Today I’m thankful for having parasites (it turns out I have two different parasites going on inside of me, a pair of parasites).  I don’t like the parasites, but its caused me to do some life evaluation.  Firstly its caused me to spend more time thinking about things above & my relationship with Christ.  Secondly its caused me to spend more time with my family.  Thirdly its caused me to start exercising and working out.  I have lost, as of this morning, 8 pounds in the last month.  Some people lose weight from parasites, I’m losing it from being healthier in my diet, healthier by exercising, and healthier by having self-control.

I know its weird to be thankful for a parasite problem, but I guess I’m used to being weird.

Sure, this one probably seems like an easy one given its proximity to Mothers Day. However, I’ve been thinking about motherhood (as much as I probably can’t fathom it) and I think its pretty terrific that my mom was there as we were kids kissing our boo-boos, kicking our butts and making us tons of food. Sure, the food may seem like a superficial thing, but I recall as a teenager being able to eat more food than was probably sane. Here are a few funny stories involving my mom being a comforter, a corrector, and a cook:

Comforter

When I was about 14 or so my dad took us up the Virginia City truck route which was a 6 mile long windy road with cliffs at parts and gravel on oil pavement. The perfectly safe place to bring us given that when we weren’t under his supervision on our bicycles we were probably out in fields that had barbed wire strewn about them. Rusty barbed wire. But I digress. As I mentioned we had our bicycles with us because the purposes of these trips up the truck route were to bomb down them at insane speeds with as little use of the breaks as possible. I crashed multiple times on these rides, but one of them was a doozy. I was going about 35-40 miles per hour on my BMX bike (smaller 20″ tire kids bike) when the collar nut that keeps the handle bars and front forks synchronized became loose. My front tire started to wobble back and forth and my bike began to swerve. As happens when I’m involved with things the bike crashed. I scraped and rolled across the pavement stopping a few feet away from the edge of the cliff I was riding next to. Like all but the toughest of people I cried. My dad loaded up the bikes and drove us home with me bleeding all over the suburban and my clothes.

When we arrived home my mom carefully picked gravel from my arms and side (thank God I was wearing a helmet) and helped wash out my wounds. That was pretty awesome considering that I should probably have been taught a lesson about being a stupid stunt bicyclist.

[note: my dad was a good dad, too, but that’s another post.  We begged for him to take us up the truck route.]

Correcting (That’ll Learn Ya!)

One winter my cousin Norman was up with us in Carson City and we had a good freeze. The three of us (Norm, Ed and I) went for a walk and discovered that the ice on top of the Carson river was fun to crack and break through. Sure, our feet got wet but the destructive nature of what we were doing was much more fun than the water was cold. After walking up literally one half a mile of the river’s edge stomping through ice our feet were incredibly cold. Colder than the heart of even the most evil politician. Yes, it felt about -40 degrees (which is the same in Celcius & Fahrenheit) in our legs and feet. OK, I admit it: evil politicians are probobaly colder than that.

We called my mom from a pay phone in the middle of the park that we were in and asked her to come collect us. No such luck. If we were crazy enough to walk in a frozen river for that long we could walk home, too. The whole quarter of a mile or so to our house we all grumbled and fussed about how mean my mom was for making us face the consequences of our actions. When we got home we asked her to kind run us a hot, hot bath. We needed the hot bath to warm us up. As some of you may know and be chuckling about already cold body parts don’t like really hot water because the temperature difference is so severe that it literally feels like burning. My mom gladly ran a hot bath for us to take turns using.

Much shrieking was heard as all three of us in order discovered that this hot bath was not the solution to our problem. Lesson learned. Mission accomplished.

Cooking

My mom was a better cook than we let on with all of our grumbling. If mom made anything but Spaghetti or hamburgers we’d gripe because our pickiness knew very few bounds. Mom would make large quantities of food to feed us and our friends, hoping that there might be left-overs so that the next day my dad would have a more complex lunch than rice cakes and such (he’s gluten intolerant as well as allergic to corn & various other grains). Mom, even when she wasn’t cooking for us, would buy foods that we could cook for ourselves. She bought huge quantities of frozen burritos. While that may sound like a bad thing, consider that I would eat one for lunch (we lived a few blocks from the High School my brother and I attended), one before going to work in the afternoons, and my brother would also participate.

Mom fed us food, shopped for food for us, and even taught us a thing or two about cooking so that when we moved out of the house we lived out of microwaves and fast food containers.

Thanks Mom!