Where Are Your Clothes, Little Girl?

I received a brief note from Kellie this morning. She said that Jack Henry “is doing very well. Surgery was a success! He is groggy and sleeping a lot.” She is thankful for everyone’s prayers. Thank you, God, for watching over this little guy, for guiding his surgeons, and for taking care of pirate mom and pirate dad.


Recently, sitting and staring at a blank word processing screen has produced the same question over and over again. What happened to the stories? What happened to the insanity that defined my life? Where are the stories that I shared on my blog that were nothing more than a venting rant that people found entertaining? Some readers laughed with me while some readers laughed at me, and I really didn’t care as long as everyone was laughing.

The answer came to me when I realized that my children have settled down. Captain Chaos hasn’t been chaotic. Major Havoc hasn’t created any havoc. If General Mayhem’s recent behavior (he’s 12 11/12 years old) is any indication, the teen years might be tolerable. He’s almost human. Any thoughts that sanity might reign in the Arby household were forgotten when we found the girl standing in the living room at 10:30 last night, wearing nothing but toe nail polish and a smile.

“Hello, little girl, where are your clothes?” I asked.

“I took them off,” she replied, spinning in a circle. The twinkle in her eyes indicated that she was wide awake, ready to play, and enjoying her nakee-ness.

A little food helped put her in a sleepy state. When we brought her to bed we discovered that she had set up camp on the floor of her bedroom to play. She had a small TV on for an illicit viewing of Kipper the Dog. During a recent rearranging of stuff in our house, we tossed a small TV and VCR in the kid’s room, more out of a lack of anyplace to put it than a desire to allow our children to have a TV in their room. There is no television reception in their room, so this was only for children’s VCR tapes. We really do not want our children to have either TVs or computers in their own rooms, and this one is going to find a new location in our home today.

Captain Chaos understands stealth. I have no idea how long she was awake before we discovered her streaking upstairs. I suspect a long train of blogging topics is just below the horizon, heading my way!