Adulthood - how did this happen?

I don't have much anything to report on the adoption front. Still waiting on a signature. No, our file has not been lost (I asked). DSW just hasn't done anything with it. In light of not saying anything unkind about DSW and their ineptitude method of operation, I'll elect not to say anything and just ask ya'll to keep praying.

There. Wasn't that an adult response? I'm not sure why or how this adult thing happened. It's weird, really. Just yesterday I was doing the please-please-can-we-have-a-snow-day dance with my daughter (didn't work) and this morning I was scheduling an appointment with a lawyer to update our will. Yes, a real lawyer. For a real will. Apparently the $39.99 special with Legal Zoom is not acceptably adult. Who knew.

That got me thinking about all the other areas of my life in which I am expected to be an adult, but in which I fall short. Sigh. But then Jen Hatmaker blogged about her difficulties with certain "maturity required" issues. And I felt better about myself. See, all my small group friends especially Michael W., I am not the only one who doesn't answer the phone. And because Jen Hatmaker is a Christian writer and speaker and is all spiritual and stuff, I am claiming phone ineptitude as a mark of spiritual maturity.

So, in the hope event that someone else in cyber-land needs a boost of self-esteem, I, too, will share some ways in which I fall woefully short of the adult-behavior-required mark.

That not answering the phone thing? Full disclosure -  I often don't answer the phone because I can't FIND my phone. It's somewhere. I know it's somewhere because I used it just a minute ago to play family feud. (So fun!) But then I put it down because I didn't want to miss the South Beach Towing rerun when the overweight guy tries to climb in the passenger window and loses his pants. Hahahahaha!

This makes it very difficult on my child(ren) because while most children can rely on their mother to help them find (socks, shoes, homework, backpacks, softball gear, uniforms, purses, tickets, etc.) this just isn't an option in my house. I don't know where it is either. It's probably with my phone, playing family feud. "Experts" encourage parents to allow their children to gradually take more and more responsibility for their "stuff" as they grow older and more mature. I handed that responsibility over to Sam at around 18 months of age. Good luck, girlfriend!

I also can't seem to manage the very grown-up and parental task of creating a weekly dinner menu for my family. I know they must be fed. For the past 14 years Sam has required feeding three to six times a day, so it's not like this fact of life snuck up on me. I have the very best of intentions, I do. I want my family to eat delicious and wholesome made-from-scratch meals. I have read COUNTLESS books about the importance of delicious and wholesome made-from-scratch meals. But I dither and dither and suddenly it's six o'clock and everyone is starving and I forgot to go to the farm store plus I have NO IDEA what to cook and the only choices are scrambled eggs or Qdoba. Sorry Michael Pollan.

Which is weird because I really, really like to plan ahead. Except when I don't like to plan ahead. Like with dinner. (I think it's actually I-forgot-to-fix-dinner-so-let's-go-to-Qdoba intermittent reinforcement.) To avoid this last minute drama, I recently decided I was going to give every day a dinner theme. I read this somewhere. (Maybe on family feud.) This would help me. So, let's start with Sundays. Sundays are pizza night. Surely I can remember to make pizza every Sunday. It's not that hard. I am, remember, an adult.

BUT THEN my parents went on a raw food vegan diet, which has done amazing and almost miraculous things for their health. This got me thinking about how we should incorporate more raw and or/vegan food into our diet. So I spent the bulk of Sunday afternoon googling raw and/or vegan pizza to serve for Sunday pizza night. There are a surprising number of websites devoted to this very thing. One in particular grabbed my attention. I should have known I was in trouble when the first paragraph of the directions read: "The key to creating a successful vegan pizza is in the planning ahead" but I forged on. The recipe included a long list of ingredients, of which I had exactly one (tomatoes - but canned, not fresh).

By now it was six o'clock. And I had a vast knowledge of the benefits of vegan pizza and an understanding of how to construct a vegan pizza. But I still had only one ingredient. My family was not thrilled about eating canned tomatoes, and were not convinced that this plate of canned tomatoes was actually pizza. So I did what any self-respecting college student adult would do: call Pizza Hut. They had it ready in fifteen minutes.

But I also offered fruit snacks. And every pre-schooler adult knows that fruit snacks = one serving of fruit. So that should count for something. Right?