Blog

I’m excited to make this announcement: Gwyn McVay will be reading poetry at the Fireside Writer’s Conference!  Click on the link if you’d like to find out more about the conference or register to attend.

From Ordinary Beans by Gwyn McVay:

The Demoness

She liked me to say poems,
other people’s at first,
then my own. That was scary,

not her skull necklace—I liked that;
but saying for her the plain words

that had to be right, or she’d hiss
like a tigress, whistle around her tusks,

and stomp on tortured souls. So I chased peacocks,
I cooked masalas that burned through the kettle,
I climbed trees with snakes. Love sonnets
she could take or leave. Her taste

changed daily under my tongue,
imported fish eggs, the next day
ordinary beans.
At the ghats
where bodies are burned, where she lay down
and wrapped her human-skin robe around her,

she said to me, All this time
it was my death song. Don’t worry—
I’m going with the Buddhists next time round.
You did all right, for a kid.

Oh, I said, and she burst into flame.
This painting is made of her stare.

I was struggling to find a topic for Tuesday’s Top 10. Fortunately it was 9:12pm on Sunday night, and this one just sort of happened all around me. By the way, I’m really not a fan of parents who spend all day and night complaining about their kids, so please don’t misconstrue this as a list of grievances – I actually find most of these completely hilarious.

So here are the top 10 stalling tactics my children use:

1) “I’m hungry” – this is usually said with chin tilted forward, eyes looking up at you, as if they no longer have the strength to hold their head in an upright position and will certainly not make it through the night without one more bowl of Cheerios.  Or one last banana.  This is one of the hardest stalling tactics to thwart because what parent likes to think of their kids going to bed hungry?  But they realize this.  They have Navy SEAL type tactical skills in that 5 year old brain.  Don’t give in.

2) “I’m thirsty” – this one is difficult as well, because the amount of time it takes to fulfill the request is minimal.  But it’s the principle folks. One drink of water now will lead to a request for a 7-course meal at 10:30.  Which will inevitably lead to . . .

3) “I have to go to the bathroom” – a relatively straightforward request, the first of which is granted.  Each successive request becomes less and less believable . . . unless you’ve given into #2 already.  Which is another reason not to give into #2, because then you can’t be so sure about denying #3. The recently potty-trained child can make this tactic especially problematic.

4) “I’m scared” – once again, sometimes tough to deflect.  What if they’re really scared? What if the same shadow that scares the belittles out of you each night just went across their window? Probably not.  Chances are they saw you pause and will now press in, hoping tonight’s the night they get to sleep in bed with you, ruining any romantic bedroom plans you might have had with your wife and turning a decent night’s sleep into a long interior monologue regarding whether or not now is the time to migrate to the sofa.

5) “I’m not tired” – this is usually said while yawning or collapsing on the floor in a fit of sulkiness.  Or falling asleep standing up.

6) Singing – my daughter will sing to herself just to stay awake.  I’m not sure how this works.  If I would sing to myself in bed, at night, in the dark, I would either put myself to sleep out of sheer boredom or Maile would knock me out – either way, I wouldn’t be awake any more.

7) Poking themselves in the eye – my son Cade does this.  Yes, the one who referred to nipples as first knuckles then nupples. We can always tell he is nearly asleep because he keeps sticking his index finger in the corner of his eye and peeling back his eye lid.  Very strange.

8) Being good – this is when they go super-stealth.  You might even forget they’re still awake, because they’ve retired to one corner of the room, surrounded themselves with books and toys, and are prepared to make their last stand Ghandi-style: completely nonresistant.  You find yourself saying, “Oh, look at how nicely they are playing – what the heck, let them stay up for another half hour.” Before you know it, you’ve brushed your teeth, retired for the night, turned out the light, and suddenly realized you never put the kids to bed.

9) Making things up – this is sort of a last ditch effort.  “But dad, we NEVER get to stay up late.”  “But dad, you never read to us anymore.” “But dad, you’re just making me go to bed early because I’m being bad.”  None of which are true.  If they start with this one and somehow realize they’re making as much sense as Bryan Allain’s Cannarf rating system, they’ll usually retreat and go back to #1-#5.

10) “Ummmmm” – this is a new one for our family, introduced by Abra (pictured above), and I’ll admit: it’s got me stumped, mostly because I just don’t have the heart to simply walk out on her.  It goes something like this:

Me: Good night, Abra. (kiss)

Abra: Gaggy? (that’s how she says Daddy)

Me: Yes, honey?

Abra: Ummmmmm.

Me: Abra, what do you want sweet heart?

Abra: Ummmmmm.

Me (frustrated): Okay, good night Abra (I turn to walk out).

Abra: Gaggy!

Me: Yes?

Abra: Ummmmmm.

ad infinitum

So what’s your favorite kid’s stalling tactic?

Lyrics | Ray Lamontagne lyrics – Trouble lyrics

Trouble

Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble . . .

Trouble been doggin’ my soul, since the day I was born

Worry

Worry, worry, worry, worry . . .

Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone.

Been there?  I have. Trouble is lousy – whatever kind you can think of, I don’t like it.

Worry sucks, too. Have you ever laid awake at night, so worried about something that you couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think of anything else?  Sometimes, if I let it, worry paralyzes me until I can’t write, can’t think.

There will always be trouble in this life, but there doesn’t have to be worry.

What’s your response to trouble? Here are four options for taking the worry out of trouble:

1) Be patient – did you know that 95% of the things we worry about never even happen?  I have no idea how someone goes about creating a statistic like that – sounds suspiciously made up – but it’s roughly true in my life.  When trouble seems to loom, instead of hitting the panic button, how about taking on a “wait-and-see” attitude?

2) Meditate – for all of you who don’t have a problem with a little quiet time: palms up, palms down; release, accept; let go of your worries, accept inner peace.  Some people believe this only works in California, or at least just on the left coast – not true. I’m in the heartland of Anabaptism, surrounded by Amish and Mennonite churches,  and I still find meditation to be one of the best ways of starting my day and attaining a sense of peace and balance.

3) Be generous – if you are inundated with worries and want to rid yourself of them, nothing works quite as well as being generous, especially in the area you are worried about.  Stressed about money?  Give some away. Worried about a family member? Help someone else’s family member through a tough time.  Relationship troubles?  Spend some time helping someone else sort through their own relational mess.

4) Let it be an opportunity for joy – maybe the toughest of the four, but if you can learn to transform troubles into joy, shoot, you’ve found the golden ticket.  Sometimes the things that seem the biggest trouble end up launching us into some of the best things we could imagine – I’ve experienced that: a failing business and huge amounts of debt forced Maile and I to make a difficult choice, and now I’m living the life I always dreamed of.  This brings us back to patience – can we wait out the trouble, without worrying, long enough to experience the good on the other side?  And, believing there is good on the other side, can we suddenly let trouble be a reason for joy, since we know it will lead to something good?

Trouble is inevitable.  Worry?  Not so much.

How do you keep your troubles from turning into worry?

I have to tell you all about a friend of mine – her name is Jen Hudson. On Jen’s Facebook page she said it the way that only she could: “I live in Aylesbury, Bucks. I am married to Dave and we appear to have some small people that live with us too. Ella is nearly 9, Sidney is 7 and Jude is 3. Help!”

First – Maile and I lived in England from ’01 to ’05, and we made some amazing friends while we were there.  They were quite kind to us, considering most of England wasn’t too happy about the Americans leading them to war in Iraq.  Dave and Jen were just one family from Southcourt Baptist Church that took us in and befriended us.

The winter before we left England to move back to the States, Jen and her family received terrible news: Jen had breast cancer. Their family was immediately plunged into that life of treatments and tests and chemo and operations and radiation.  There were so many reasons that it was hard for us to leave England – but leaving then, knowing that their family was fighting so hard, made it particularly so.

Jen battled cancer in a way I have never experienced. It seemed that every other month we were receiving completely opposite reports – at one point the cancer seemed to have taken over her body and the doctors gave her a short life expectancy.  The next month we would hear that she was fighting hard, doing better. Through it all, she and I had some good battles playing Scrabulous on Facebook – she had been a librarian at one point in her life, and usually took me to task.  She liked talking trash, which made it even worse.

For those of you who know how much I love Scrabble, you’ll understand this was difficult for me to handle.

Then, just as she was receiving radiation treatment, miracle upon miracle: she found out she was pregnant. Impossible, the doctors said.  Insignificant, as the baby will probably not survive the radiation – so she put off her treatments until little Jude was born.  Then, immediately, she resumed her own personal war against cancer.

For the last year we never heard too much.  An email every once in a while.  The occasional Facebook update:

I can sense that World Cup fever is subsiding: once the US was eliminated, World Cup stories fell from prominance on ESPN’s website.  Goals no longer result in the disabling of Twitter. As the field dwindles, only the hard core fans remain.

Yet as the games continue, I had this realization – the things that go on in the World Cup are eerily similar to the things that go on in my house on a daily basis:

1) Mom pours glasses of chocolate milk for everyone and announces they are ready. Kids are coming at the kitchen from every angle (corner kick).  Cade reaches out and impedes the progress of his sister (she exaggerates the contact and lies on the ground, her face a silent scream, as if her wind pipe has been ripped from her neck). Obstruction!  Yellow Card!

2) Abra, two years old and still in diapers, says she has to go potty! She leaps over her brother, dashes back and forth to avoid toys, slips sideways into the bathroom, sits on the potty, and (kerplunk) . . . GOALLLLLLLLL!

3) Sam, age 1, sneaks into the bathroom and is about to grab the toilet brush. Mom (line judge) raises her hand (flag), shouts and stops everything.  Offside!  The opposition breathes a sigh of relief.  Calamity was averted.

4) Lucy trips Cade. He collapses to the ground in anguish, rolling around and clutching his surely shattered ankle.  Mom raises her finger and sends Lucy to her room (red card).  Cade impishly grins and, after shaking his head as if to regain his senses, walks away while limping on the wrong foot, obviously unscathed.  Cries of injustice reverberate around the world.

5) Dad arrives home in the 90th minute. Mom gestures toward the sideline with her hand, her head bent down in exhaustion.  Dad runs back and forth a few times, gets rid of the crick in his neck, stretches his quads, and jogs in to the living room as an extra-time substitution.  Mom retreats to the bedroom (bench) for a 20 minute nap.

6) The kids know they are winning so they waste time. But I’m still hungry!  But we didn’t read a story tonight!  But I’m thirsty!  Dad (the opposition) runs around the field, chasing the game, as the kids one-touch pass around him.  Then mom (referee) emerges from the bedroom and says firmly, “Go to bed.”  The game is over.  Everyone shakes hands.  The kids laugh and go to bed.  Dad (the losing team) sits on the sofa and hangs his head.  “You’ll do better tomorrow night,” the official (mom) assures him.

There’s this intriguing writer in Lancaster County, and his name is Ira Wagler. Most of you folks who have lived in Lancaster for a while probably heard of him before I did.  I met him for the first time last week.

A self-proclaimed literary redneck, his blog posts first caught the attention of a huge online audience, then a literary agent, and he now has a book deal with Tyndale.  In person Ira is as kind as they come – personable and humble and generous.  As a writer he is refreshing, probing and at times disarming in his willingness to tell it as he sees it.  I am proud to have a writer like him in our area.

I am especially excited because he has accepted my invitation to join us at the Fireside Writer’s Conference where he’ll speak for a few minutes, and then I’ll engage him in a time of q & a.  Ira’s attendance is worth the price of admission in and of itself – then take into consideration each of the other speakers who have already committed to be there (Bryan Allain, Andi Cumbo and Ken Mueller) along with their areas of expertise, and you’ll understand why I’m looking forward to October.

I still have three to four more guests to announce in the coming weeks, including the poet who will be doing the reading on Friday night, so stay tuned.  In the mean time, click on the names above to check out some of their blogs/websites.  Soon you’ll be as excited as I am for October.