Snuggling with my sweet little boy on the couch. He looks up and starts singing “Sweet Little Mommy” (to the tune of “Hush Little Baby.”) Heart: melted.
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I haven’t really spent all that much one-on-one time with my sister-in-law, save for the occasional trip to Target. So I was most pleased when she agreed to use my extra BookSneeze-provided Women of Faith ticket.  photo courtesy WomenOfFaith.com We spent the majority of Friday and Saturday with several thousand other women, all there to be inspired and uplifted. There were, as you might expect, laughter and tears. Par example:
So! I enjoyed the weekend overall, and I did come away on Saturday more inspired than I was on Thursday. But there was something that rubbed me the wrong way. The “theme” of the event was “Imagine,” but the sessions didn’t really reflect that at all. It seemed like they’d just kind of randomly picked a word and Scripture (Ephesians 3:20) in order to make some nice-looking logos for the T-shirts. I’m thinking maybe they don’t really need a theme. The overarching theme for some of the speakers seemed to be “My most recent publication, which is available for purchase in the concourse.” I know this is a business, and I know the speakers/authors need to sell their wares to make a living. But I’d suggest they ask the speakers to lay off mentioning their books and let the emcee handle the sales pitch. Lest we end on a sour note, here is a video clip of the very funny Ken Davis: Disclaimer: BookSneeze and Thomas Nelson gave me a pair of tickets to attend this event. It’s a good thing that I procrastinated on making any progress on that awesome dinosaur room for Petey, because he’s changed his mind about it. I’m OK with that, though, because there are also some lovely options for his new choice: Space. My sister-in-law Mrs. Perry Mason found a “Blast Off” bedding set on deep clearance at Target, so the decorating has actually sort of begun! John W. Golden’s Happy Bear and Hirsute Hedgehog have been in Pete’s room since he was a wee babe. I don’t think it would be a good idea to deface them with spacesuits, though, so I think we might replace them with this set of four rocket prints ($48). Because he really can’t have a room without something by John W. Golden, right? Pete wanted to paint his room a dark, dark blue. It’s a gorgeous shade, but his room isn’t on the sunniest side of the house to begin with. We compromised by painting one wall his color. And that deep blue wall is just begging for some cool decals. Graphic Spaces’ Rocket Boy decals are pretty much just what I’d like to see there. At $70, though, they might remain something I’d like to see on the wall. The previous owners of our house put floral switchplaces in our bedroom. They also put one in Pete’s. The one in our room will probably stay there for a good long while — mostly because they installed it upside-down, and I find that weirdly charming. But Pete isn’t really a floral kind of kid, so we need to change it out for him eventually. There’s a good chance I’ll end up getting a Plain McCheapo model, but I’d like to spring for this rocketship switchplate from Metallum Creations. At $20, it wins the Most Likely to Be Purchased award. My boy is steadily marching toward becoming a 4-year-old, but that doesn’t make him too young for teddy bear art. Especially if the bear in question is an intrepid space explorer, like Sharon Mathieu’s polar bear ($25). I like his heart-shaped head. Having a dad who loves to do yard work? Priceless. The lawn has been mowed, and the hedges have been trimmed. Thanks, Dad! We’ve been attending a church across town for about two years. It’s a nice church. The full-band music ministry was a little jarring after about 10 years of attending the exclusively a capella churches of Christ, but I’ve grown to enjoy it. But there’s still something missing, for me. Community. Friendship. Fellowship. I just haven’t found it there. I’ve talked about this here before (here: all the way back in 2008!), my difficulty in finding connections. And I have met a few people since then, but I still don’t know that I’d qualify all that much of my progress as more than acquaintances. Maybe I don’t give out a “call me, let’s go do something!” vibe. Or maybe it’s that I don’t take that initiative and call people myself? I’m afraid of rejection, I guess. Anyway. The church. It is nice, but I wanted to try to find something on our side of town. I was thinking that maybe if we were attending church with people who lived nearer to us, then we might run into them in the community and something like Oh Hello I See You Everywhere Let’s Be Pals would happen. So we tried a tiny church near us last weekend. It’s actually a church plant that just started meeting in a community center, and three or four of the people I’d call acquaintances attend it. Those people were kind and welcoming, but I don’t think we’re going to be going again. There isn’t a children’s ministry or really a spot to form a children’s ministry, and Rockford and the kids gave it a rather lukewarm “review” afterward. However! They started a Bible study for women this week, and I went. My new goal is to keep going and force them to befriend me. (Sad! But true! Unless I chicken out.) (And maybe it’s already working! I was invited to A Thing after writing this, but I couldn’t gom) But, oh hey! This wasn’t supposed to be about my sad sack of a social life. It was supposed to be about this: I’m going to a Women of Faith in a few weeks with my sister-in-law. The events are all about finding inspiration and laughter and hugging, I think. I hope to come away from the weekend inspired and with a new resolve to get out there and find my people. (Just so we’re clear: I do not like the Moody Blues. But the song popped into my head as soon as I typed the last three words.)
Last month I wrote that “Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers is the best pitcher in Major League Baseball.” In that post, I observed that in the past 20 years only five pitchers have achieved 23 wins or more during a single regular season. At the time, Detroit’s Justin Verlander and New York’s C.C. Sabathia were both on pace to do so this year. Let’s check back in to see how they are doing. In short, it looks like Sabathia is tiring out and losing his stuff. Compounding this is the fact that two of his remaining starts are against very good hitting teams (the Angels and the Red Socks). I’m penciling loses in those two games, leaving him with 20 wins for the season. Impressive, but not on Verlander’s level. Detroit’s Verlander is another story. In his 31 starts, he already has 22 wins, just five losses and four blown saves/no decisions. So his win percentage is an awesome 71 percent. And he still has three more starts to go. At his current pace, he will finish with a beastly 24 wins. But here’s the thing: Verlander is going to win 25. He hasn’t lost a game since July 15, which was 11 games ago. That means that his 10-game win percentage is 100 percent. And the Tigers’ bats are finally waking up. In September, they are averaging more than 9 runs per game. Verlander wins games if his team can score a run or two. At run support to the tune of nine, he won’t lose. Twenty-five wins. They might as well give him the Cy Young now. And let the MVP talk commence. |
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