The Car Seat Chronicles

_{I feel like God uses every little circumstance to make me grow spiritually. For example, I try to take Maddy’s car seat out of the car and it takes me forever because the clicky thingy is not cooperative. So I’m sitting there just fuming at this car seat, desperately clicking away at the chinggydingy that attaches it to the base. In my mind, it feels like its taking an hour to get this thing detached, but in all reality it probably is only a few seconds. Yet it makes me soooooo angry! I feel my face heating up as if I were a old Southern woman in New Orleans going through a menopausal episode in the middle of a heat wave. I swear that car seat is as big as me and it sounds silly, but sometimes….. just sometimes, I feel like it has a special plan to ruin my life. Well, NOT today car seat, NOT today!}

_{I’ve been thinking of what makes or breaks my days more often than not. Yes, it definitely sucks to have some big catastrophic bad circumstance happen, but those usually only tend to happen from time to time, (thank God in heaven!) BUT little nuisances as stated above happen to me every day, all day long and for some reason, these have a big say in how I feel. The days that I think I’ve got it all down, I’ve been there done that, I’m the king of the castle give me a treat, I’ve got everything under control, tend to be days filled with nuisance -warfare! WHY? My theory, after praying a lot about it, is that God uses these little frames of time to get me to turn to him and give up that silly sense of control. I feel like when the day is going great the less likely it is that I turn to pray. Sad but true. Most people pray to God when things are going wrong and when we’re having the best of days we forget who’s in control, when what we should be doing is thanking God for our blessings.}

_{As I had this epiphany, I’ve been testing a few things out; when I’m faced with the ugly N’s throughout the day, I begin to pray and stay calm, and what do you know, the battle happens to have MY winning stamp on it! I kick that energy draining, frustrating, THING’s A-double snake!! Yeah, take that car seat, you didn’t rile me up! When I stay calm in the midst of these calamities, and I realize that there is really no reason for me to get so worked up, I feel a sense of peace and joy. I’ve been able to minimize the amount of time I spend being stressed out about the “small” stuff and it feels great! Little Nuisances, even though they’re teeny tinny, they add up and tend to drain you of your joy. Don’t let them. Practice every day staying calm and praying through them. Make it a point to not let something so trivial tell you how to feel! Today, who will win that battle, You or them? I hope you have a wonderful day! Stay blessed, Stay saucy!}

Danny the Donut Man, and the best donuts in the world.

This is a story about much more then donuts, as most stories are. ‘Twas Saturday night, and my family was over for Madelyn’s half birthday party (not really a party, party per say. No clowns or princesses or anything like that, we just needed an excuse to have lots of good food and great company). The evening started off normal, we were all huddled around the kitchen waiting on someone to start heating up the comida. After we got motivated to start warming some tortillas, we began eating and having some good conversation, and then it happened! Doug asked me to tell my whole family about Danny the Donut man. So I did, not knowing the repercussions of my actions…. I said to my family, “So on ‘free admission to any museum day’ Doug, Maddy and I were at old Sac and Doug bought me some donuts from a little street vendor across the way from the rail road museum. Oh man, they were so good! The best donuts I’ve ever had in my life! We had two kinds, powdered sugar and cinnamon sugar. Ohhh they were the best!” EVERYONE immediately was salivating and they all got excited about these donuts. I think it was my brother that started it, but he said, “Ohhh let’s go get some!”, and everyone in an uproar yelled “yeah! “, you would have thought someone just said they were giving out free iPads or something! So in the midst of all the excitement, my husband the planner mentioned that Danny the Donut Man was probably not there because of the rain. I took immediate action and did what any normal person would do; I called the Rail Road Museum and asked the clerk man to advise me if he could see Danny the Donut man across the way. I thought who ever answered the phone would have hung up on me thinking I was ridiculous to have called THEM to ask for that kind of information. The awesome guy said, “Ma’am, I’m looking right at him.” After getting the affirmative we all piled into my brothers big’ol SUV and drove to Old Sac to get us some donuts. We got there just shy of six o’clock and I could see he was packing up his cart! I yelled at my brother to stop the car so I could run out there and stop the mad man from closing down. I ran to him as fast as I could and I said “Are you really all closed?”, He told me he only had what was left and it was about a dozen donuts (these are not your traditional size, they are little minny donuts by the by) so I was a little sad, but everyone would still get to try them non-the-less. So I told him I was going to get my wallet and went to the car and told everyone to get out. After all us Mexicans like to do everything together! All eight of us rushed to the cart and waited for our donuts and then Danny the donut man said the kindest words, “You know what! You don’t need your wallet! These are free, they are the very last and I feel bad that you can’t have them warm and out the oil.” I said “Are you serious!” and we all thanked him! We were all so excited that we were all compelled to hug him. As I got my turn in the hug line he said, “God is good!” And there, at that very second I felt something wonderful. I felt the warmth of being human and loving people for the sake of loving people. I felt proud that there are still decent and nice people in this world. Why, it would just be so cool if instead of wars people could just give others free donuts, wouldn’t it?

The coolest things happen when you least expect them. I feel like my whole family was moved to do this spontaneous thing and it ended up fulfilling more than just our sweet tooth. We all had a sense of togetherness and love that I can’t explain with words. But it felt like when you eat the greatest donut in the world; Warm and sweet, and once it hits your belly, you’re as happy as can be. As you go through today, find the ways to brighten someone’s day, you’ll never know to what extent you’ve helped them. Be kind and be blessed, and for Peet’s sake, stay saucy!

We prayed for poop and guess what? We got poop!

Maddy has been venturing into new arenas in the food department, woot woot! We can say that our baby girl has graduated from her innocent, almost good smelling dirty diapers, (I use almost very loosely), to nasty, and menacingly disgusting ones! But for some days now she had been really constipated, so I did what any good mommy would do; I prayed for her to poop it out and gave her some prune juice. Two days later, after forgetting about my prayers for poo, I was going 100 miles per hour trying to get things done, I was out and about running errands with the family and I realized I had to change Maddy’s diaper. In my hurry run, run, run state, I put my baby girl on the back seat of the car and anticipated a two minute diaper change. We were in a hurry to get home so I was taking all the shortcuts possible on this diaper change. I took off Maddy’s overalls and low and behold what did we have…….. a whole lot of prune induced poo! Lots and lots of it ladies and gents. It seriously took me about 23 minutes to change her. After having caca all up in my fingernails my mind was just reeling. I was officially pissed at Doug, for whilst I was battling the world’s most nauseating diaper, he’d been eating IN- N- OUT in the front seat of the car with the greatest of ease, (pretty gross huh? Considering I was yelling, “Eww, oh gosh this is disgusting, eww, oh no it’s on my hand! Ewwww now it’s in my EYE!” AND the guy just kept eating). I finished and threw Maddy in Doug’s arms and ran to the bathroom to wash my hands. I looked in the mirror and I saw the most desperate and flustered woman I’ve ever seen staring right back at me. Why in heaven’s name was I so upset, I got exactly what I prayed for. That got me thinking about life and how funny we can be with our precious time. When we’re going about our day and something unexpected happens that throws us for a loop, we get our panties in a bunch. Why do we think we have full control of what our day is going to be? Day after day we go about our business and have an idea of what our day might look like in the morning, but soon after brushing our teeth we realize that the “perfect” day we planned in our head just isn’t going to pan out exactly as planned. Why is there so much resistance from our part for events, mostly unpleasant ones, to happen to us when everything seems to be going smoothly? Why is it so hard to cope with our computer crashing, getting a flat tire, or getting pooped on by a big ol’ bird? In my case why was it that I was so upset for getting what I had prayed for. My prayer didn’t go like this,” Dear God, please help Maddy not be constipated. Help her poop, but please, only do it when it’s extremely convenient for me. If you don’t, I’ll throw a fit, you know me, I’ll do it. Thank you God. “

We get upset but what we should be doing is finding the blessing in these disruptions and seeing them as an opportunity to get closer to God, after all he is the only one that can help us through all the poo in our lives. We can also see it as a blessing. What if in those 23 minutes I was changing Maddy’s diaper we avoided a car accident…. You just never know. God does things for a reason. So, as you are going through your day and you find yourself with little annoying “distractions”, take a moment and breathe because I know how annoying they can be, and then just roll with it, think of how much happier you’d be day to day if you didn’t make these little nuisances dictate your joy. Think about it! Stay blessed and stay saucy everyone!!

P.S. For the record, Doug was super hungry and he needed to eat really bad and the diaper change didn’t really take me 23 minutes. I was only mad at him because I was mad that I was the one changing the diaper and not him. Not his fault at all. Love you lovie! J