Being Goofy
Good morning, homeschool heroines. I apologize for our technical difficulties yesterday. I wrote the blog late Wednesday night and made the “boy, I sure was tired last night” corrections Thursday morning in plenty of time for it to come to your inbox at 7:00 a.m. central as usual. Why it went out in the middle of the afternoon, I have no idea and neither did my wonderful technical guy and son John. He had one idea about why the corrections didn’t get saved so maybe I can keep that from happening again. If you’d like, you can read the corrected version so you know that Ray (my number one proofreader) and I haven’t lost our marbles.
The blog goof wasn’t my only goof yesterday. Nate, Mary Evelyn, Clara, Wesley, Ray, and I finished setting up our convention booth in the morning and then walked several blocks to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center on the banks of the Ohio in downtown Cincinnati. I want to tell you more about this museum, but I need to think about that a while first.
Yesterday was Nate and Mary Evelyn’s fourth anniversary. When the two of them finished seeing the museum, we got to babysit the children for the rest of the afternoon while they had a date.
We looked around and played around the museum for a little while and then began the long walk back to the convention center. We must have been a sight. Wesley was strapped to my front and Mary Evelyn’s backpack was strapped to Ray’s back. I had a purse on one shoulder and a camera on the other. Clara walked between us holding hands with both of us.
As we waited to cross a street, I pointed out a cement truck to Clara, calling it a CE-ment truck (my southernness kicked in) and Ray laughed at me and asked, “Like the CE-ment pond?” (you gotta know The Beverly Hillbillies to understand that). Then I started laughing. Clara asked why we were laughing. Ray said, “She’s so make-fun-able.” I told Clara that Notty had said I was make-fun-able for forty years. Ray and I enjoyed my make-fun-ableness and shared more laughter at my goof #2.
The convention started at 6:00 last night and I was supposed to do a class at 6:30. Well, I love talking to people in our booth. Too close to 6:30, I was in an excited conversation. When I checked on the time it was 6:31! In a panic, I grabbed my stuff and drafted Nate to help me carry it. I hurried out of the exhibitor hall, stopped to ask a convention center employee the directions to Room 236, hurried up the escalator, walked and ran to Room 238 (oops), and hurried all the way to the front (with Nate several steps behind me) where a woman whom I hoped was the room hostess was speaking. When I realized she was not a hostess but the teacher of a different class, I went out the door at the front of the room and on to Room 236 with Nate still behind me. I hurried up the center aisle of the real Room 236, put down my stuff, and opened my mouth. I hadn’t planned for my opening remark to be: “I have never been late to teach a class before–I’ve been late to lots of other things–but never to teach a class . . . ” (oh, well, goof #3). The attendees were so kind and the class went great.
After the vendor hall closed, Nate, Mary Evelyn, Clara, Wesley, Ray, and I went back to the hotel. We got on the elevator with one other passenger. I was talking away to my mother on my bluetooth which is, of course, hidden by my hair (I know it’s rude to talk on the phone with other people around, but there is just this small window between the time a convention is over and my Mother goes to bed). Mary Evelyn told the other passenger: “She’s not losing it. She’s on the phone. ” I looked at the man to share the humor of the situation and he just looked at me with a rather un-humored expression (goof #4).
Have you been goofy already today? Were you goofy yesterday? Maybe last week or last year? Come on. Make me feel better. Tell me one of your goofy stories.
I’m looking forward to meeting Abraham’s wife Sarah. She knew the joy of having people laugh with her. When she bore her 100-year-old husband a son, she said:
“God has made laughter for me;
everyone who hears will laugh with me.”
Genesis 21:6, NASB
That is the sweetest photo! You and your husband make grandparenting look like the new parenting! I hope that my husband and I will have similar experiences when we’re grandparents someday.