As you can see, I’ve been playing around with my look again. I’ve grown weary of looking at the same pretty autumn scene day in and day out; it just doesn’t feel right now that it’s July. So, I am experimenting with a more summery palette. I’m not sure what I think of the latest look, but I’m still tinkering. Please bear with me through my growing pains. Thanks!

Regular readers of this website may remember this post from last year wherein I waxed rhapsodic over my latest must-have technological toy, the Motorola Razr. I exuberantly sang this popular phone’s praises from the hilltops with all the blind loyalty of a rabid schoolgirl crush. I was enraptured.

Alas, I am a fickle creature, and the Razr and I are officially divorced.

The new apple of my eye is the Samsung Blackjack. It’s true; I have finally joined the ranks of Crackberry addicts and thumb-typing Smartphone users everywhere. In just three days, I already don’t know how I ever lived without it. No more updating contact information in three different places. No more connecting my PDA to the computer with something as archaic as a cable to synchronize my calendar. No more being tethered to the computer for checking my email when instead, it is delivered right to me wherever I am. Friends, I assure you that more likely than not, I will now be reading your comments to my blog entries on my Blackjack, rather than in my passé computer-based inbox.

Really, though, it was only a matter of time. Some of my earliest readers may remember this even older post wherein I threatened future ownership of a combination device that would allow me to finally shed the PDA. Now I can only wonder what took me so long. Oh yeah, I was sidetracked and seduced by the Razr.

But this time, I am committed. I will vow to love my new Blackjack passionately. At least until the next cool new toy comes along.

Next stop, iPhone?

Who remembers this classic childhood car game? We play it in our car a lot, minus the punching. Over time, however, Maia has evolved a complicated set of rules about exactly what you must say in order to receive credit for a punch buggy sighting; a script so complex that only she can remember it accurately, thereby hoarding all punch buggy points for herself. As best my feeble mind can remember, it’s something along the lines of:

“Punch buggy, got it, green one, got it, no punch backs, got it, got it.”

In our car, the game has also expanded beyond VW Beetles. PT Cruisers count, as do Orlando’s colorful public transportation buses, called Lynx buses. Though for the purposes of our game, these buses must be referred to as “paw print buses”—because of the Lynx paw print logo—to gain credit.

However, poor Noah has no hope of ever earning any points since he can’t quite remember exactly how to call his punch buggy sightings for proper credit according to Maia’s ever-changing rules. So he’s simply given up, and has instead taken to helping his sister in her spotting. He points them out to her, and she gets the credit for calling them. It’s teamwork at its finest, especially when playing against others in the car. And even though it’s to Maia’s advantage since she technically keeps the points, I’ll take cooperation like that over bickering any day.

Last night, my mom alerted me to this online video (aptly titled Voices from the Homeless Clinic) on our local newspaper’s website, featuring testimonials from patients at Orlando’s Health Care Center for the Homeless. I was understandably tickled to see my dad featured in a couple of the scenes—he’s the doc in the white lab coat.

But I, ever the insatiable snoop, was not satisfied with that little snippet. I wanted to know more, so I looked up the homeless clinic’s website and lo and behold, I find that my dad is featured as the Volunteer Physician of the Year!

Just for the sake of posterity, I decided to record here the entire text of the article. Way to go, Daddy! I’m so proud!

HCCH Volunteer Physician of the Year:
Dr. Jaime Torner, MD

Dr. Torner was born in San Sebastian, Spain and received his Medical Degree from the University of Madrid in 1965. In 1974, he began his practice of gastroenterology in Port Charlotte, Florida. In 2004, after 30+ years of practice, raising three children and blessed with four grandchildren, Dr. Torner and his wife of 40 years, Ginger, retired to Lake Mary.

After a few months of retirement, Dr. Torner was looking for a volunteer opportunity to use his talents and training to help those in need. He began his search on the Internet and it was our good fortune that he happened across this very website (www.hcch.org). He contacted us and began to volunteer two days a week.

Soon his two days stretched to 4 then 5 for one week then two weeks and more. This winter, our Medical Director took an extended vacation leaving us with a shortage of providers with an already overcrowded schedule. This was also the time we were moving into the new Orange Blossom Family Health Center building. Dr. Torner didn’t miss a beat and cheerfully consented to come in five days a week for over one month.

“Charity begins at home.” Says Dr. Torner. While his friends and colleagues go on mission trips to third world countries once or twice a year, Dr. Torner practices his passion daily. “Why go around the world when there is work to be done right in your own backyard?”

HCCH is inspired by Dr. Torner’s commitment to his craft and his community. We are grateful for his volunteerism and moved by his ethics and principles.

4:31 p.m.: Anonymous subject parks in front of the pediatric dentist’s office, only one minute late for her daughter’s appointment to have two cavities filled. Subject considers this good timing, considering she has already turned around once to retrieve the cell phone left at home. The cell phone is a crucial piece of equipment for this outing as there is an extra kid in tow, and waiting time in the dentist’s office is to be efficiently used to plan a rendezvous with said extra kid’s mother to transport two of the youth to her house for overnight custody immediately following the fillings.

All these carefully planned details become immediately irrelevant at precisely 4:31 p.m. and 30 seconds when, in the tardy hustle and bustle of herding three kids out of the car while checking the weather to determine the need for an umbrella and simultaneously collecting reading material and a can of Diet Coke to settle in for an interminable stay in the dentist’s waiting room, anonymous subject drops the (open) can of Diet Coke directly in her lap.

Anonymous subject’s instantaneous reflexes prove no match for the fizzing Diet Coke, which soaks her shorts in exactly the spots one would expect had the accident been of a rather more humiliating “call of nature” nature.

Being already late for the dentist’s appointment, anonymous subject has no choice but to enter and pray no one will notice. Because surely the more she protests her innocence, the less likely people will believe the slightly yellowish wet spots in all the wrong places are really only Diet Coke.

Readers, I have a confession to make. Had I not stumbled across a blog-iversary post on Cassie-b’s blog recently, I would have completely forgotten that today marks the second anniversary of the birth of my own blog! It’s hard to believe I’ve been at it for two full years now! To celebrate this milestone, I thought it would be fun to share some interesting blog stats.

Since its inception on June 4, 2005, this blog has seen:

• 208 posts
• 66,018 words
• 1,397 comments
• 8,692 visitors

Top 3 posts with the most comments:

• The mighty mighty em dash (22 comments—including genuflection before my grammatical excellence and the offer of a pocket protector for Christmas)
• Able to leap War and Peace in a single bound (21 comments—including kudos for being a brilliant reading and writing superhero and a request for pictures of me in a spandex costume)
• Don’t try this at home (19 comments—including admiration for my husband’s wisdom, a vote for best post read over the Thanksgiving holiday, and a request to borrow my mother and her graph paper)

Longest post:

• My legacy to you (1351 words—apparently the correct number of words to hit people right in the tear ducts, as this is also the post in which I was accused of making people cry)

Post with the most visits:

• Ducky rules the world (148 hits—thanks to a link from Miss Cellania as part of her ode to ducks)

Category I publish to most often:

• Family (44 posts)

Search terms (including variations) that yield the most visitors to this blog:

• inspirational reflections
• locks of love
• sleep assault monique
• you reap what you sow meaning
• how I met my husband

And you can always check out all my personal favorite posts right here.

Today, a friend paid me a very nice compliment. She said I was the best working mom she’s ever known, with a job that entails a high degree of responsibility while also coordinating the busy schedules of two well-rounded, happy kids, and that I manage to do it all cheerfully and without ever having bags under my eyes.

I accepted the compliment graciously, because I was too chicken to tell her the truth of just how much of my kids’ lives I have already missed. I didn’t tell her that I missed Maia’s school award ceremony a few weeks ago (she received the Leadership award), because I was traveling, or that I missed a recent ceremony celebrating the publication of a book jointly written by her class, because I was catching up at work after having been traveling. I didn’t tell her that I was not there last December for Maia’s third surgical round of ear tubes, because I was, you guessed it, traveling, or that Maia left a message on my cell phone which brought me to tears, telling me it was okay that I had to miss her surgery because she didn’t want me to get fired from my job. I didn’t tell my friend that I have never been on one of Maia’s school field trips or volunteered in her classroom. I didn’t tell her that at Noah’s daycare, the director commented recently about how long it had been since she had seen me. And I didn’t tell her I’m entirely convinced that our pediatrician was recently shocked to discover that my kids actually have a mother.

This is not to say that I don’t get plenty of really excellent quality time with my offspring, however. I am there far more than I am not. I’ve never missed a dance recital or a school performance, and we have so many silly family moments that I treasure. Just tonight, I tricked Noah into giving me 100 kisses, and boy did he deliver! I gave him the option to call it quits after the first 50 sticky ice cream-faced kisses, but no, he kept going and even threw in an extra 10 for good measure. It’s moments like that when I know I wouldn’t trade my life for anything. Somehow, everything always ends up just right.

What I did tell this friend was that there is no possible way I could manage the juggling act without the world’s best husband and father who takes on far more than his fair share of household responsibilities and never complains, or the grandparents who always pitch in to help Kent when I’m away. And Maia wouldn’t get nearly the number of extracurricular activities without the friend who has taken her to dance lessons every Wednesday night for the last two years, and who for the third summer in a row is sharing carpooling duties with me for Maia’s and her own daughter’s busy summer schedule.

The reality is that Supermom is a big, fat myth. It’s more like super friends and family.

That’s the line Kent uses to wake up Maia every single morning, as she explained to new friends the other day with a classically exasperated “see what a goofball dad I have” eye roll. Like he really thinks that in the stupor of sleep, she’ll forget that it’s practically summer or that we live in a tropical climate, leap out of bed, and race to the window to behold the miracle of a white winter wonderland.

My daughter would never fall for such a ruse to get her moving for school, so sometimes Kent alters the story and tells her it’s Christmas, and Santa came. Yet another failed ploy from the goofball dad to rouse Maia from her slumber.

Maia may think her dad is goofy now, but someday I guarantee she’ll be telling this story with fond memories instead of exasperated eye rolls. I know I do—I have my own fond memories of dads and the morning wake up routine. As a teenager I got my own phone line in my bedroom, and throughout high school my dad called me on my phone every single morning to wake me up. He was more reliable than my alarm clock, to my constant annoyance. But I secretly loved it.

Silly dads. You gotta love ‘em!

Just to relieve the worry of those who have wondered where I have been hiding, I’m still alive! I have been on the road this week for work (in glittery Las Vegas for the 3rd time time in less than a year), to be followed over the next 10 days by:

• a full day of travel to get home
• a packed weekend of brunches, dance recitals, bible study, and a secret undisclosed mission
• a hooky day to visit with out-of-town friends at Disney
• two days in the office to pack in two weeks’ worth of work
• a long weekend visiting Kent’s family in Tennessee in celebration of a niece’s graduation

I’m not done with this blog by a long shot. It’s just a 15-minute break. I’ll be back. Soon. Very soon. I promise.

Noah (out of the blue, as we are pulling out of the McDonald’s drive-thru): I like McDonald’s. They don’t have McDonald’s at church.

Me (in mock surprise, and curious to know why he made the random connection between McDonald’s and church): They don’t??? Well, what do they have at church?

Noah: Donuts.

Me (with a sinking feeling that I know exactly where this is heading): Noah, do you know why we go to church?

Noah (brightly): To get donuts!

I knew it. Silly boy! I think it’s time to cut him off from the donut cart.