FAT LIP
One night last week, we had “Fat Lip” for dinner. Yeah there’s a story behind it … when our son David was little, he would ask Cheryl what we were having for dinner, and without fail, whatever it was, he’d say he didn’t want it. One evening, Cheryl was cooking what most people would call “Beef Stroganoff”, when David came into the kitchen, and with a sneer, asked Cheryl what she was cooking. Tired of his rejection of her dinners, she said, “A fat lip — want some?” He didn’t waver, but immediately went into his routine, whining, “I don’t want ‘fat lip!'” We all laughed. From that hour, Beef Stroganoff has been “Fat Lip” at our house. So … once again the Thomas family had “Fat Lip” for dinner!

ATTA GIRL?
One day last week, our kitten Eponine brought a “catch” into the house: a piece of bark she had snatched from outside. (If you look very carefully at the picture below, you can see it not far from her right front paw.) She batted it around in her paws like it was a living thing, and laid it at our feet just inside the door as an “offering.” Of course, everyone had to make over it. Libby gushed: “Good girl!” and everyone likewise made a big fuss over ‘Ponine’s hunting prowess.
I must admit it made me wonder somewhat about the “Good sermon, pastor” comments we often hear as people exit the church door …

SILENCE NOT ALWAYS GOLDEN
Me: “I want to play tennis again today.”
Cheryl: “We probably won’t get to, today. But it will be good to have a break in between days, to rest your shoulder.”
Me: “Yeah, ’cause I was really hammering that ball yesterday.”
Silence from Cheryl.
Me: “WASN’T I?!”
Cheryl, laughing, “I was hoping the conversation was going to move on before I had to answer that …”

PICK-UP LINES?
Libby had noticed that Michael had some “peach fuzz” on his face, and teased him: “Michael, here’s a good pick-up line for you at Falls Creek (youth camp) next week: “Do you like peaches, cause I’ve got the fuzz?!”
We all laughed, and someone made the obvious observation about whether that was really a good pick-up line.
Paul: “Josh obviously had it easy with Libby. Whatever he said, Libby would go: ‘that’s a good one!'”
Josh: “Yeah, I think my ‘line’ was, ‘Wanna go out?'” Creative!

SLEEPY TIME
My lack of sleep due to POTS is well-chronicled, although I have come to have a peace about it, since 1) I am doing better with it, and 2) there are a LOT of people who struggle with sleep issues, so it is not like I am the only one who deals with it. Plus, 3) I get to stay up and read! That is like a bonus, if you look at it that way!
So the other night I was up reading at about 4:00 a.m., and Michael came out of his room. He said he hadn’t gone to sleep yet, but that he had a good idea: to get back on “schedule”, he wouldn’t sleep at all, then stay up all day, and then he believed that he would sleep at a decent hour that night. I told him that MIGHT work, but he would have to be careful not to take a nap during the day.
Well, a couple of hours later, he was all excited about how he had not slept the night before. He was prancing around the house, saying excitedly to Cheryl, “Hey, I don’t even feel like I didn’t sleep at all!”
That was the last I heard before I went out for my prayer walk. I came back to get Cheryl, who walks with me for a couple more miles afterwards, and she greeted me with a laugh and said, “Michael is sound asleep on the couch! He sat down to read a book, and then laid over to get ‘more comfortable’ and soon he was out.”
A few minutes after we got back, Michael got up groggily, and Cheryl started laughing at him.
“This is where I start to impress you by singing random Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs”, Michael mumbled.
Cheryl looked at me and said, “I think he’s still asleep!”

KITCHEN HELPER
I sliced up some cheese and sausage for a gathering we were having at the house Saturday evening. We didn’t know how many were coming, but, I said, “Well, if all else fails, we will just eat it for dinner!”
Cheryl: “Hey, then you helped make dinner tonight!”
Me: “Any way you slice it.” Get it? 🙂

BITTERSWEET
Last Wednesday, Josh & Libby and little Miss Corley Jane moved to North Carolina so that Josh could attend Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Wake Forest. People have asked how we handled the move, and the truth is we have mixed feelings about it. We are very proud that the kids are going to seminary, of course, and glad that they will be joining our son David and his wife Ashley there. But it is hard to send our very first grandbaby halfway across the country. I jokingly said the kids couldn’t have driven any further east away from us without plunging into the Atlantic Ocean! But Cheryl & I have known that they were going into ministry, and we never expected them to be near us, so we have regarded these past weeks with Corley Jane as what Louisianians call “lagniappe” — an extra blessing. But we still felt like this when she left: