The Cookie Game

A couple weeks ago, our family was visiting with my inlaws. It's a Sunday routine...we always go visit them. This particular Sunday, the tv was on and America's Funniest Home Videos was on. It was one of those shows where all these previous winners were together on a cruise ship and competing to see which winner was the TOP winner. Shows like that are stupid in my opinion, but this one had something to offer me: THE COOKIE GAME!

It was typical dumb video that won $10k at some point in history, but the game they played was great...and was PERFECT for a Cub Scout meeting! So we did it! The boys loved it too!

Here's how you play:
You need at least 1 cookie per person who plays.
Sit on the sofa or you can lay on the floor, but do it in a way that allows you rest your head in a tilted position. (Flat on the floor does not work for this.)
Place a cookie on your forehead. Place your hands by your side.
Use ONLY your facial muscles to move the cookie down your face and into your mouth.
If the cookie falls or you touch it with your hands, start over by replacing the cookie on your forehead.

That's it!

It is so funny to watch people play this game. They will twitch eyebrows up and down, and bat their eyes so dramatically. Mouths will open and close in rapid succession even before the cookie gets low enough to be affected by that. It's quite funny.

Now there are some things to remember: you HAVE to keep your head tilted at an angle so gravity can help you, but not take over. You can't lay flat because gravity will hold the cookie in place and not allow you to move it at all. You also can't use a moist cookie. It tends to stick. I tried it with chocolate coated cookies and they cling to the skin too much. Dry type cookies will work, like Oreos and Oatmeal cookies. Fresh baked cookies will work if they have cooled completely. Try it at your next family night or game night! Be sure you have a camera with you!

Cub Scouts to the Rescue!

Today was one of *those* days...you know the kind, more than you can deal with. It started when I woke up. (Maybe that was my first mistake.) I've struggled for months now with headaches that come from a "kink" in my neck. I've gone through umpteen pillows trying to find one that suits my neck. The one I have right now has given me the best results, but that just means I wake up with a headache 4-5 days a week instead of 6-7. Anyway, I woke up with a headache. I also had to work.

When I got to work, I made myself a bowl of grits with butter and salt...just how I like them. I keep a few things at work for meals since I can't leave the shop to purchase food. I had butter stashed in the fridge too. All was well. I even have a large bottle of water there so I can avoid the nasty nasty tap water that comes through the ancient pipes at the shop. All is good, right?

Maybe an hour later ( I lost track of time here ) I decided the headache was becoming intolerable. I've got a bottle of Excedrin Migraine I keep in my purse for headaches that take over. I hate taking them, but they work when the headache is so severe and I have nobody to rub my neck and try to get vertebrae to go back where they belong. This was one of those days, so I took some Excedrin. About an hour later, I was so sick that I was hanging my head over the cold porcelain sink in the kitchen wishing I could throw up or die. My head hurt so bad that I couldn't see clearly and Facebook was not enough of a distraction. Thankfully, customers were few and far between so I didn't have to do any real thinking and I had already written my newsletter and blog article the day before. I finally had Manti bring me some lunch thinking possibly it was from lack of sleep, or from sleeping funny....but it could also be that I just needed some protein in my system. He brought me a salad from chick fil a. I ate a couple bites of the chicken, but I nearly lost that. It took me most of the day to eat those 3 small pieces of chicken in my salad. I never did touch the lettuce. It was horrible! I called Tommy. He suggested the butter might have been a little old or exposed in the shop fridge, so I should take some charcoal caps. (That's what you do for food poison...they even do it at the hospital.) I took some, and for a short time, the nausea eased in intensity, but not totally.

Finally, it was 3:45pm and Tommy brought the kids to me. We had cub scouts today and he had a doctors appointment at the same time. So Mesa came in to the kitchen where i was and started massaging my neck and head. I got bits of relief here and there as things shifted under her fingers. THEN my boss walked in to relieve me so I could go to scouts. It was a bigger relief than she knows!

We get to scouts and the boys are being SUCH boys.....loud! I thought my head would explode. We had our opening and we separated into age groups. My boys were going learn some knot tying. I only have 2 boys officially (Luke and Morgan), but sometimes I also have Jared (my 5 year old) and Tristan (my friend's 6 year old) who are what we call "Honorary Cub Scouts". We include them so they find out that scouting is awesome fun and want to participate when they get old enough. We're successful with that so far.

We tie our knots, we tie neckties, we do all our "work" and are ready to play. The whole hour we were in our room though, we had no air conditioning. It got hotter and hotter and I decided we couldn't stay in that room any longer....it was 99 degrees today! I had the boys start picking things up under Mesa's supervision and I went to check to see if the other group of boys was ready to stop and play a game with us or not. Their room had A/C! They wanted to play our game too, so I went back to my room to collect my boys and join the others. Mesa was in the floor though! They boys told me that Mesa fell backwards and her head went "THUMP" on the floor. She kept laying there after that. I asked if she was playing and they said no, they didn't think it was a joke. They thought she passed out, but she wasn't bleeding. I leaned down to look closer. She was just laying on her back, eyes closed, breathing quite shallow. I nudged slightly and said "Mesa, are you playing? Don't play like this." She didn't move. Mesa can't help herself, she would have cracked a grin if she was playing around. She didn't this time. My alarms in my head went to shrieking. I touched her shoulder and moved it slightly, not wanting to shake her, but wanting to shake her to bits at the same time. I talked to her as calmly as possible and told her she needed to get up, that she was in the floor and we needed to go to the other room where it wasn't so hot.

Mesa is a sleep walker, always has been. When she walks in her sleep, she has a way about her that doesn't verbally respond, but she does make slight grunt noises and she moves very deliberately like she's trying to go back to doing what she was doing...but she wants to do it like she is doing it knowledgeably. That's how she was acting as she got up from the floor and her eyes very deliberately opened. She sat up, stood up, walked around as if she was picking things up and leaving the room. So I started asking her what happened. That's when she realized her head was hurting. She didn't talk a lot at first and she was quite pale. She had no idea what happened, and she vaguely remembered the floor hitting her head. Her skin felt very hot and clammy, so I got hold of her arm and carried the few things I needed to the other scout room. Together we all joined the older boys and they played a game with cookies. I'll have to blog about that game by itself...it was hilarious.

While the boys played, I collapsed in a chair and watched. That's when it dawned on me what all had happened. Two weeks ago, I had one of the doctors from church come in and teach some very basic first aid to the boys. They listened, but they were all show-offs at the time too and I figured they all knew how to put a band-aid on and that was likely all they retained from the class. I was so wrong! These little boys did not panic. They just went right to checking on Mesa to see if she was bleeding. They told me EXACTLY what they saw and they were willing to do what I needed them to so they could help her further. They got out of my way right off the bat without me having a chance to get flustered about it. That let me not panic and get right to the issue and take care of things.

They did exactly the right things!

Now that might not sound like extraordinary..... but then it again it might if you knew that these boys are quite young. Jared is 5, Luke is 8 and Morgan is 9.

And Mesa is just fine. She was overheated. She hit the back of her head on the tile floor, so she has a bump now and a headache, but she is otherwise just fine....

Thanks to my little first responders!

To Quote the Boys...

"Daddy, I caught a dirthopper!"
--Jared, upon catching a cricket or grasshopper in the dirt-not the grass.

"Daddy, what are these two things?"
--Jared, after getting out of the bath.

"You smart Alex!"
--Morgan

"Want me to get to my anger?"
--Jared

"Speaking of dumpsters, can we go to the Goodwill Store?"
--Morgan

"Can we please get the overalls? We can sew it up the middle and it won't be a dress anymore!"
--Morgan

I've started keeping a notebook of things the kids say. I've missed hundreds of good ones...but I won't miss them anymore!! :D

The Demons Are Coming

Years ago, some terrible things happened to me. I never really dealt with any of it either. Years after that, more terrible things happened and again I never really dealt with it. Just a few years ago, even MORE bad things happened,...but this time, I wasn't capable of dealing with it. I wanted to, but I didn't know how and I honestly didn't have the internal strength to just forge ahead and take care of it.
What I didn't know then, is that my swallowing it and keeping it out of sight meant that I began to be a different person. This person reacts badly on a frequent basis and those bad reactions have consequences that affect other people. It's an ugly pattern that has formed.
Recently, the opportunity arose to get some help for our whole family. The way it is presented will be more help to specific individuals, but the result should be that the whole family can heal from wounds that originated with me.
This help began this week. In order to heal, I have to relive some of those hellish events before I can actually "detox" from them. I don't like that, but I like them hurting me over and over again even less. I totally hate it that they are able to hurt my family too, so the healing is worth the pain. Still,...those of you who are around me regularly, please understand the demons are coming and I have to face them before I can slay them. I hope you don't feel any of the heat from that, but if you do...hopefully this blog post gives you some idea why it is.

The Mental Strobe Light

I had a nice talk with Manti yesterday. It was just the two of us, and we were able to talk about some things that have weighed quite heavily on my heart for sometime now. During the conversation, I tried to explain to him what I experience inside when I'm under stress.

Imagine being in a dark room - like at a dance where the lights are very dim and there are a lot of people - and there is an intense strobe light flashing the whole time. I'm not talking about a disco ball. I'm talking about a strobe light that flashes strong beams of lights haphazardly around the room into any unsuspecting eyeballs that might be unfortunate enough to be looking in its direction. How do you turn off one of those things? I think they hide the switch somewhere so that only one person knows where it is and they have all-power where the strobe light is concerned.

Inside my head is a strobe light. It has endless battery power too, I think. I don't know where the switch is, and if someone turns it on, its inevitably going to aim for my eyes and keep me from being able to focus on anything. It truly is a miserable feeling.

And that is my definition of my personal stress response. It's no wonder I can't deal with anything during stressful times, right? It interferes with all thought processes and reasoning. I'd really like to pull that plug. *sigh*

So am I just odd, or is that a plausible description for what everybody experiences when they feel stressed?

Unique Family Pictures

I love family pictures. I wish I could afford to do it much more often than I have.

Recently, I made a trade with a friend of mine who is a photographer. He went with us out to a nearby park and took pictures of our family. After he took several different sets of pictures, we changed our clothes and put on our native regalia. Then he took pictures of the family all over again. I think they turned out wonderful!

Relief Effort Service from Carrollton Ward

The Powder Springs Georgia stake of the LDS church is like many other stakes around the southeast region, in that we were asked if we could go and give service to those in nearby areas that suffered from the disastrous tornadoes back on April 27th. Generally, the men were asked to render this service, but our stake president did not turn down any women who wished to assist also. Because of my calling in emergency preparedness and my ham radio license and connections, I was contacted and asked to be a part of it if possible. So this past weekend, like many others in our area, Tommy and I with our son Manti went to Bessemer Alabama to see what we could offer.

We saw nothing along the interstate to indicate there had been a problem, other than a couple signs down. We arrived at the Bessemer stake center and saw nothing to indicate storms there. We went inside and were given t-shirts to identify as a volunteer worker and told to get with our "group"...which normally meant to join up with other members of our ward, but in some cases we were split up. So Tommy and I happened to see Richard Davis across the hallway and he had us join up with him. We rode with him and his father, Bishop Davis in Douglasville, over to the location of our first work order. It was the most winding route you ever saw! Every road was numbered, and to get 11th Street, we had to go down 11th Way and cross 11th Court and 11th Avenue!

Our area was a community called Pleasant Grove. It's actually the same community where my mother and aunt were little girls, and 2 of my uncles and another aunt were born there. So for me, this was an opportunity to take care of my roots. To enter any of the streets that led to the devastated neighborhoods, you had to have a pass on your windshield (and it was best to have a yellow t-shirt too!) that identified you as either a resident or a volunteer associated with a specific group. If you didn't, the National Guard wouldn't let you through. We had the necessary identifiers so we drove into the neighborhoods. Have a look at what we saw as we drove through looking for our assigned address...



We thought that looked pretty rough. I guess in reality, it could be looked at as an opportunity to mentally prepare for what there is still to see, but I didn't feel prepared like that. As we drove further in, I could only gasp and hold my breath.


So sad.
Now these pictures are small for load time reasons, but the reality of them is enormous.

We got to our first house and found Kevin Knox already had a crew working there. We jumped off the road and put on our gloves, getting right to work trying to find the driveway for this house. Trees were all over her backyard and front yard. We cut and piled limbs till about 11:30am Alabama time.



Look there on the right side. See that young girl? That's Sophia...hauling a TREE! Don't tell me girls ain't tough!

Off to our second work order address and look at the change in the neighborhood... gives me chills...





Our assignment didn't seem to have much problem in the front yard. Seeing all the other mess everywhere, we were puzzled for a second as to why we were sent to this one house. The homeowner was at the front door when we pulled up so we asked what we could do to help her. She sent us to the back yard. NOW we understood! This lady had been an avid gardener it seems. She had potted plants strewn all over. Her rose bushes no longer had leaves, and you couldn't see them! You could only feel them when they stabbed you as you pulled the tree limbs and roof shingles off of them. The house next door had lost part of its roof. We found it for them....in the yard WE were working in! We worked and worked for a few hours. We stopped for a lunch break during that, and visited the house across the street. Take a look....


It looks like Stanley is walking across the clear foundation- no floor, no walls, nothing. It's an illusion. This is actually the front porch.

You're right! There's no house attached to this porch!

If you stand on the porch and look down, this is the basement. Nice Snapper mower, huh? I hope the family comes and gets it! So where is the house?.....

It's the green/gray colored building you see Tom looking over at. It's knocked clean off the foundation and emptied completely. I didn't get a picture of it, but there is a closet underneath this cement porch I'm standing on for this picture. The door had blown off, but the contents were still intact. I hope the family (if they were home) hid inside there. It's the only place that wasn't demolished. This is dead center of the eye of this storm. You can tell it because the way the trees look. There is a path cut and all trees that the tornado engulfed look like this- no green, nearly no bark, and few limbs. Check out the neighborhood around this very same house....
Can you read that sign? It says "For Sale, Open Floor Plan"-- yeah, its ALL open floor!


So we finished up this location and went just a little ways down the road. We ended up at the sweetest lady's house! She was a widow lady, and had been saying her prayers pleading with the Lord to send us that day. Ten minutes later, we were knocking at her door. She was an older lady, and just as precious as you can imagine! She worried over us and watched us work.
We had gotten pretty tired, as you can imagine. The sillies started to show a little. As you look at our progress here, notice the antics. I think Barry Barton had something a little hinky in his lunch ;)



See? Maybe Laura will see this and pack his lunch FOR him next time!
I really DID do more than just take pictures...honestly!

At the end of this work order, we talked with the lady. She was so gracious and thanked us profusely. She had no idea how she would be able to pay someone to do that job. She was fighting tears as she talked. She told us about a lady who had been killed just down the road from her and how terrible the whole ordeal had been. She pulled on my heartstring, that's for sure!

When we finished the day, we went back to the church yard and camped out. I've never seen SO many people anxious to be in bed by 9pm in all my life! It was so quiet so fast!

At 6am, people were rolling out and packing up tents. At 6:30am Sunday morning, volunteers had come to the church and were cooking pancakes and bacon for us. We ate and were ushered into the chapel where the Bessemer stake president addressed us. We had a sacrament meeting and one speaker. They took pictures of the group and did a headcount. If we read their lips right, there were around 350 volunteers packed into the chapel and the overflow area. It was so wonderful! We heard there had been accidents too. One in particular we heard through the grapevine... a volunteer had gotten into the whole where a tree's root ball was. He was trying to use his chainsaw to cut the roots loose and when he cut through, the root ball fell on him, crushed him, and he died. He was only 30 years old.


We spent Mother's Day giving relief to others. I feel SO good about my efforts. We had 3 more places we visited, and all members of our ward worked together this time. We were so blessed, and I will never forget this.

We counted 34 members of our ward participating, but the blessings bestowed on all are countless!