To Breanna Go Where No One Has Gone Before

“Were you going to change the one into a seven?” Okay, I'm trying to find the best quotes from this weekend that round out how I spent it, and this one gets pretty high on the list. I heard about this one secondhand when Martha, Sarah, Jeffrey, Mary, Josceline, and I were on our way to Bismarck to visit our niece, Josceline's sister Breanna, on her seventeenth birthday – Grandma Sharon was with Josceline in the Dollar Tree to pick up Breanna's birthday card and the one she chose first congratulated her on turning eleven, and this was Josceline's response upon her seeing the card! Six years' difference, and a sign that sometimes our eyes don't focus as well as we'd like …

“What is Bismarck plus Coke? An Icee!” Now my answer to that riddle Josceline posed while we were having lunch with Martha's aunt Stella and cousin Dionne at Bismarck's Sam's Club on Saturday would have been … less polite coming from me. I'm sorry to say I am not a big fan of our state capital, and it's nothing personal, so PLEASE don't try to make it so. After lunch we picked up Breanna where she was and took her shopping as well as to dinner at Golden Corral for her birthday and then to Mark and Stella's house – very big, very remote – for birthday cake, birthday cookie, and ice cream. I felt it for a few hours that I'd eaten too much, and also I'd run out of conversation material …

Got home just before midnight Sunday and slept fast enough after getting the rest of the family in bed, balancing our checkbook, and getting my devotion time in (since it was technically Sunday) since I couldn't sleep after napping in the van both ways. In church, something got me so angry that I was not good to be around but that's when in the house of God is where you need to be – generally I won't miss church unless I either can't get to one or I'm dying, it's that … hardwired into me – when you are really ready to force-feed someone to a shark. I heard most of our youth group's presentation on this summer's trip to New Orleans as I only had two people in my Sunday school class and so couldn't hold it.

One big bummer about writing plays for Parable Playhouse, the Sunday School class I'm teaching, is that I need a minimum number of people to make the play work. In the case of “Jesus and the Paralyzed Man” I need five – four to carry the man in and one to be healed – and for the play we're starting Sunday, regarding the birth of Jesus (yes, Virginia, it's that close to Christmas), I've written roles for eight people. No, actually seven people and one animal. (I'm debating whether to post “The Birth of Jesus, Seen Through Marty's Eyes” as a note tomorrow, give people a sneak preview of this – I think it's so good and so funny as well as so important. If I can get a good cast, I'll record it too.)

Oh there is a lot to say, but I'm nearly halfway done at work! Stay awesome, peeps

David