phone ring, ring of fire, ring-tailed lemur

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. It has been more than 2 weeks since my last blog post.

Sunday, WHILE I was teaching the high school Bible class, my phone rang. The teens all gave me this "UUUuuuUUUMMMM, Miss Stephanie, why is YOUR phone ringing in class????" But I knew why, and when I answered the phone and began saying things like "When did your contractions start? How far apart are they now? Has your water broken?" they knew why too. I ran home, (if you know me, you know to never take that phrase literally), changed into appropriate doula attire (comfy shoes and clothes that dry quickly and don't show goo), and headed to my 22nd birth (17 of them completely natural). And, despite a mom who began a 23-hour labor already tired, she gave birth to a lovely little 6# 14oz baby girl. On Monday, I slept, and then I took a nap, and then I slept some more.

Last weekend, my best friends brought home their newly-adopted son from Ethiopia. We had a welcome-home celebration for them at the Nashville airport, complete with grandparents and old girlfriends and siblings and youth group kids and closest friends and camp friends and college roommates and other adoptive families and a musician (okay, he just happened to be playing guitar where we were, but we requested "Ring of Fire" anyway) and a professional photographer. Oh, and my beautiful daughter and granddaughter who drove 5 hours JUST to be there. The plane was scheduled to land at 3:19, then it got bumped to 3:27, the miraculously to 3:09, then 2:57 (apparently a caped Clark Kent was pushing the plane) and so we all gathered at the security gate, balloons and posters and cameras in hand and waited. And waited. And, oh my goodness, WAITED. We think they must have stayed on the plane to catch up on their jet lag! But FINALLY they walked through the gate, and it was as special as any birth I have ever been part of (Mayah's excepted.) And seriously, have you ever seen a CUTER little boy??? Amazing day.

Finally, Tuesday I saw a man on the interstate, walking back to his vehicle, carrying . . . a slightly bloated, very dead raccoon. I console myself, and my queasy stomach, by assuming he mistook it for the extremely rare Kentucky ring-tailed lemur and was taking it to a taxidermist. Yes, I'm certain that is what he was doing.

theory of revolution

As I stood in line with some 37 teens waiting to get into the Winterfest Youth Conference in Gatlinburg, 8 of them formed a small circle around me and started turning in a clockwise direction for no apparent reason . . . other than to prove my theory that everything actually DOES revolve around me. :)

During another “standing in line” episode, one of our senior guys dissed me. TWICE. And all before breakfast. I’m not going to mention his name, but only because Bradley doesn't deserve the attention. Anyway, the second time he slammed me by stating that it was way too early in the day for me to be beautiful. One of our girls jumped to my defense, “Saying Stephanie isn’t beautiful is like saying the sun doesn’t shine!” I foolishly felt compelled to point out that it was a very overcast morning, and the sun actually wasn’t shining. “Yes it is!” she proclaimed, “you just can’t see it!”

Yeah. Like me and the beauty thing. It’s there, you just can’t see it.