Don't You Forget About Me

This weekend, we put together the United States! At least the lower forty-eight (so that excludes Alaska and Hawaii); let me explain. For weeks we'd been missing the puzzle piece representing Georgia, and Jeffrey found it slightly worse for wear on our car floor Friday – or Thursday, my memory's fuzzy about that – and as we had all the other pieces, Sarah, Jeffrey and I put the country together! If only it were that simple in real life, or maybe it is … interesting thing about this puzzle we got as a gift from a teenage friend at church, whoever operated the jigsaw didn't complete the separation of Florida and Alabama; they got the bottom vertical cut done, but not the horizontal. I guess like the announcer of The Outer Limits, WE control the horizontal!

Saturday my kids and I slept in – sad to say that for now Martha works from six am to two pm at McDonald's on Saturdays – and really needed it! Some hours after Martha got home I scheduled an appointment with my clan to sit around our dining room table and discuss the family budget, to see where our money needs to go and get it there! Martha was astonished and admonished that I shouldn't have to ask for an appointment with my household, but I retort that is the only way to get us focused on what we must do, especially the ugly stuff. For the most part, we did get accomplished a working plan to pay our bills and give priority to what needs to be prioritized. Now the proof is in the pudding … seriously, it's dangling in some chocolate pudding.

Sunday morning we threw many people off (one church leader referred to our being “conspicuously absent”) by coming to Bethany Lutheran's second service instead of the first because then we could sleep in. The kids didn't have Carol Choir first service, so that helped. In Sunday school their shepherd Ashley, my confirmation assistant Dalyce, and I had nine first-graders in class where I read the story of Jesus' Trial and Crucifixion – normally I'd use the kid-friendlier SPARK Bible, but there's a few details that it leaves out that the quiz show part of Noah's Arkade would cover – out of the Bible to the kids and then had them line up in teams to answer the questions. That didn't go so well, but there was some interesting food for thought. Six and seven-year-olds tend to give that.

And something else that morning before I left the room reminded me, for better or for worse, that I am doing something right. The grandmother of one of the kids I had that day came in and asked me how he behaved. Not that any of the first through sixth graders I have in Sunday school are … too bad … but some have too much sugar in the morning and act on it, if you receive my meaning. So I'm a little lax in enforcing discipline (I try to leave the heavy part to Dalyce and whichever shepherd they kids have that week, and sometimes that works better than others); I'm just in love with how the grandmother – young lady for a grandma, trust me – approached me and said I do not need the grief of bad-behaving kids. And I agree.

“Thirty years ago TODAY, the Breakfast Club had detention.” That's a little thing that makes me go boom – that's the day that occurs in the 1985 movie The Breakfast Club. Since the movie debuted February 15 that year (the day after Valentine's Day, THAT'S an irony, nearly eleven months after the events of the film) when I was thirteen because my birthday's in December, even watching this on VHS – remember that? – some years later and it being one of Martha's fave films, it is hard to not see yourself if you grew up then as one of these characteristics. Though I'll be honest, I thought Bender would be the principal by now (in 2014, that is, seeing the future unfold a la Lemonade Mouth) after I read that! But who knows, it could even be you.

David