Miscellany

I don't have much to write about (oops--tipped my hand) but I think it's time we all had something new to read, so here goes.

1. I have a reason to love Boise. Clue number one came via our friends' encounter with some Rwandan refugees in a local grocery store. Clue number two came from a story I heard on National Public Radio about the first official Iraqi refugee in the US and his family's relocation --to BOISE, Idaho. Clue number three wasn't really a clue. It was an article in the Idaho Statesman about a boy who started soccer camps for refugee children here in town. In it I learned that Boise has three major refugee resettlement organizations and is home to approximately 5,000 refugees.

I love that. I love that every few weeks in church the bulletin has a new request on behalf of these organizations. They need school supplies, conversation partners for the adults learning English, people to help with unfamiliar errands like grocery shopping, even families willing to open up their homes until housing can be found. I can't imagine a better opportunity for a person such as myself; a person lacking in initiative but wanting to do good. For now I'm finding it quite challenging to take proper care of my OWN family, so I figure I'll start with providing some school supplies and work up to something more meaningful like conversation partner. Once the boys are in school.

2. Crest White Strips. Anyone? I'm on day 4, and they don't have to tell me twice that it's the same stuff that dentists use. It tastes like the dentist. Twice a day. For 14 days. The wages of a lifetime of coffee and tea drinking and a later affinity for red wine is yellow teeth. And now I pay the piper, who takes the form of gel-laden clear plastic strips that make my teeth hurt. (Normal and to be expected, the piper assures me.) I think it's working. Please, please let it be working.

3. Before I had children: "How can any mother leave her children at home in the care of another and go off to work unless it were an absolute financial necessity?"

After having children: "Hmm...never once, in any job I ever had, did I have to make the request, 'Please don't spit.' And never did anyone approach me with an outstretched index finger and make the solemn, accurate pronouncement: 'booger.'"

4. I joined the YMCA this week. They have a very nice facility very close to our house. The people there are so friendly that it's borderline alarming. I spent about an hour and a half getting an orientation on the weight machines that involved much discussion, and I realized that I am so starved for adult conversation that I didn't even mind that it was on the subject of fitness.

5. I feel I am still recovering from that deflated let-down that one gets from tearing through a long-anticipated good book in one go. I speak, of course, of the final Harry Potter book, and of the dreariness of finishing it. Quite good, and well worth neglecting the children for.

So there you have it. This week I will be getting ready to fly the coop. Off to Pair-ee on Friday and I'm trying not to dwell on it so as to at least get a few winks in between now and then.

Here's to all of us getting all the winks we need. I speak to you, parents of babies. God bless you.