Warm Pumpkin Pie, TV Experience and Miss Texas Pageant

Last night I played the benefit concert at the organic farm of Brother John, who is a healthy looking, blonde haired two year old boy of wonder, suffering from medical conditions I can’t explain. There were fuzzy baby chicks of yellow and brown and black, sleeping in a cardboard box, that were held lovingly, along with a small grey kitten, by iolana and other sweet children. I saw a zipper spider, and iolana said, “Look, Mom! It’s Tim!”….Tim was our zipper spider who lived outside Lily’s bedroom window about four years back. He is a legend, and all zipper spiders are referred to, lovingly, as Tim. The turnout was small, probably because of the hefty admission ($45 per person, $100 per family, all deservingly going to aid John in his medical bills) and the distance to the event. We had to drive through fields of milo, until we found the turn off road of dirt and weeds, and bumpety-bumpety-bump down the road to green grass and an open barn with a wood stage—which turned out to be a flatbed truck tucked into between the pilings. Cool! Good food, good folks, good music—Barbara K and another band (whose name escapes me, I apologize) and I ended the evening singing to little John as he bent his head, ear cocked to the monitor, looking but not seeing, but not really needing to see because he could hear more than I was singing.

This morning, got up at 6 am and prepped for a day of shooting for film…I can’t talk about it yet, but it is a tv show I am hosting in conjunction with Austin. It will be fun when edited, said and done. We started at the capital, and ended up on Town Lake near the running trail. Stopped in at church to use the facilities, and was blessed to cross through my Sunday School class just as the circle of prayers were beginning, so I stopped and joined, along with Josie, the lovely assistant (and mom!) to the producer of this show, and we bowed our heads and said the Lord’s prayer with friends. Ah, that was relaxing…

Got home, Lance had made plans to go out with Todd, his best friend, so iolana and I stayed home and looked up the skateboarding bulldog on YouTube…then we started watching baby panda bears, a skyjumping pug, and lots of old Gumby and Pokeys (the Groobee episode is GREAT!) After that, we made dinner, and watched the Miss Texas pageant. Ha ha ha! That was a lot of fun because io and I were admiring the dresses and deciding who had genuine smiles and who did not. In between commercials, I was up making homemade pumpkin pie (we had nothing to create a graham cracker crust except one tiny bag of Teddy Grahams, so I improvised and poured those, along with some smashed ice cream cones, into the bottom the pie tin…pouring all the ingredients on top and throwing the entire sha-bang into the oven.

Bed time…io and read the comics (saved “Pearls Before Swine” and “Over the Hedge” for last, although Snuffy Smith is about as much fun as you can have!… snuggled up in bed, eating warm pie and laughing as her pink, toy mouse danced on her knee singing about “baby poo pie.” This was the joke that had us in stitches because just as io was about to take a bite of pie, she mumbled, “It looks like baby poop!” To which her mouse, whom I was holding as she began to scarf pie, burst into a high pitched version of his new hit single, “BPP”…a rap all about baby poo pie. This sounds dumb, but man oh man, we were laughing so hard. I took the empty plate to the kitchen, giddiness in the air, only to return to a sleeping seven year old, tangled up in my blankets, her mouth a little “o”. I went back to work on cleaning up the night’s dishes, just as Lance came home to enjoy the warm pumpkin “BPP”.

Ah, family. Is there any love greater?