that music is a little loud, son.

i'm losing so many things. i'm wondering if that's because i am aging.

i mentioned last week that i lost part of my Bible. (1 Peter 4 and 5, if you forgot because you're old too).

last night i needed to comb my hair, and i couldn't find my comb even though it never leaves the bathroom. eventually i found it on the bathroom floor...

this morning i couldn't find my cell phone. which sent me into a panic.

and i went to run errands today and forgot my list. that one really pissed me off because i love lists. actually i think i DID remember it, but i stuck it on top of a movie i was returning to blockbuster. so now the blockbuster kids know i need toilet paper.

i'm wondering if the next phase of this "getting older" thing is the one where i drive down the interstate with my blinker on.

this is all so sad, because my memory has been so perfect up until now. my first semester at college, i didn't even write down when my assignments were due because i just remembered. the only reason i started writing them down was because the day i named "syllabus day" came to be my favorite day every semester. the day i went through my planner and wrote down when everything was due... from every crisp, new syllabus...all in one sitting.

sigh. i loved syllabus day.

side note: i don't usually call attention to my post titles because i like to leave them cryptic, but this one is a quote from my best friend ashley. one time when we were at the ripe age of 19 or 20, we were stopped at a traffic light. this car full of youngsters pulled up with their music so loud that our car was vibrating. ashley, ever so calmly, looked over and said "that music is a little loud, son." (with the windows still rolled up, of course). i think that's the moment our friendship went from "awkward-roommates-because-we-just-met" to "best-friends-forever", because we were laughing at it for an hour.

i feel eery.

my job is so weird sometimes.

today i realized that something people regularly is say "beep, beep!" when a small child is in their way...like that kid somehow knows that the sound a car makes means "get out of the way." why would they know that?

and i was reading this one book that has a picture of a different animal for each letter of the alphabet. the animal for the letter N was narwhal.

???

then the person who was helping me out, while the other teacher in my room was on her lunch break, tried to make me smell a diaper. she started to change this kid she thought had crapped her pants, but the diaper was empty, so she tried to shove it in my face and make me smell it to see if she was crazy, like maybe it was gas or something.

that is NOT ok.

you can't understand.

let me start by saying that i love my parents very much.

my sisters called to warn me that my mom signed up for a facebook account, so we briefly thought about creating fake accounts and realized it wouldn't work.

anyway, that conversation led me to discover that i made a huge misstep, and i think my mom found my old blog address.

i hope you see that since my sisters called to warn me, there are other people in the world who feel this way about my parents...it's not just me. they also told me that my mom's best friend told her not to get facebook, that she couldn't handle what she'd find there. but she did it anyway.

she doesn't know that we know.

i know it sounds crazy....a 24 year old hiding her blog from her parents...especially when i don't write about anything scandalous.

you don't know my parents. there's so much that they don't approve of. i can't do much without them telling me i'm a disappointment to God, or that my behavior isn't honoring to Him.

oh the stories i could tell.

i'm not kidding around. when i changed to a PCA church from southern baptist (reformed theology, holla!) ...my mom told me i needed to make sure to still tell my children about Jesus, and that she hoped i still knew Jesus was important.

i can't fight that kind of madness, so i have to hide everything.

i will tell a story. so that you know how crazy my parents are.

one time when i was in high school, i had AOL. dark times.

i got this weird e-mail from what appeared to be AOL claiming there was a problem with my account and i needed to send them my email address and password right away. i thought...hmm...that seems weird. so i called for my mom. and she said to give them my address and password.

a week or so later i went to a ROCKIN' steven curtis chapman concert (that was sarcasm, by the way...), and i got home, and my parents were acting really weird. they wanted to have a talk with me...

alone.

they said our family's AOL account had been shut down, because a lot of pornography had been sent out from MY email address.

we were having this conversation alone, because they thought it was me.

the first thought in their head wasn't "i wonder how that happened! allison loves Jesus! allison doesn't let us down! allison isn't an idiot, allison makes good decisions..." but..."we need to talk to allison about her porn addiction."

we never got that far because i said "oh i guess thats what that email was about...it was a scam!" and they looked relieved.

so, that's my parents. no logic. no sound reason. just constantly assuming that i'm doing something sinful, even when i'm not.

so, i have a new blog.

i have some deeper thoughts about this, but i'll save it.

let me just add that i hate this. because i love them, and i don't want to hide things from them. but this is how i keep the peace. no fights about how piercing my nose would be a ticket to hell, or how God shuns me (like the amish) when i see certain movies, or that the wine my church uses at communion is a gateway drug.

i can't make this stuff up.

i learned that one of the kids in my class is afraid of rabbits.

rabbits.

how am i supposed to take that seriously?

and when i was flipping through a book today getting ideas for next week's lesson plans, i stumbled across a new dance move.

it's called "The Swim"

"Have the children step side to side, and forward and backward while moving their arms as if swimming. Play almost any rock music from the 1960's and this dance will be perfect."

yeah, that sounds like a great idea. play some jimi hendrix or janis joplin. perhaps a little simon & garfunkel. maybe some bob dylan.

for two year olds.

actually now that i think about it, if i ever did something ridiculous like open my own preschool...that would totally be perfect. allison's school of rock preschool.