SAVVY AND SASSY IN THE -ER ZONE!

April 24, 2011

Happy Easter, peoples of cyberspace and surrounding territories!  It has been a momentous month for this desperately doodling ding-dong.  No longer am I a dinosaur with one finger in the 21st century and the rest of me still malingering around in the 19th, using paper and pens and sometimes even stamps to communicate with the rest of the world.

No! Thanks to my oldest daughter and son-in-law, I became the astonished owner of an iPad, when Amy handed down her version 1, as she promoted herself to version 2. I can now doodle away wherever I may be in the world, as long as I don’t forget to charge the battery on my virtual pad of paper. I can also play brain empowering games involving the death of pigs by angry birds, or my personal favorite–hangman! How’s that for taking a flying leap into the real world of deeply serious technology? I can hardly stand myself.

I can also hardly stand the fact that I am now old enough to be the recipient of my children’s hand-me-downs. Does this qualify me for senior discounts? Or maybe those come along with my youngest child’s senior year in high school. But wait–that’s happening right now, too. Hurray! I’m officially older than I care to dwell on at this moment.

So let’s move on from the savvy, to the sassy! To celebrate my launch into high tech society, I did something I hadn’t done in nearly twenty years. I marched myself and the high school senior (to make sure I didn’t turn around and march back out) into a hair salon and got a real haircut. And this wasn’t just a whack it off and curl it under type of cut like the ones my husband has been bestowing upon me for lo, these many years. This is a STYLE with layers, requiring the application of goo, hanging upside down while drying, straightening the not-quite-straight-enough hair and merciless teasing until the poor, pitiful hairs either cry or shape up. We’re talking sassafras like nobody’s business at the end of all that! I’m a brand new woman except for the body and the part of my brain that still refuses to savvy up, which is most of it.

And that unsavvy part of my brain enters deeper into the -ER Zone with every passing day. CraziER, sappiER, forgetfulER, emotionally unstablER, neediER–you name the -ER, and I’m right there. Maybe it’s hormones in the wacky zone, maybe it’s transitioning toward the empty nest, maybe it’s just me finding my true self (please, Lord, don’t let this be the real me!) but whatever all this -ER is, I’ve decided to go with the flow. Might as well enjoy the ride, since I’m already on the -ER Zone roller coaster.

That leads me to my final thought for this month’s installment of doodles from the far side. The girls and I were driving around today, chatting away, when all of a sudden, Erin pointed out the window and exclaimed, “There’s Jesus! What’s He doing here?” I nearly drove off the road! My savvy, sassy and -ER self thought, “Oh my gosh! He’s come back! Why am I not flying up in the clouds right now?” Really, for a split second I thought it was rapture time and something had gone drastically wrong. But then I saw the re-creators along the side of the road and remembered that it was Easter weekend. Pretend Jesus was carrying his cross as he was being beaten by pretend soldiers.

Later the girls and I were talking about it and we felt weirdly bad that we had just kept driving, instead of stopping to help the pretend Jesus. But then how many times do we keep going on our busy way instead of stopping to help someone in real need along our path? Isn’t that how Jesus told us to serve Him–by helping people in need as we travel along the road of life? I guess that means we should be looking for Jesus everyday and not be surprised when we see Him. If we could just see Jesus in everyone we encounter in a day’s time, every day would seem like Easter!