Flying By the Seat of My Proverbial Pants

Me and Mandisa get together every morning.  Well, her, Lecrae, Phillips, Craig, & Dean, Toby Mac, and a select few others.  I read a while back about how an author I follow made the "soundtrack to his life" in the time while he was trying to write a book and find success.  After reading this blog's ( http://www.jonacuff.com/blog/every-dream-needs-a-soundtrack/ ) comments, I decided to make my own soundtrack to a dream.  I listened to this just about every morning as I get ready for the day.  However, this morning I awoke to a harsh reality.

Someone, somehow, had erased all my playlists on my Iphone.  Quel horreur!  What was I to do?  Could I even take a shower or brush my teeth with my lovely Colgate toothpaste without my soundtrack to a dream?  I was a car with a flat tire in the middle of the night; I was an empty box of Diet Coke cans.  My Iphone laid there, silently mocking my deleted sense of direction in music form.  Not to be mocked by any inanimate object, I …

It's tough to be single.  If you are a Christian chick and want to date, you have to first of all know single men that are believers, and then they have to be men you would like to date.  Also, I'm not familiar with the idea that guys take a look at a woman and think, "Wow, that is marriageable material!" 

Having been single, married, and now divorced (but I pray for love for my ex on a regular basis), I feel like I am well-qualified to write on this topic.This can be titled THE CHRISTIAN MAN LIST. Of course, this is written from the perspective of a woman desiring to date and perhaps one day marry.

So all those haters out there who instantly want to attack this like white on rice, it’s okay, it’s not talking about you.Unless it is. THE CHRISTIAN MAN LIST ( to determine how marriageable you are, and definitely not an exhaustive list) Attends a traditional church +1 Owns a house or living space +5 Attends a small group+2 Wears a denim jacket +3 Attends a small group where he …

As shocking as it may seem, there are people in this world that have NEVER seen Princess Bride.  In fact, I discovered that my own daughter has not added this cinema verite to her own life experience. I mean, if someone were to mention ROUSes, how would she know that it was a reference to rodents of unusual size? Or if someone cries out, "INCONCEIVABLE!"  she would not get it! How about if I kill one of the Florida state animals (roach, mosquito, lizard, spider) and upon examining it, proclaim that it is just "mostly dead"?  Another personal favorite is "Love, True Love" delivered as only a sinus-impaired priest can do. 

There are a whole host of movies I saw as I grew up that have been lost to part of this current teen/young adult generation.  I realize that the gory showdowns between Rambo, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Predator, and Charles Bronson and whatever street ruffian he was involved with pale in comparison to what today's gamers face, but…

In the words of Meg Ryan, in one of my all-time favorite movies You've Got Mail, "Don't you love daisies? Daisies are the friendliest flower."  If there's a friendlier flower, I do not know of it.  And if you go to a grocery store in Jacksonville, you are likely to see bunches of daisies in colors that nature did not create.  One day I asked the florist how in the world is it that these flowers can be these beautiful if not unnatural colors. Her reply was that the omnipresent "they" stick the daisy stems in vats of color and, much like the 7th grade science project involving food coloring and celery, the dye makes its way up the stem and eventually shows itself on the bloom, making turquoise and hot pink and bright orange daisies.
Pretend, dear reader, that there are two plastic wading pools in life. One is the Jesus wading pool. When you stick your toe or foot or feet in here, it's because you are immersing yourself in God's Word and filling up…

I got an early birthday present today.  I don't consider myself hard to buy for, but I prefer to receive gifts that reflect that people have listened to me and know what I like.  (Likewise, I try to do the same for people I gift.)  But this was so thoughtful that I am starting my blog with it.  It's a Moleskine.  You might be saying, what?, as my friend Vann did on facebook.  It's a journal that records your thoughts, hopes, dreams, etc.  But the key is that pretty much every motivational speaker and writer has one and talks about it.  So I figure that I can now become QUEEN OF THE WORLD.  Or, at the very least, I can feel empowered to continue to write my book.

Sometimes I am in random places and see something that my quirky mind thinks would be an awesome blog post topic.  But if I don't write it down, it's gone, pretty much right after I tell myself, "This is such a great idea I could never forget it."  But now, with my Moleskine, which I pretty much i…

In the course of my day, I end up on the websites of a dozen different Baptist churches.  Usually I am trying to figure out what their most current mailing address is, which is normally not on the website.  Neither are emails.  But what I have noticed is that there are generally a few Baptist church stereotypes.  First, there's the Big Bubba Baptist Church.  These are usually located in rural areas, and the picture of the pastor shows that there may have been more than one (hundred) covered dish events in his lifetime.  The website may include the next knitting or quilting club meeting times and generally espouses conservative thinking and living.

Another type of Baptist church is the I'm-A-Baptist-Church-But-The-Word-Baptist-Is-Not-In-My-Name.  Strangely enough,  however, you will likely find one or a combination of the words Life Journey Point Fellowship Pointe Cross North Way.  These have cool websites with lots of graphic-y splashes of color describing the next Bible study…

Well, now that we have all successfully made it past the supposed end of the world, again, I would like to propose what could be an exciting proposition for all concerned.  I will now be posting daily to this crazy little thing called my blog, and you, all four of you, should check in daily to see whassup and what's down with this life as I see it through through the life of a single mom with three teens and a whole bunch of great friends. Today, I'd just like to give a little shout-out to my awesome friend Brenda, who I have actually only known for a total of five months, but when you camp counselor-together, that propels you into the "I've known you my whole life" category.  Not only is she the most chill person I know (and I thought I was fairly chill), but she has all these talents that she is completely humble about.  Everything that I pin on Pinterest that is a watercolor anything, I know that she will pin it as well.  In fact, I can predict what she is goi…

Every now and then I have an idea that makes me think, hmm, I oughta write a blog post about that.And then I write it down in the Notes on my Iphone and look at it again in a few months.But I feel so strongly about the following words that I am compelled to write this blog post NOW. There is a separate set of physics that govern laundry.Now, I know that students of physics, two of which exist in my house as teenagers, will say that an object in motion stays in motion (as evidenced by the activity of my 71-year old mother) and that an object at rest stays at rest (as evidenced by the activity, or lack thereof, of my 74-year old father).And I know that there’s something about molecules that keeps my Diet coke from running over the sides of my glass if I over-pour just a little too much.
But one thing that I know for sure is that laundry has its own set of physics.The only reason I know that this exists is that somehow, someway, the tiniest cami strap wraps itself not only around the cente…

One of my least favorite things to do is visit my local Walmart.  I used to go later at night, around 9 or 10 o’clock, to beat the crowds, but what I then found was that with fewer shoppers, there are fewer cashiers.  Which brings me to the crux of this blog post: theoretically, the lane clearly marked as “10 items or less” or, in the case of Walmart, additionally, “20 items or less,” would lead most shoppers to believe that going through this lane would put them in the company of like-minded shoppers that had escaped the Walmart maelstrom with less than 10 items (a feat within itself).  However, apparently the idea of having 10 items or less is a very fluid idea for some; I think that having multiples of ten is enough for them to think, “It’ll be okay, people won’t mind.” Except that I do mind.  As much as I don’t want to, when I see someone that I can visually tell has more than ten items, I mentally count every blip of the register to see how badly that shopper has transgressed the …

Wow. I am typing this into my IPhone as I digest Taco Bell before I head off to church. I am at 20% power, so I will have to do this quickly, rather than write it in a Word document and cut and paste it into my blog. But I have found myself living on the edge, in my own special way, a lot lately.(guilty admission: I just came out to my car to plug my phone into the car charger.) anyway, the point is that things have not been going my way lately. Things that I thought were a sure thing are now completely different.and at the same time I keep hearing that God calls us to do things we can do only on His power, which really messes with my desire for control.

Philippians 4:6 tells me to chill out, God has it totally under control. He's got this."prayer abd supplication with thanksgiving" are the words He wants to hear out of my mouth.so what if I do something crazy and totally trust God? And pray for everything, rather than trying to figure out how to do it on my own? That wo…

There are many things I love about my city.It’s a big-yet-small town, which some love and some hate.(Don’t listen to the haters.They can’t afford to move to a true metropolitan area and they are taking it out on the rest of us, all the while enjoying low housing costs.)But that’s not what this blog is about. The city of Jacksonville has taken it upon itself to build and provide bike lanes and bike paths on many, many streets in our fair city.I respect that and, in fact, have researched laws applying to bicyclists so much that I know I must have at least a three-foot space between me and a bicyclist when passing said bicyclist.Which leads me to my problem, my what’s- stuck- in- my- craw, my big beef with bicycles. USE A BIKE LANE.Enough already.Even though there is a wide and smoothly paved bike path on a back road that I frequently travel, bicyclists travel in the street.What? What is that?Same pavement, different place.Do bicyclists think that cars won’t take them seriously if they rid…

Tonight was an epochal evening for me.  Tonight was the night that I actually ironed on young daughter's stars.  You see, young daughter plays rec basketball in a Christian feel-good league where we play fair, be sweet, and have a "positive circle of encouragement" or something like that.  Every week, every player gets a star for coming to practice and a star (one of five colors) that indicates her strongest skill that week.  Ideally, every parent takes these stars home and irons them on the team t-shirt.  At the end of the season, the players ideally have practice stars for every practice and stars for each game.  However, I am usually better at losing the stars than ironing them on.  This is the sixth year we have played in this league.  Six years.  And I am finally getting good at keeping up with the stars. 

This reminds me of other mom stuff that we bullet-proof moms are supposed to do, but yet I kind of find myself not liking those moms that do all the mom stuff fo…

Although I am fairly convinced that resolutions need a complete new makeover, I have made a few, the usual.   Eat better, exercise more, love more, forgive more, stop texting and driving (not that I do.)  If you ask me, people sometimes use resolutions to set themselves up for failure, but that is a completely different blog.  I am proposing Un-Resolutions.
The older I get, the more I realize that there are certain things that I just am not doing anymore.  Like for instance, as much as my kids may want me to, I am not getting in a cold pool or a cold ocean unless I want to.  I have already served my time with young kids in a pool whose temperature rivals that of most Icees.  Not doing it.  So in the spirit of Un-Resolutions, I propose the following:I refuse to eat at restaurants whose food I know is overpriced and poorly prepared…not naming any names, Castle of Italian Food…. When people are overtly stupid and their driving affects the progress of ten or more cars, I am going to break t…