Today was Monkey’s last day of school for the year. Actually it was his very first last day of school! There was a pizza party and everything. But frankly, I don’t know how I’m going to survive summer, spring break was almost the death of me. He’s not my little toddler anymore, he’s been out in the world away from me, and he just won’t be content in our old unstructured ways. He’s made friends at school, friends he’ll want to see, so there will be playdates. There is a recommended reading list and activities to help him prepare for kindergarten. I’m actually going to have to plan stuff!

We walk up to school most days and I really enjoy it. I’m going to miss our walks; I guess we’ll just have to walk to other places. The exercise, the fresh air, the nature, all of them add a nice aspect to my day. Especially the parts back home after dropping Monkey off and when we walk back up to pick him up. It’s not that I don’t like walking with Monkey, but that time alone with Pumpkin is special. She’s just so new to all this human-stuff and absolutely everything is this bright, shiny wonder to her.

On the way back up to the school, we played one of her favorite games-”Mama, what’s your name?” She asks everybody present in just that fashion. “Daddy, what’s your name?” And the answers are always the same, “Daddy.” “Mama, what’s your name?” “Mama.” And then you have to ask her, “Pumpkin, what’s your name?” “Pumpkin” she answers. Luckily this round didn’t last too long.

Then she picked up a stick that she declared just the right size for a walking stick. She told me it was for walking up the dirt. Then she said, “Mama, today is Dirt Day. I love dirt.”

I knew it. Kids don’t just get dirty in the pursuit of other things like play. They get dirty because they love the dirt itself, on its own merits. So the next time I look around my kid-full House and wonder how all the dirt got in, I’ll know that the children have invited it over. Because they love dirt.

God, it’s going to be a long summer.

Today, after its absence of too many weeks, the sweet song of the dishwasher is once again heard throughout the House. Music to my ears. Please forgive me, dishwasher, I’m sorry I ever called you “alleged dishwasher.” I swear that thing got offended and broke on purpose just to spite me. The whole broken aspect of the dishwasher was very minor and easily remedied and completely stupid that it was not resolved earlier, but I’ll discuss the specifics in a bit.

But first, I’d like to sing the praises of labor-saving devices in the home. With all the many things going on in my life and in my House, I don’t always (ok, hardly ever) get to keep the House as clean as I would like. Truth be told, I’m fairly lazy all on my own; left to my own devices, I would let the House get very cluttered. My clutter is of the books-and-papers variety and I have to force myself to go through it all and discard most of it when it gets overwhelming.

Now, add to my clutter one man and all the many messes that come standard with most of them. The trash bags that literally have to be blocking his way into the kitchen before he notices them. The towels and clothes that can land within inches of the hamper but never quite make it in. The cups and glasses and half-empty pop cans that land everywhere but my kitchen. The toilet paper rolls that never make onto the holder.

After eleven years, like water, we had reached our own level. We had found a comfort level somewhere between utter slob and clean-room. The dishes got washed, the food got cooked, the bathroom got cleaned, the clothes got laundered, all when they needed to happen. True, we did eat out somewhere close to all the time, but there was still plenty for both of us to do and plenty of us to do it.

Then, cue the dark foreboding music that signals doom, we had the kids. Kids are loud, smelly, messy little creatures that generate an enormous amount of filth. The astounding number of poopy or wet diapers, multiple clothing and bib changes for the spitters, multiple clothing changes for moms of the bazooka-barfers, meal-time mayhem, feces-throwing, and seemingly thousands of toys. And clean rooms never stay that way once the kids are out of bed.

So, I was not keeping up with the six thousand things that go along with keeping a household running smoothly. Then my nearly 10-year-old dishwasher broke. And all of a sudden the limited amount of housework I was able to stay on top of–got on top of me. I took my household labor-saving devices for granted and even grumbled about them when they didn’t deliver absolute perfection. Then one of them left me. It wasn’t a huge deal, just a little piece of plastic less than two inches long, but it presaged the collapse of my rickety little attempts at order. The plastic retaining bolt that attaches the lower spray arm assembly to the bottom of the dishwasher came apart–the threaded part detached from the top. I found a place online that carried a replacement part but, as the threaded half of the bolt was still lodged in the machine and I didn’t know how to remove it, I didn’t order it.

How hard can it be to do all the dishes by hand? I don’t know how housewives did this job a hundred years ago, before dishwashers and vacuums and washing machines and Swiffers. Cleaning up after the meals was arguably one of the easiest parts of the job for your average early 1900’s housewife, even without hot and cold running water. Here am I, spoiled little 21st century mom, beaten to a pulp by a sink full of dishes when my 100-years-ago doppelganger was extremely fortunate if she had one of the first electric washing machines, called The Thor, which was first mass-marketed in 1908. If she didn’t, laundry was a hard, heavy, all-day task. A sink full of dishes probably looked something like a trip down easy street to my past-times counterpart.

But to me, a sink full of dirty dishes meant too much time spent scrubbing by hand, not being able to keep an ear open to kids for too long, and a sopping wet shirt. Finally, after a busy holiday weekend during which I had no time to give over to hand-washing dishes, I decided to get serious about fixing my dishwasher. Now follows the embarrassing part of my sad tale. The part which has provided an inordinate amount of amusement for my husband.

I was convinced that the threaded part of the bolt was well and truly stuck down in and its removal called for some highly original thinking from yours truly. Rube Goldberg would be so proud of me. I had an elaborate scheme involving keyhole saws, epoxy, and pliers all planned out. Hubby scoffed at my idea, so I told him “Fine, you get in there and you figure out how to get the damn thing out!” He didn’t. Until Sunday when I couldn’t take it anymore and I made him take a look at it. So he gets in there, I hold the flashlight on it, and he starts poking around what’s left of the bolt. Then he says, “This seems kind of soft, I wonder if I could just pry it out?” He gets a butter knife out of the drawer, has me hold the light just so, and starts doing something. I crouch down so I can see and he’s turning the butter knife, using it like a big screwdriver and just twisting the damnable think out! With a butter knife! !!!! So I say, “You are not!” Infuriating.

I called around today and found a place that carries that sort of thing and got to fix my dishwasher! But not before enduring much teasing at the hands of my husband and certainly not before he told the embarrassing tale to everybody he ran into at work this morning. Including the part about my Rube Goldberg ideas for removing the offending bolt. I asked him if everybody thinks I’m crazy now, he said that they just think I’m a girl, apparently forgetting that Goldberg himself was a, um, himself. Then he says, “Wait, wait. I just want to tell the story one more time!” And he does, including bits about “Epoxy and Popsicle sticks!” and “It took me, literally, under 60 seconds to take it out! With a butter knife!”

Well, it may have taken him under a minute to remove something that I had a hare-brained scheme all lined up to do the job, but it took me weeks just to get him in there to look at the thing. I seriously don’t know who I’m more peeved at–myself for all my complicated plans or him for removing the thing so easily. With a butter knife!

Anyway, I now have a working dishwasher again, and an empty sink. Because of a butter knife!

OK, so I’m a morning person now. Not by choice, mind you, by coercion. Hubby and I were married eleven years before Monkey came along. We decided to wait a sensible six years before jumping in parenthood, but then were unpleasantly surprised with the five years of infertility that followed. But we had plenty of years to become set in our ways.

My natural inclination, in sleep patterns, is to stay up late at night and sleep late in the morning. Even though sleeping really late on work days was impossible, I still slept as late as possible, pushing the limits of how fast I could get ready for work. This is where my infamous lead foot came in real handy. You see, I like to drive fast and I’m not a timid driver (I once faced down a Chicago city bus and won). But on the weekends, ah sweet slumber, Hubby and I would sleep until 11 am or noon.

My parents, bless their hearts, would often ask “When are you two going to start going to church?” I never did tell them that going to church would seriously cut into my sleeping-late time and I was just too lazy to go and then there was that whole baptist-church-scarred-me-for-life thing, but I digress.

For eleven years it was just the two of us, living the life teenagers only dream about. No parents to tell us what to do, no overwhelming responsibilities, the freedom to just find a new job if the old one didn’t fit my schedule, the freedom to go where we wanted when we wanted. We would occasionally get up and go places on the spur of the moment: Branson, Dallas, Eureka Springs. But mostly we just slept late.

And then, five and a half years ago, that all changed. Monkey was born and I haven’t had more than a handful of peaceful nights’ sleep since. And the only times I get to sleep in are when we take the kids out to stay with my folks overnight. Once, when Monkey was still a small-to-middling infant, he let me sleep until 9am. We all would’ve slept later, but some kind of internal mom-alarm went off, I jerked out of sleep on my own, freaked out when I looked at the clock, and sprinted into Monkey’s room convinced that something was wrong. Nope, the little fella was peacefully sleeping, but of course I couldn’t go back to sleep. Adrenaline was pumping through  my veins and my heart was pounding so hard that it kept threatening to push its way out of my chest.

Anyway, we always figured that the kids would eventually settle into our pattern of sleeping. After all, they come from two very confirmed night owls, why shouldn’t they just immediately take to staying up later and sleeping in? I’ll tell ya why not, because fate has a cruel streak.

To my kids, if the sun is up so are they. Light outside, even just the faintest pinking at the eastern edge of the sky, and it’s party time! Well, they have gotten a little better since those days, but still. I’m lucky if I get to sleep until 7:30. If one of them sleeps later than that, the other one won’t. Take this morning for instance. Monkey probably would’ve slept later than 8 o’clock, but Pumpkin had other ideas. I still have a monitor in her room, so at 7:30, bang on the dot, I hear “Mama! I’m ready to get out now!” “MAMA!!!! MAMA!!!!” The monitor made it sound like she was screaming in my ear. So I went and retrieved her for no other reason than to Make. The. Yelling. Stop.

Anyway, she disturbed Monkey, who probably needed to sleep a lot later than he did. And now I’m watching Tom and Jerry at 9:00 on a Saturday morning when I would much rather still be sleeping.

Someday, they’ll be teenagers who want to do nothing else but sleep until noon. But I’m afraid I won’t get to enjoy it, by then they’ll have me turned into a real morning person. You know the kind, the one’s who say stuff like, “Oh yeah, I got up 5 o’clock this morning and got all my housework and laundry done. Then I weeded the garden and did the grocery shopping!” Let’s hope, for everyone’s sake, that they don’t succeed at that.

Today was a special and scary day for Monkey, it was his very first school program. His adorable little Pre-K class stood on the stage in the gymnasium and sung seven cute songs. Well, the rest of his class did.

Hubby came home from work to go with me and Pumpkin. Grandma and Grandad drove in and brought Cousin L. with them. Cousin L. was born six weeks before Monkey and they are very close. She’s as shy as Monkey is outgoing, but somehow always ends up the one who gives the orders when they play. Pumpkin managed to keep her dress on long enough to get through the program. She likes to wear pretty dresses, for about 2 hours and then they start to bother her and must come off! Now! Of course, we always have to maintain a bit of an edge, so she wore her pink high-top Chuck Taylors with her flowery dress.

Well, maybe it was the crowd or just standing up on that stage, but Monkey started crying during the very first song. First, he had that deer-in-headlights look, then he started wiping his face with his hands, and then his frown got bigger and his little chin started to quiver. It was all I could do not to run up to the stage and gather him in my arms and head for the hills. But he was a trooper, he pulled himself together and went on with the program. Of course, I didn’t see his lips move very much, but he did his best to keep up with the hand motions and dance moves.

After the songs, the teacher showed pictures from throughout the school year and everybody “oohed and awed” about them. When that part was over, Monkey ran to his daddy, wrapped his arms around him, and I didn’t know if we’d be able to pry them apart. You know, ol’ Mama’s there for everything, but having Daddy there is something special! Well, Hubby had to get back to work so he missed out on cookies and punch.

We didn’t think to take a camera, because you know, we’re dumb. But luckily the iPhone takes pretty nice pictures and I have some grainy shots taken with my cell phone. One picture I got was Monkey with his “buddy.” The school offers a type of mentoring program where classes of older students partner with the Pre-K classes and have “Buddies Days.” I finally got to meet Larry, Monkey’s buddy. I have heard about that kid since the beginning of the year and I was so happy to meet him. Larry is such a nice boy, and he seems to genuinely like Monkey. Tomorrow is Ice Cream Social Day with the Buddies. And the last day of school will be Pizza Party with the Buddies Day.

Later, after we got home, we talked about what happened. Monkey said he got scared at first, but then he got better. But all in all he had fun. And next year he starts Kindergarten. When did all this growing up happen?

I meant to write about Mother’s Day weekend way before now, but such is life. Friday was my open house at nursing school, where I was inundated with valuable information; and I’m really glad they gave us paper versions of everything or I wouldn’t remember a word of it. Saturday was Monkey’s Day. We dropped Pumpkin off at my folks’ and took Monkey to his first movie theater movie. We took him to see “Speed Racer”, thinking the racing cars would be a good fit for his little racing mind. He made it through about an hour. He liked the huge bag of popcorn and the giant pop he shared with Mama (two potty trips, thank-you-very-much), but the movie was a little intense. About half-way through, he closed his eyes and told me he wanted to take a nap. That means he’s scared and doesn’t want to look anymore. So when we asked him if he wanted to leave he said, “Yes.” So we played an arcade game on the way out and took him to Peppers for lunch.

We sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather. And Monkey spilled salsa on my feet. After lunch, we made the much-dreaded trip to the mall. But we didn’t have a choice because that’s where the Apple Store and Sephora are. I got my Mother’s Day presents a day early–an iPod and a nice, long time browsing in Sephora all by myself. Not only did I get my mom some great philosophy products, but I also picked up some perfume for myself, V by Valentino. It’s yummy. Now, I am not the fanciest of girls, but I LOVE Sephora! It’s like a candy shop for grown women.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been a bit of a Luddite when comes to all this computer stuff. That is until I needed to get proficient, fast, for my first online class. Now I have three blogs (how’d that happen!) and pay bills online and shop online and can even put together a pretty good Word document. But the last personal music player I owned was back in probably 1989, a Walkman that played actual tape cassettes. Most of which were mix-tapes recorded for me by sympathetic friends. Now, I am the proud owner of Pinky, a (big shocker) pink iPod nano. She is named Pinky, not only for the obvious reason, but also for Pinky Tuscadero, ex-love of the Fonz. I always loved her, and ached to be that cool. Wow, that’s a lot of pink.

Last night I went to iTunes and bought my first 50 songs. No albums yet. And if I do say so myself, that is the oddest mix of songs; I’ve got everything from Ministry to Mozart. Lot’s of Eighties, some modern electronica, and very dark classical. Oh, and Johnny Cash covering NIN’s “Hurt.” Just odd, I tell ya.

After I downloaded all my new stuff, I played with my new iPod for about 2 hours. I was bouncing around to the music and Hubby started laughing at me. He told me I needed to go to the kitchen and make a sandwich, a la Terminator. I cracked myself up today, because after we dropped Monkey off at school and came home, I went into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. All while dancing around the kitchen and singing out loud to the songs. But alas, no cybernetic assassins from the future showed up. Just me and my sandwich, and Pinky.

Of late, the House of the Burning Prairie has been a veritable hotbed of ghostly activity. OK, not exactly a hotbed, but it has been rather active. And in some new areas.

The master bedroom has been the site of some paranormal goings-on. A bit of background-I can’t sleep in a bed right now on a account of something went wrong with my hip (bursitis, meh) and because, apparently, I snore like a buzz-saw. Of course I’ve never heard this snoring of which Hubby speaks, so I’ll just have to take his word for it. But the result is I sleep on the chaise in the den so I can remain in a partially upright position to take the pressure off the ol’ hip and to not disturb anyone else with the snoring. Eventually I want to get one of those Tempurpedic mattresses, but I digress.

In the past several weeks, Hubby has seen some apparitions in there. Once he woke from a dream convinced that Pumpkin, our 3-yr old, was standing by the side of the bed. He lurched up out of bed and stumbled over to her, thinking something was wrong, but she wasn’t there and was, in fact, still sleeping soundly in her crib. Then one restless night, he glanced over to the same area of the room (right in front of the master bath door) only to see a man-tall solid black presence just standing. Right. There.

He was completely spooked both times and came to tell me about it. As some of you may or may not know, I have seen the little apparition with my own eyes. While I was fully awake and standing up, and folding laundry, the toddler-size form floated into the room, “stood” in front of me and then slowly disappeared. It is about the height of Pumpkin, so I think this is what Hubby saw the first time, as for the dark thing, I don’t know.

And we have seen some things that others would call poltergeist activity. We had an infant car seat for Pumpkin, the kind with the pull-out infant carrier and since we’re lame, we left it in the den when she out-grew it. She’s quite the naughty little toddler, and we used it to block off one of her escape routes. We are also so lame that we left one of those little hanging baby toys hanging from the handle. One evening, Hubby and I were sitting on the couch when he said, “Oh my god!” I looked over at him and he was pointing at the infant carrier. Then I looked over at the carrier, the little toy was swinging back and forth by itself. What Hubby “OMG”-ed over? He saw it start, he was looking right at the thing when he saw it pulled forward, as if by an invisible hand, and released to start swinging. Just in case you were wondering, Hubby absolutely does not believe in the paranormal. Not that I do, or anything, mind you.

Small objects also tend to be found in unlikely places, places where we don’t put them. I suppose some of that could be blamed on two very naughty and inventive kids. But I saw something yesterday that cannot be explained away.

After dinner (hummus and tabouli), Pumpkin decided she’d seen enough of me for a while and went off to bother, I mean play with, her daddy. Hubby was in the bedroom playing with his computer, I mean working on stuff, when she went in there. I followed her and she told me, “Mama, you need to get out of here.” So summarily dismissed by a baby, I left. That was o.k., Monkey wanted to talk about his day at school.

It seems that there is a rather troublesome kid in his class. Yesterday Troublesome Kid, or T.K., told Monkey that the teacher said he (Monkey) was supposed to go to time-out. So Monkey dutifully asked the teacher and she said No, she didn’t want him in time-out. Guess who I think belongs in time-out? Anyway, I was telling Monkey about my own experiences with a T.K. when I was a kid. Monkey was sitting right in front of me the whole time, I didn’t take my eyes off him until I saw a slight movement out of the corner of my eye.

Pumpkin has a play kitchen, complete with pots and pans and six thousand (I exaggerate) little plastic pieces of play food, including play sushi! Well, as Monkey and I were talking, one of those little pieces of play food rolled into the room from out in the hall. It was the little tomato, which is not perfectly round, though it did roll as if it were. It looked as if someone had rolled it into the room from the front hall.

I picked it up, expecting it to feel too cold or too hot or have a slight electrical charge, but it felt perfectly normal. I could still hear Hubby and Pumpkin back off in the bedroom playing. I walked back and asked Hubby if either of them had left. They’d both been back there the whole time. We tried to come up with a logical explanation. Hubby, security-minded as always, checked all the doors and windows. Then we asked Monkey if he had seen what happened. He told us that he saw the little tomato under the couch when he was looking for another toy earlier. Hubby asked him if he could’ve kicked the thing out from under the couch, but that isn’t possible because I was sitting on the couch in question and hadn’t seen him do anything like that. And even if he had accidentally kicked it, how then did it roll in from the other room?

I also find it very interesting that something manifested itself when Monkey and I were talking about bullies. I was telling him that there will always be a T.K., I even had one of my own. And I told him about one of the times when my T.K. made me feel so scared that I didn’t want to go back to school. I could still feel an echo of that fear as I told the story. Then the tomato rolled in.

While I don’t have a personal theory about poltergeist activity, I do have one about hauntings. As I’ve said before, after someone passes away, surely he or she has better things to do than hang around in my kitchen. I do not for one minute think that the earth is populated not just with living people, but also with the spirits of the dead. That could get crowded.

There is speculation that hauntings are simply tears in the space-time continuum. This sounds reasonable. If some kind of traumatic event occurs-suicide, murder, battle-the violence inherent in the event rips at space-time. Then what we see are not spirits, but actual glimpses of the past. Or the future. But what about the non-traumas, the ghosts that haunt houses for no discernible reason? Place memory goes a long way towards an explanation.

How can a place have a memory you might ask. Well, I think, to a certain degree, some buildings are alive. Have you ever loved a house and then lavished that love, and time, and effort, on that house? Did that house seem happy? Have you ever seen a well-cared for, but empty, house? Did it seem sad, even though the yard was mowed and there was fresh paint on the outside? Maybe houses, and other buildings, are alive with spirits we invest in them. If a house or office building serves its purpose well, keeping people and possessions safe and comfortable, then it will be happy. But what of run-down buildings? I’ve often wondered which comes first–do people stop loving a building because it falls into disrepair or does the building fall into disrepair because people have stopped loving it?

And since something has to be alive to have a memory, that explains why hospitals don’t report a rash of hauntings even though lots of people die in them. Nobody loves a hospital, even when it’s doing its job, so hospitals never get invested with a spirit.

What if my silly, repairs-in-progress house remembers the other people who loved it? And it’s just showing us its memories, like someone playing slides from his latest vacation? I like that.

But that still doesn’t explain the tomato.

The entirety of my life has been an exercise in hiding my true self from others. From the earliest times I can remember, I have felt alien, outsider, unwelcome. The differences between my family and myself showed up too early to be the result of outside influence. It is as if I am wired differently. There is a word I have always cherished for its appropriateness to my situation: changeling. A changeling is an elfin child that has been traded for a human child (without the human parents’ consent). But instead of elves, I always figured I was taken from some liberal family back east. I imagined that while my family was dealing with this inexplicable little vocal, progressive activist some branch of the Kennedy clan was forced to try and raise a conservative redneck who spoke with a pronounced twang. If I didn’t so closely match in appearance, if not demeanor, my mother and grandmother, I’d swear somebody left me in a basket on their doorstep.

So, from those earliest of years, I knew not to reveal myself to my family. (Not that way, McPervy.) I couldn’t reveal the inner workings of my mind, that thing that is more me than my mere physical existence, to them. They wouldn’t understand. The little I did reveal was met with mockery, derision, or blank stares. I still don’t know why they didn’t support my desire to be a writer; was it some kind of notion that writing wasn’t a real job that paid actual money or complete disbelief that anyone would have any desire to read anything their ridiculous child wrote?

The church we went to (southern baptist, but I’m feeling much better now, thanks) had very specific teachings about the proper place and behavior of women. So I learned not to make waves there, not so I could have an easier time, but out of respect for my father. While he would never want or expect me to submit to any man, he still finds some kind of fulfillment in the church and I wouldn’t want to damage him in the eyes of his peers. But the minute I married my free-thinking, non-churchy-type husband I walked away and never looked back.

School was hell. Short, smart, weird, glasses, my mama dressed me funny, scrawny, needless to say that I was a walking target. And since I was a target, I learned to keep most of my thoughts to myself. Things that a more socially able person could express without fear became verbal bear traps for me. My classmates were brutal, but they were children, my teachers were adults and should have known better. But most could not be trusted, either.

Friendships were problematic, especially with other girls (this has followed me into adulthood). Most other girls and I had nothing in common. I liked books, and the dusty places where they lived, I liked science and still do, I wrote poetry, and mooned over Mr. Spock. Other girls fretted about hair and clothes and told lies about the boys they liked. Even in my friendships with other smart girls there ran an undercurrent of jealousy and petty competition. But since I was scrawny and awkward and goofy and funny, I was many guys’ gal-pal. And frequently, the secrets I kept from my male friends was the depth of my feelings for one or two of them.

I went to college, but not just any college-a southern baptist one! It was here that I honed my skills at hiding pieces of me, and where I was punished most harshly when I failed to do so. I partied and drank no more than half the girls in my pious all-girl dorm, but I didn’t go to church on Sunday mornings. I had had my fill of compulsory church growing up, finally away from home, I saw no need to put on a false face. Big mistake. Because I did not make the proper genuflection to appearances, I was once again alien, outsider, unwelcome. Even my best friend from that time had no problem jettisoning me to preserve her social standing.

I’m actually glad I learned that lesson early in life. Being an unabashed liberal in a red state can get a body fired. (Incidentally, doesn’t “red state” sound kind of commie? You’d think the wingnuts wouldn’t dig on that.) So in the interest of keeping jobs and not causing problems for my husband, I didn’t discuss politics or religion at work.

After my son as born I struggled with post-partum depression and a feeling of isolation. People, with the best of intentions, would suggest that I join mommy groups. But I just knew that I wouldn’t have anything in common with other mothers beyond the fact of having given birth to a child. I was with this child all day, every day and into the nights. I did not want to gather in a coffee klatsch and talk about diapers and nipples and vaccinations and developmental milestones; hell, I was steeping in that at home. I needed a break from my everyday life! But it was very unlikely that I would be able to meet mommies that wanted to talk liberal politics and even-more-liberal religion, not in these parts.

Now, through going back to school myself and sending my oldest off to preschool, I am meeting many other women. But I know that while I can be friends with these other mothers on a certain level, there is still a large part of me that must remain hidden. But I’m used to this, it’s sadly nothing new.

Since I began blogging and reading other blogs, I have found whole big groups of people that share a lot of my values. It’s refreshing and nice to be able to be more of myself with others. But still.

As I have gotten ever deeper into blogging and reading and commenting, I realize that there different parts of me that I hide now. You see, I also have some values that could be considered old-fashioned. Hubby and I got married in our early 20’s, because I’ve always thought that dating is for teenagers. Grown-ups get married. And that you should be careful about who you marry and go into it with the conviction that marriage is for the long-haul. While marriage is a partnership of equals, it is not 50-50; sometimes it’s 60-40, sometimes 20-80. It’s hard work, but rewarding, and should not be entered into lightly.

Oh yeah, and I’m a breeder. I find this particular label offensive. Look, the conservatives are having kids by the truckload because birthing them is easier than converting them. Why should liberals who choose to have children be classified as breeders. I am passing on my liberal, compassionate values to the next generation, my next generation. And I feel that there is need for my unique, wonderful, and flawed genetic material to remain in the gene pool. I believe the quickest way to kill hope and striving, and breed cynicism and apathy, is to promote the idea that the world is already over-crowded and straining at resources so people of good conscious shouldn’t have biological children. Horse hockey! These are exactly the kinds of people who should be having kids! Nature is just as important as nurture in a person’s character. Pass on those positive traits, people! Anyway.

My religious beliefs must also remain largely hidden. Atheists, agnostics, and people of many faiths have found a warm and welcoming home in the tolerant and accepting atmosphere of the liberal movement, and rightly so. I have the utmost respect for people of varying faiths or no faith at all, but I frequently find that I am denigrated for my beliefs. Now I realize that being a christian in a nominally “christian nation” affords me a degree of privilege not available to people of other faiths or no faith at all. I will not force my beliefs on others or denigrate their spiritual choices, nor will I demand respect. But here, at my House, I would like to point out that non-theists feel that a belief in God without proof is irrational (NOT my wording), while their lack of belief is rational. But since you can’t prove a negative, atheists actually have a belief, the belief that there is no God. No different than my belief that God exists. Someday I will share the basis of my belief, my own Direct Personal Experience with the Almighty. But not now.

But something that I think a lot of people are dead-flat wrong about is the space program. I am a strong and vocal supporter of NASA and the space program. A lot of people think that money “wasted” on NASA could be better spent on domestic programs, but I posit that the space program is a domestic program. The innovations made possible by our reaching into space benefit everyone! Money funneled into the space program filters into the private sector. Jobs in the aerospace industry tend to pay very well, giving more people more disposable income to spend in ancillary sectors, providing more jobs to more people. The hope and inspiration that the possibilities of space travel provide translate into a vibrant and optimistic culture. And I’m getting ready to go all Pollyanna on you, joint projects like the International Space Station can foster a sense and reality of cooperation among nations. When everyone realizes that we all share this beautiful blue marble, a warm oasis floating in a cold, black void, then we begin to recognize just how much we all share in common.

Instead of mothballing or scrapping the space program, we need to grow it and make it even more ambitious. There are solutions for our planet’s problems, and if those solutions can be found either in space or in the innovative ideas we come up with to get us there, we must reach further and more aggressively into space. We are citizens not just of nations, or even just of this planet, we are citizens of this universe and we must not allow timidity or fear or worry keep us huddling and scratching at the surface of this ball of mud. We have to take those first steps necessary to take our rightful place amongst the stars. Maybe our planet is becoming over-crowded because we are meant to reach for more. So lets do it. Let us reach for more.

I believe in the inherent nobility of the human spirit, despite how the media tries to dissuade me. And I believe the Almighty created these questing souls in us. We need to fulfill our destinies and become the kind of humanity for which we all have the potential.

Robert Browning expressed these things so well: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” and “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, ‘A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!’” Let’s all take this sage advice because the best is truly yet to be.

Addendum: When I started this post yesterday I had no idea it would turn into such a rah-rah session for NASA. But there it is.