Jenny the Cow

First off, Hannah hates me because I didn't blog yesterday AND I cut in front of her in the snacks line last night. Sorry, girl, I just needed some chocolate. Will you forgive me? Can I be un-voted off of the island and back into Amber's car?

Anyway.
I've been cranky, irritable, and frustrated this week. I'm sore from ice skating on Saturday; it baffles me the number of people that have never skated on a natural body of water. Irony is that the first time all winter when my hands have actually been warm was while I was ice skating. I'm sick of being freezing cold; maintenance can't fix my air conditioner but the room temperature has peaked at 63, so they gave me a space heater. Oh, and if you are one of those brave souls who gave up chocolate for Lent and suddenly have this overwhelming desire to remove this temptation from your life, I am willing to take one for the team and will not object your sending it to me. :-)

For these reasons, I feel the need to write a blog that will make me smile. We all have those stories that have influenced our life. Perhaps we aren't even characters in the story but it still merits regular retellings. This is one of those for me because it was a classic bedtime story while my sisters and I were growing up. Of course, some creative liberties have been taken through the years but the basis of the story is true. Without further ado, and I'm pretty good at ado-ing, this is "Jenny the Cow" as told to me by my father.

<>< Katie

I was in class just like any other day. The teacher was talking about something, but I don’t remember what since I wasn’t listening anyway. All of the sudden there was a strong rap on the door. The teacher answered to a police officer who asked if I was in that class. Now, I’m not a perfect little angel; I get into my share of trouble but nothing bad enough for the cops to be involved. Plus, I had no idea what I’d done. Silently I followed the officer towards the front door of the school.

Am I being arrested? What the heck? I wondered to myself.

As we crossed over the threshold and into the parking lot, I realized the cause of the commotion. Standing in the middle of the school yard stood my cow, Jenny. Yes, I think Jenny wanted to try out for the soccer team. How did she get here? What was she doing here? Why was she here? I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but I didn't have time to figure them out either.

Standing a few feet from my beloved Jenny was a police office poised to shoot. I panicked. How do you prevent an officer from shooting your cow without getting shot yourself? I had no idea.

"Don't shoot!" I heard a distant wailing. I looked up towards my house and saw my mother running down the hill flailing her arms. "Momma's here, Jenny, come to Momma."

I was mortified. Surely the entire school was watching from the window. I think a stray cow in the middle of the soccer field warrants a break from useless math. In case having my cow visit school wasn't bad enough, my over-weight screaming mother was not helping the situation. The officer's arms were still extended, finger on the trigger.

"Don't shoot! I'll get her to move! Don't shoot! Jenny, come to Momma, Jenny. Momma's here. Come to Momma, Jenny," my mother's cries continued. I don't understand why she can't sound a bit more grown up, even if she is just talking to the cow. For a brief moment, I almost wished I was back in class, bored to death.

Mom drew nearer to us, the police officer failed to lower his gun, and Jenny refused to move. He wouldn't really shoot Jenny, would he? He can't shoot her, can he?

I didn't know. All I really knew was that my mother was running out of ideas and the cop was growing impatient. In the distance, I could see a yellow truck approaching our brouhaha. Instantly, I recognized it as my dad's. How many people do you know with a big yellow trucks? On second thought, how many people do you know with cows at school? Pa pulled over to the side of the road and barely shifted the truck into park before he hopped out of the cab. The focus shifted from Jenny to Dad.

"Jenny, there's Dada, go to Dada," Mom whined.

Much to our surprise, Jenny did run to Pa. The officer lowered his gun, my mom stopped screaming, and I breathed a sigh of relief. On to our next problem: how are we going to get Jenny home? Luckily, Pa already had that all figured out. He opened the tailgate and Jenny hopped into the truck bed. He drove Mom and Jenny home. Sadly, I was sent back to class.

Thank for the Noise

Yesterday was my first day to sleep in since the 9th and I took a full opportunity to do it! It would have worked a whole lot better if it weren't move-in day for returning students. Yeah, the brilliant architects who made this building forgot about insulation. I'm not kidding. There are some bullet-sized holes in the wall where we can literally see through into our neighbors' room. So, yesterday I awoke to the banging of desks against the wall, the slamming of drawers, and the building of bunk beds. What a perfect way to start the day. :-)

As luck would have it, I ended the day in the exact same fashion. As I lay there in bed praying midnight would come and visitation hours would end for their male friends with big booming voices would be forced to return home, the air conditioner turned on. That was all God needed to do to get my attention.

You see, my friend Kaitlyn (who I blogged about a few weeks ago) is so sensitive that she can't tolerate ANY noise. The noise of the air conditioner is too loud.

Thank You, God, that I can tolerate a certain level of noise.

Thank You God for the ability to hear.
Even if I'm unintentionally eves dropping.

Take a minute and thank God for those things you often overlook or become annoyed with. The gurgling fridge. The ability to smell, even if it is the garbage. The ability to see, even if you see more than you want to. The ability to touch, too bad you got your fingers stuck together with glue. The ability to talk, even when those crude four-letter words slip out.

<>< Katie

"Pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18

I think we're gonna die!

I know, two blogs in one day WHAT? Well, you see, today is a very monumental day in our house, and I was not aware of it until five minutes ago.

In early July, my mom started a new diet that involves controlling what she's eating, how much she's eating, and when she's eating it. It's caused some major changes in our house. For example, it's 7:30pm, and we haven't eaten dinner yet because she can't eat for another 30 minutes. We're also had some pretty interesting food around here lately. The muffins aren't too bad once you get over the burnt-brown coloring, the crunchiness from carrot chunks, and fresh pineapple mush in them. We affectionately call her bread "Wood Chip Bread" because it seriously looks like mulch. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited to return to my college-diet of daily pizza.

My dad is taking another stand and attempting to save the environment. That's not to say he won't blow four cans of Raid in five minutes. Rather he's avoiding watering the grass and turning on the air conditioning. As a result, it's almost August and we haven't turned our air conditioner on all summer. It's ok because all of us (except Dad... how ironic is that?) like the breeze from having the windows open. I leave for school in two weeks and today, for the first day all summer, we turned on our sprinklers.

Mom's going organic.
Dad's going green.
We're going to die!

In Christ,
<><>

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1

Happy birthday!

My grandpa turned 75 today! We were talking about "The Birthday Boy" doing something and he snickered. We changed it to Birthday Man. He still laughed.

"The birthday geezer, maybe!"


A few years ago, I was at my grandparents' house for the week. That year their tomato plants had pretty much taken over their yard. You had to wrestle the tomatoes to get off the deck. It was actually really funny. They also had a gopher problem that year. A gopher made his home in the rain drain right outside their bedroom window and would be loud and obnoxious at night. To solve the gopher problem, all my grandpa had to do was drop a golf ball down the rain gutter. There was even a little hole he called "The Gopher Hole".


This particular day, we got the golf ball to get out the gopher, but Grandpa didn't have any shoes on. He precariously climbed though the bushes to get to the Gopher Hole and balanced himself on a chunk of cement and a few larger rocks. He dropped the golf ball expecting the gopher to come out the other end. Well, instead the golf rollyed out and