Dry

I was hungry and, in a brave attempt to keep myself from reaching for something more delicious and fattening, I opened a pack of dried apricots to snack on. They were overly dry. Tough, in fact. Still, I did my best to enjoy them myself and put a bite of one in Spencer's mouth, sure he'd think it was like candy.

For the next hour he hummed all his songs and mumbled all his "words" and before we went out on our walk, I took the same piece of apricot out of his mouth. It was completely reconstituted.

On our walk we passed a number of thoroughly dried frogs on the sidewalk.

You know how after the rain you see dried worms everywhere? It's like that where we live, but with these cute little frogs. We have some living in our backyard (not the dried up ones) and we do our best to keep them watered and happy so we don't find them one day, flat and crispy, in our garage as we have in years past.

As we continued down the street we came to a scattered pile of unused matches on the sidewalk. I stopped and thought for a second. It's been very hot, dry and windy and these matches seemed like an accident waiting to happen. I started to rub them one-by-one into the ground with my flip flops to wear off all the phosphorus (looked it up). As I did it, I explained to Aaron that one of the matches could light and start a fire. Or some kids could come and take them and start a fire.

Aaron knew that kids don't play with matches so I had to explain that some kids do dangerous and bad things like play with matches. I told him that if a fire starts in your house it could spread and all your toys can burn, your clothes and your bed. You would have no place to sleep etc.

Aaron listened carefully and was thoughtful for a minute after I ended my lecture. Then suddenly he looked up at me with worry in his eyes and said, "And Spencer's toys! Spencer's toys could get burned and he wouldn't have anything to play with!!" He was very disturbed. Probably for his whole childhood he will never play with matches for fear that Spencer's toys might get burned.

Tough apricots, dead frogs, and fire hazards.

And one frazzled lady.

I've been feeling kind of dried out lately, too, in case you couldn't tell from the past couple of posts. Not enough healthy food and exercise, not enough planning and meditating and taking meaningful time for myself to feel put together, and not enough time drinking the Living Water.

I am working on rehydrating myself, but it would kind of be nice if someone could just stick me in their mouth, go about their business for awhile and spit me out, a new and improved Lisa.

No, that wouldn't be nice, I guess. Not literally. I'll just work on it myself, one snack, morning walk, and scripture session at a time so I don't end up as unpalatable as the apricots, as unbecoming as the frogs, and as fear inducing (or explosive) to good children as the matches.