Let's try this again

It's been a long, hot, dry summer in Birmingham. No hotter here than anywhere else, and really, no hotter than it is normally between June and September. As for dry, the media and the Water Works kept talking about the "drought", but the meteorologists kept reminding us that we were in what our agrarian fathers called a dry spell. As my last post date will attest, the dry spell affected my blogosphere as well as my biosphere. Let me try to catch you up.

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Both kids had birthdays. Lovett turned 14 and had a music-themed birthday party, dragging his drum kit into the living room and jamming with some of his friends over cheeseburgers. I bought him a DVD of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, and he now quotes whole scenes of dialogue and lapses unexpectedly into an annoying scouser accent. Dora turned 6 and had a Little House on the Prairie-themed birthday party. Zelda built a makeshift covered wagon in the backyard, and a few of Dora's hardier friends slept around it in tents. When Dora insisted that I, as Pa, sleep with them, I pointed to my brick-encased bedroom and said, "That's my little house on the prairie," though I did build and tend the fire until midnight.

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I am vicariously enjoying America's return to regular space missions through the eyes of my kids. I was a space fiend as a child, and both Lovett and Dora have a keen interest. We regularly go outside for the space station fly-overs (find the next one for your location here), and we are faithful viewers of NASA TV. I've stayed up late every night of the STS-115 mission in a valiant attempt to reclaim some of my childhood enthusiasm for the space program. Man, if Al Gore had just invented the internet twenty years earlier...

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Lovett is back in public school for the first time in two years. He is in the eighth grade. It has been a challenge so far. I love the kid - he's smart, witty, creative, etc., but I gotta say that math is a foreign language to him. Often I've told him over a set of math problems to hire somebody to balance his checkbook and never, under any circumstances, try to design a bridge. I told him he could draw a bridge, write a poem about a bridge, sing a song about a bridge, but leave the bridge implementation to those pointy-headed kids in his class who actually understand the simplification of fractions. We'll all be safer.

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I talked to my mother one day last week. First time since Dora's birthday last year (please look in archives for related posts if you're curious. I'm too lazy, or don't have the heart, to post links). Here is the transcript of the call:
Chris: Sticky Widgets, this is Chris.
Mrs. DePaul: Hey.
C: Hey.
MD: Listen, we need to know what to get Dora for her birthday.
C: Uhhmmm...
MD: Well, just think about it. We're on our way out of town so just leave a message on our answering machine. You know we use that as our caller id so if you don't say anything we don't know it's you. I don't get up until 2 or 2:30, so just leave a message.
C: OK, I'll think about it.
MD: Just leave a message. Ok, bye. (Click)

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I'm on a spiritual journey of sorts. I've taken the month of September as a sabbatical from church. It had gotten so that my entire "Christian" identity was tied up in the institution, and I need to get away from that. I normally feel incredible guilt if I'm not "doing" something, but it never seemed to bother me when I wasn't "being," if that makes any sense. I don't know how long this will take but I've promised myself to be patient with me and I'm trusting that the Father will be too. "Being" before "doing." Relationship before ritual. Hunger instead of duty.

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Well, I think you're caught up. If I think of anything else I'll post it. Here's to blogger regularity.