There's Manna in Numbers

EIGHT -- the number on the clock that the little hand points to when I'm sitting at the soccer field on a Saturday morning.  On a Saturday morning.  Wait...did you hear me?  On a Saturday morning.  Whoever had that brainchild must be one of those weird morning people, and they probably do other stuff before the roosters like eat dinner...or...laundry.

ONE -- the number of tattoos that my cherub-faced stinker installed on himself while I wasn't looking.  Our family is all about some ink, but choosing to mimic thugists...not so much.  And I'll show you the picture...as long as you promise not to say, "Aw...he's so cute."  Because, y'all...he put the stinkin' thing on his neck.  The thing that holds his head on.  Which he obviously wasn't using when he inked himself.

SEVEN -- the number of nights that I've slept with the windows open.  Keep in mind that 3 of those nights were with the husband 239,382,392,823 miles away....and the beauty of sleeping chilled to the bone in the crisp fall air beat out the fear of the BoogieMan.  That's some amazing fall air, I tell ya.

EIGHT -- the number of months that it took our walls to get all dinged up from one too many hallway soccer games and swashbuckling pirate attacks.  We remodeled in February.  Today, I spent the afternoon repainting what we just painted.  

NEVER  -- the time in which the husband and I will finally be able to have nice things (and walls that don't get dinged up).  Dadgum boys.

SEVENTY-THREE -- the number of minutes that the offspring member of the red headed persuasion stared at his language book the other day.   He had to write four sentences about what he did this summer.  That's it.  Four.  And you would have thought that I asked him to translate the Gilgamesh epic into Latin.  On minute seventy-four, he caved.  Score = Mom: 1, Kid: goose egg.

FORTY-ONE  --  the number of Pez Dispensers in the oldest rascal's collection.  He wants to make sure that I clarify that the forty-one does include one giant talking Yoda Pez Dispenser and a box set of 8 Star Trek members, which leaves 32 individual Pez Dispensers.  You think I'm kidding.  I'm so not kidding.  I'm also not kidding about the Excel spreadsheet that is worked up on these said 41 Pez Dispensers.  Because we're wild and crazy like that....

SIXTEEN -- the number of days that I've eaten nothing but junk.  With the husband in and out of the country and baseball/football/soccer seven nights/afternoon a week, I've been ingesting mad amounts of fast food and frozen-food aisle edibles.  My innards screamed out for vegetables the other day, and I managed to wolf down a can of cold mixed veggies before heading out to the ballfield.  Go ahead...judge.  I'm sixteen steps ahead of you. 

TWENTY-FOUR -- the number of Words With Friends games that I have going on right now.  Because I have an infinitesimal amount of spare time on my hands.  What?  I'm not playing with you?  My user name is RascalRaiserAmb.  C'mon..you know you want to feed my Scrabbalized habit.

ONE -- the number of precious husbands that I have.  It looks strange to me that I just wrote the word "husbands"...plural.  Speaking of plural...have you seen that new TLC show, "Sister Wives"??  Bizarro.  I'll keep my one man all to my self, thank you very kindly. 

ENDLESS -- the amount of blessings that I feel and have felt from the onslaught of prayers, support, and love showered on us by our friends and family.  We've had some issues that have sneaked their way into the crevices of our lives and have pitched tents in some very uncertain deserts and valleys.  We've dealt with confusion, misunderstanding, and the unknown.  And yet, we remain remarkably at peace.  Because prayer is manna in the desert.  Support is manna.  A "just checking on ya" email is manna.  A facebooked "how ya doing?" is manna. 

And manna is FOREVER, friends.