Last year, the lovely folks at Flip Video sent me their little hand held video-gadgety thingeedoo to try out and it was love at first sight.  This year they sent me one to give away to you, just in time for Mother’s Day! Yay nice Flip people! 

Here’s the lowdown on The Flip:  It is custom made for someone like me with a low techno-IQ and little time/patience/energy to figure stuff out and it’s small enough to fit in your purse. 

It is so simple to use.  Seriously, I took it out of the box, shot some video and then uploaded it (or is it downloaded?) to a video service in about 15 minutes. I keep it in my car just in case Sean does something cute or I spot a UFO and the local news needs footage. Because if a UFO is going to land on Earth, you better believe it will be in Texas.

You can get one at most of the usual places where techno-gadgetry is sold.  Or you can leave a comment here and maybe win one. 

Leave a comment on this post by midnight Thursday (5/1) telling me your mother’s first name (or your favorite mom-type person) and some fun factoid about her.  I’ll randomly draw a name to win a 60-minute Flip Video.

I’ll go first.  My mother’s name is Vivian.  Her parents named her Alberta but someone changed it on the birth certificate to Vivian. No one knows who.  It was too much trouble to change back, so Vivian she is to this day or “Bib” as her family calls her.  Or Wivian.  Also, her grandmother kidnapped her when she was five and took her to St. Louis. But that’s a story for another day.

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Edited to Add: Y’all! I am loving your comments and hearing about your moms. I really should be doing about a zillion other things, but I can’t tear myself away. 

Edited Again to Add: Even though the contest is over, feel free to leave a comment about your mom! I love reading them.

I am fascinated by stories of people who manage to survive in the most extreme and unimaginable conditions.  When I hear those stories, I wonder what it is in them that keep them hanging on and I wonder if I have it in me.

Sometimes, when I imagine that I’ve accidentally fallen off a cruise ship, I don’t really see myself treading water for days at a time.  If faced with bobbing up and down in freezing waters, I would probably take the easy way out and allow myself to slip away.  I would be happy to move along to the next life sooner rather than later as opposed to suffering for any extended period of time.  I am not afraid of what lies beyond.  I know where I am going when this life is over.

On the other hand, I really like my life and am in no hurry to leave it all behind.

About 14 years ago, I was in danger of drowning, not in an ocean but in my own sorrow.  Like a person lost at sea, I felt hopeless – without hope, not one ray of sunshine could I find.  I couldn’t see that life would ever be good again.  I started thinking that maybe it would just be easier to slip under the waters, to yield to the darkness.  All the while everyone was saying, “You are amazing!  You are so strong!”  I didn’t understand that.  How could they not see how desperate I was?

During that time, my dad came out to Texas to hang out with me.  Unlike everyone else, maybe he sensed that I wasn’t holding it together as well as it appeared from the outside because one day he sat me down and told me about a story he had read about a girl who was lost in a great forest.  He said that every day she would climb the tallest tree she could find and she would shout at the top of her lungs, “I am a survivor! I will survive!”  And then she would listen for her own voice echoing back, “I will survive I will survive I will survive…”   Eventually she was rescued or found her way out of the forest, I don’t recall.

I don’t know if my dad really read that story or if he just made it up on the spot, but on that day, I became the girl who climbed a tree every day, shook her fist at the world and shouted, “I will survive!”  On that day and in that moment, I made a decision to carry on, to go on and live and to live well.

A decision — the difference between life and death. That is the certain something that survivors have in common. 

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“…those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary…”

~ Isaiah 40:31

Sadly, what you are about to read is a true story. But it keeps Antique Daddy employed and Antique Mommy in new shoes.

The other day as I was paying bills, I noticed that I had a late fee of $15 on one of my credit card statements. $15. That presented a dilemma: Is it better to pay the $15 and go on my merry way figuring I’d blow $15 somewhere along the way sooner or later? Or should I stand on principal and sacrifice what little sanity and free time I had on that particular day to a Visa call center?

I was in kind of an ornery mood and I figured it was worth $15 just to mess with some call center agent. So I called those people who are everywhere you want to be, except perhaps where accounting logic resides.

After spending 20 minutes keying in my credit card number, being transferred, telling some stranger what my mother’s name was before she married my father, being transferred, telling another stranger what the last thing I purchased was, verifying my credit card number that I had already keyed in at least twice before and then getting cut off, calling back in and starting over, I was connected with Jason whom I imagined was a scrubby clean boy with freckles and right out of college with a degree in communications and a minor in philosophy. And it went like this:

Thank you for calling Visa. This is Jason. How may I help you?

Hi Jason. This is Antique Mommy and I’m looking at my credit card statement and I notice I have a late fee of $15.

Yes, ma’am you do.

Well, I didn’t pay late. I always pay the amount due in full and never late. I never pay anything late. Ever Jason. All the labels on the cans in my pantry face forward, and the spoons never mingle with the forks in the silverware drawer. I don’t pay late Jason. Ever.

Well. Um. Okay, well, just a minute. Let me get back to another screen. Okay, I see. Okay, yes, here it is. Yes, you have a $15 late fee.

Yes, Jason, I know I have a late fee, that’s why I’m calling. My question to you is how is it that I have a late fee? I didn’t pay this bill late. In fact I paid it two weeks before it was due.

Um let’s see ma’am. Yes, you paid in January. I see that. And then you paid in February. And then it looks like your March bill you paid two weeks before it was due.

Jason, since I paid early, don’t you think, if anything, that I should have a credit and not a late fee. I didn’t owe anything so I didn’t pay anything.

Well there you go. You didn’t pay your March bill.

Because I didn’t owe anything. You owed me. Technically you owe me $15 because you didn’t pay me on time.

Um…. (click click click…. clickityclickityclick click…) Okay ma’am? Because you are a valued customer (which we all know really means “nutcase”) as a courtesy, I’ll wave the fee this time, but in the future..

Jason, thank you so much. And next time? I promise that the next time I don’t owe anything — as a courtesy — I’ll be sure to not pay anything on time so I won’t get a late fee for not paying what I don’t (click) Jason?…Jason?

Originally published April 2006.

Okay, I am happy to admit when I am wrong.  Here’s a teen who should write a book. She’s a college professor teaching math and physics and in her spare time, she is looking for a non-invasive method to test blood sugar.  If she is successful, she will become the patron saint of diabetics.  Her book is one that I would buy and read. 

I don’t know who Mylie Cyrus is. Why would I? I’m not a ten-year-old girl nor do I have one living in my house.  What I know about her, was thrust upon me by my home page browser which recently announced (cue trumpets) – she is writing her memoirs.  

I leaned into the computer screen to get a closer look at this Mylie person.  It turns out that she is 15.  I’m sure she’s a remarkable young lady and all having worked so hard at being born to someone semi-famous, but really, what memories and wisdom can one have possibly accumulated at age 15?

Here’s an example of what my memoir at age 15 would look like:

I was born.  Nothing happened until I was two.

When I was two I discovered that my brothers hate me. Their lives were ruined the day I was born.  I had found my purpose in life.

Age 3-5:  The Stupid Years With A Side Of Brothers.  During these golden years, I spent most of my time imitating the stupid stuff my brothers were doing like jumping bikes off homemade ramps and seeing how long you could hold a firecracker before it went off.  Sometimes I made up my own stupid stuff which usually involved the creative use of scissors.

Age 6-9:  The Stupid Years With A Side of Barbie

These years mostly consisted of playing Barbie and fighting and making up with my two neighborhood friends Kim and Cheryl.  When I wasn’t fighting and making up with Kim and Cheryl, I was fighting and not making up with my brothers.  It was during this time that I made my brother Jim so mad he threw a wrench and hit me squarely on the nose, which come to think of it, kind of explains a few things.  During these years, I spent most of my intellectual property wondering if the nuns wore underwear.

Age 10-15:  The Stupid Years With A Side of Puberty

Take one artsy, highly sensitive young girl and throw in a surge of estrogen and you’ve got enough stupid to write a book.  Hey maybe that’s where Mylie got the idea.

Age 48 and Beyond: Still stupid after all these years, but now with a baby on my hip.

I have spent the last two days sprucing up my yard.  Everywhere I look, something needs to be done – flower beds need to be weeded and cleaned, gutters need to be cleaned out, dead limbs need to be removed, bushes need to be trimmed and everything needs to be fertilized  There is no end in sight to the work that needs to be done in this yard.  If I were inclined to give up my blog and my child, I could make a career out of working in this yard.

Late this afternoon, as I gathered up my lawn tools for the day, I stood back and looked around at all I had done over the past two days.  I was filthy dirty, I had not one decent fingernail left, my bones ached and my spine was weary.   Except for several bags of lawn debris, the sad truth was that no one standing at the edge of the yard would ever know the difference.  I hadn’t planted a big tree or installed a fountain or done anything splashy.  Everything looked about the same, albeit a bit tidier if you cared to look closely.  No one is going to look closely.  There was not one drop of glory to salve my aching bones and weary spine.

No matter. It needed to be done, even if no one notices.

No glory.  As I put my gardening tools away, it occurred to me that that pretty much sums up Christian service.  Everywhere you look something needs to be done. And though you might work until you can’t stand up straight and your fingernails are so dirty they’ll never come clean, probably no one will even notice.

That is, if you are doing it right. 

Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.  Psalm 115:1 

This is a photo of our lawn sprinklers running in the afternoon sun. From inside the house, it looked like it was raining diamonds, so I grabbed my new fancy schmancy camera and ran outside and snapped a few pictures.  The tricky part was running in for a shot and then running away from the sprinklers as they headed for me and my camera.  And not tripping.

Aside:  What kind of nut job runs into sprinklers with a new camera?

Unfortunatley, what I captured here looks less like raining diamonds and more like raining hair. Not nearly as romantic of a notion as raining diamonds.  No one is going to write a poem about the day it rained hair.

The randomly chosen winner is Karen at Simply Amusing.  The prize?  A big ole bar of Ghiradelli chocolate (because what kind of prize would it be without chocolate?) and the book  “Flipping Brilliant: A Penguins’s Guide to a Happy Life” by John Chester and Patrick Regan.  On the back of the book, it reads,”Life is an adventure.  Live Accordingly.”  I love that.

Beautifully photographed and chock full of sweet and tender wisdom, I especially loved this entry on the value of learning to be still. 

“…Surely no animal can match their ability to achieve perfect stillness in the face of conditions that are the antithesis of calm. When it comes to nesting and brooding, this ability to be still means nothing less than survival of the species.”

Being still. Something I need to learn.  Along with not running into sprinklers with a camera.  Maybe I should get a penguin.

Thanks y’all for playing along and spicing up a Monday.  

Edited to add:  I have no connection to the writers or publishers of Flipping Brilliant. I saw it yesterday at Border’s and it caught my eye.  That’s all.  But now I like it so much that I’ve got to go buy myself one before I send Karen’s off to her.  Will need to get another chocolate bar as well.

It’s time again for another “What The Heck Is It?” photo contest!  Leave your guess in comments and I’ll either choose one at random or the one that most amuses me for some sort of little prize-ish thing.  Offer good while supplies last or until Monday night, 9pm CST.

Above: What the heck is it?  This is a detail from a photo I took. Can’t even blame this one on Sean. When you see the actual photo you will be whelmed.  At most.  You will wonder why I bothered getting a decent camera.

In other news, we had a baseball game on Saturday morning at 8am when Sean is in prime hopping form as you can see in the photo below. Don’t even try to outhop this boy because you will not be able to do it.  If there were an Olympic event in hopping, we would already have a sponsor and product endorsement deals.

Above:  Not actually playing baseball or even dancing like Justin Timberlake, but hopping. Backwards. Good gravy I love that quirky little weirdo.

Not actually dancing.

But dribbling.  For the record, he picked out his own clothes.

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So then this was my weekend.

Friday evening:  Almost inadvertently stole reading glasses at Wal-Mart.  I borrowed a pair to read the back of the Zyrtec box when I was in the pharmacy area.  And then I put them on top of my head with the gigantic yellow tag and all, and continued shopping so that I could read other ingredient lists, planning to buy them at check out all the while.  I got through the checkout and halfway out the store when I thought I felt something funny on my head, like a bug.  So I swatted at it and off came tumbling the stolen contraband. I was mortified.  So I did the right thing.  I stuck them in the gum rack and left the store.  If I’m going to get cuffed and hauled off to jail, I want it to be for something that would read more sexy in the police beat than reading glasses.

Saturday: Baseball game at 8am.  Then… hmmm, I’m sure somthing happened, but honestly the next thing I remember is that we went to church on Sunday morning, then we went out to lunch and I ate a hambuger which is giving me tremendous heartburn at the moment, otherwise I probably wouldn’t remember that either. 

And now it’s Sunday night.

Either we had a really boring weekend or Oldtimer’s is setting in.

I noticed this blue iris growing along side my driveway when I came home the other day.  Spring had arrived while I was out.

I think irises are so beautiful and even sensual.  Its delicate veiny and translucent petals appear almost to be shaped by the swirl and movement of water.  It seems to me that it might be more at home in a tropical sea rather than along side my concrete driveway.

I hope spring has sprung wherever you are.  Have a loverly weekend y’all.