts.




Isn't she cute? I am convinced that these little dolls are the cutest ever. I know that still more will be in my future.

After sewing her up, I rewarded myself with a refreshing dip in the pool. It was nasty hot yesterday (again), and that water felt sooooooo good. I even unwrapped my son's splint and stuck him in on the steps in a life jacket so he could at least cool off as well. (To bring you up to speed, the four-year-old broke his elbow last day of preschool, had surgery to set it with pins the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, his arm spent a week and a half in a sling followed by two weeks in a cast, and we just got the cast off and pins out last Monday and have one more week to go in a removable splint. This past week was glorious being able to finally throw him in a bubble bath again!)

Needless to say, life was good and about to get even better!

My husband took the four-year-old and the adorable birthday doll to the party while I got gussied up for another fun evening with my mom. We hopped in the car, took a little drive to a neighboring big town (small city, whatever you want to call it), and spent the most fantastic evening with this lady...




...oh, and maybe about 1,698 other folks that I couldn't make go away.

Remember back in April I got to meet her up close and personal at a book signing in our little city. She's the cutest little thing in person -- the nicest, nicest, nicest celebrity you could hope to meet. (It's just too bad she doesn't realize that we were meant to be lifelong best friends. Sigh...) And it's rare to get to see her in concert, but being she is a hometown girl 'round these parts, we were lucky enough to get to have her home (or almost home) for a concert.

And oh, what a concert! I was a teensy bit afraid it wouldn't live up to my expectations -- for one thing, it was the grand finale concert of a big international Mozart festival. (And ya'll thought I just lived in the midst of a bunch of cowtowns. There may be a few cowtowns here, but we got culture, yes we do!)

Oh yes, I was very afraid it would be a good chunk of classical music repertoire. Not that I'm afraid of classical -- I quite enjoy it actually, thanks very much in part to my music degree. But I didn't exactly care to sit through a classical music concert last night, so I was pleasantly surprised when it was only about 5% classical, and the classical that did sneak its way in was peppered heavily with humor. Did I mention she is oh-so-stinkin'-hilarious? She is. She could easily quit her day job and go into comedy.

Anyway, back to what I was saying -- the concert was 100% sheer delight. Funny, amazing, entertaining, you name it. I didn't want to leave, especially knowing that we truly were meant to be BFF's forever, and she still had no idea (poor girl), but alas, it was 10:30pm when the concert let out and we still had to drive home quite a ways.

This is where the "dramedy" starts...

I climbed into bed around 11:30, I believe, a bit later than normal for this gal. Of course, I was hyped up from the concert and all of the daydreaming it was creating in my head, all the "what if's" it had stirred up regarding me and my long-lost dream of moving to NYC to become an accompanist for all the big Broadway stars. (But that's a whole other post for another day...)

I had just fallen asleep when the phone rang at 11:45 (never a good thing). It was my mom, in a panic because her diamond bracelet was no longer on her arm. I don't know if you ladies have ever lost a piece of jewelry, but that is one of the worst losses to try and retrace your steps because those things can slip off your arm or hand or whatever usually quite unnoticed. My mom does not own very many pieces of expensive jewelry (neither do I), and this particular piece was of great value both monetarily and personally. I've lost an important item or two in my life, and I know firsthand just how sick you feel once you realize it is gone. I got out of bed, put on my shoes, grabbed a flashlight, and went over every square inch of the car looking for it. I also walked up and down my long driveway and on the street in front of our house, in my pajamas no less, hoping for a glimpse of it that way, but to no avail. Of course then I was hyped up again from feeling terrible for my mom and trying to wrack my brain as well, thinking of where or when it could have fallen off her wrist. Regardless, there wasn't much I could do that I hadn't already done at that point, so I climbed back into bed and fell back asleep...

...until about 12:45am or so, when I heard screaming from down the hall. Oh yes, it seemed the boy was probably having a bad dream or something, so I drug myself up out of bed, plodded down the hallway, and into his room. For the blood-curdling screams that he was emitting, he sure looked fine to me. I asked him what was wrong, and he sobbed, "My finger is dirty!"

Um, what?

Sure enough I had just begun to investigate the little finger and was quite confused that his fingernail bed was awfully white, when a little deja vu moment hit me, my sleepy eyes were able to refocus, and I looked around the room to find it completely covered in baby powder. Once again. Oh yes, "once again" since this was the second time our child pulled this very stunt, the first time being at least two years ago. It was almost as if he wanted me to find out in his weird little way.

Ugh, I was mad. Rootin' tootin' mad. I mean, come on, four-year-old little boys (at least in this household) definitely know better than to be sprinkling and shaking their cares away with the baby powder late at night. I took away his "light privileges" (among other things) -- he's worked his way up to more than one light on in the room at night sometimes when he is more scared, but he lost 'em fast last night since he obviously had been using the extra lights to his advantage. Back down the hallway I went, crawled back into bed and fell asleep...

...only to be woken up yet again from more blood-curdling screaming about an hour later (maybe 1:45-ish, or 2?). Back down the hallway I plodded to find my child sitting up, calmly asking me, "Mama, I want the light on?". Obviously the dramatic blood-curdling screams were not really a good indication of his true, calm demeanor and were just a tool to rouse his poor mama out of bed and down the hallway. Grrrrrrrr. Being the good mama that I am, I didn't even respond (knowing full well that any response from me at that point would not have been good in the least), but simply closed the door on his once again screaming little body and crawled back into bed, doing my darndest to ignore the wailing from down the hall that had started back up...

...only to wake up to my husband yelling something incomprehensible in his sleep (I'm guessing it was maybe 2:30 or 2:45). That man has the most adventurous dreams sometimes. I pulled my pillow over my head, fell back asleep...

...only to wake up yet again to some foul smells in the room. Seems last night was a good one for our dog and the wind she was breaking in her sleep...

...so at 3:30 or 4am (I don't even know exactly what time it was), I grabbed my pillow, stomped across the hallway to the guest room, shut the door, stepped in a dish of cat food that my husband had left in there on the floor (???), had to go back in the hallway, take the dish to the kitchen, wipe my foot off, and finally, finally crashed on the bed (no sheets, they were in the wash) on the plain old mattress with a quilt and fell asleep, probably sometime around 4 or 4:30...

...until my alarm went off at 6:45.

Which I promptly turned off.

Which explains why I didn't go to church this morning.

I sure hope Jesus will understand.

And I sure do know that God has a sense of humor. Because it was just one of those chain of events that by the fourth or fifth time I was roused out of bed I was laughing a little (well, more like that sick sort of laughing one does when one can't comprehend the ridiculousness of it all). Of course, this morning, I wasn't laughing so much at the very few hours of sleep I ended up getting, and I wasn't laughing so much at the missing bracelet and how terrible I feel for my mom...

...but it is all very much real life, regardless, and you gotta take the good with the bad, and realize that Emily Dickinson had it right: "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet." And then relish in the fact that one of these days, reading back over all these stories of the crazy days, the crazy nights, the crazy stunts my four-year-old pulls, the hardships, the joys -- that is all what life is made of!