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Riding the Storm Out

Sheltering in Place

If you’ve been following my incredibly exciting life via “Hey look, a chicken”, you know that:

a) I have just finished cleaning and organizing my garage

b) Dislike lovebugs immensely

c) Wonder how ADD katdish has been able to finish so many projects and suspect that her doctor has increased her ritalin dosage.

d) Yes, you are correct. And I’m feeling much better, thank you!

In my 43 years of life experience, it has been my observation that most things happen for a reason. I believe that the reason I was prompted to clean up and clear out my house (specifically the garage) was so that my husband and I would be able to park both cars in it. We need to park both cars in the garage because of Hurricane Ike.

A few years ago, with Katrina fresh on everyone’s mind, Hurricane Rita was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico and projected to be a big one. At that time, we decided to pack up the kids and the cat and seek shelter with my dad in Austin — which is a crazy story on its own — remind me to tell you about it sometime. It turns out that our town was spared. Rita hit our neighbors to the east.

Now, here comes Ike. I’m not a Chicken Little type. I’ve lived in Houston too long (since 1977) not to understand most hurricanes turn into heavy thunderstorms by the time they reach our neck of the woods. I take and “wait and see” approach to most of them. Although it is mildly amusing to see the local news reporters and anchors working themselves into a tizzy every time a storm gets big enough for a name.

I can honestly say that in my humble opinion, that unless you were in Houston in 1983 and rode the storm out during Alicia, you’ve never experienced a hurricane in Houston. I was here. Hunkering down with my mom, sister and two cats in a 2-story condo with big masking tape “X’s” on all the windows. Now that, my friends was a hurricane. It was scary, it was loud. It did an incredible amount of damage. We were without power for 2 weeks. It’s hard to believe that was 25 years ago. Alicia hit August 18, 1983. It was a category 3 hurricane with winds of 115 mph. Hurricane Ike is projected to be a category 3. If it peters out, then I will have bought my kids a month’s worth of junk food and water for no reason. But I’m not messing around with this one.

We’re putting plywood on some of the windows. Home Depot is limiting everyone to 3 sheets, or we’d being doing all of them. We’ve got gas for the generator and I’m filling the bathtubs up with water. My husband thinks I don’t take storms seriously enough. Usually, he is concerned enough for both of us. This time, I’m concerned. Not worried, but concerned. Some of my friends listed on my blogroll live here too. Would you please pray for protection for us and for our neighbors?

In the meantime y’all, I’m hunkering down and getting ready for that summbitch. I think we’re fixin’ to get it. (forgive me, my Texan comes out during crisis mode.)

See you on the other side.

Note to Self: Write a blog post


I’ve been taking a self-imposed hiatus from blogging. I didn’t make a conscience decision not to blog. But as the summer started coming to an end, I realized that I needed to spend some time doing several things around the house I have been putting off. Case in point: Two weeks before my kids went back to school, I happened to notice that their backpacks were still hanging on their hooks in the mud room stuffed with the papers they brought home on the last day of school of the PREVIOUS school year.

Clearly I am a bit of a procrastinator when it comes to things I deem unpleasant such as organization and filing of paperwork. Not that I’m opposed to the idea. Quite the opposite. The IDEA of being organized and having a place for everything and everything in its place is incredibly appealing to me. I just have a hard time making the jump from wanting it to doing it.

As tempting as it seems at times, I cannot blame all of my shortcomings on the fact that I have ADD. The whole organization thing is definitely associated with it, but I can’t throw my hands in the air and say “It’s not my fault, I’m ADD!” Well, actually I could, but if I did, my house would be a total pigsty and I would never have anyone over. Plus, I don’t want my kids to think it’s okay not to take care of their things.

So, in the past few weeks, I’ve reorganized my kitchen cabinets and drawers, sorted through and given away all my kids’ clothes that don’t fit anymore, and completely organized my daughter’s belongings. If any of you out there have a 7-10 year old girly girl, who is in to American Girl dolls, Barbies, Bratz, stuffed animals, becoming a future rock star, arts and crafts, jewelry, clothes and all things “fancy”, then perhaps you may relate to what a monumental task it is to organize the totality of their possessions. Let me just say, “Pegboard is NOT just for the garage anymore!” I’ll probably do a write up on my other blog about all the places I have used pegboard in my house. It is awesome. (But, once again, I digress.)

You might be saying, “Why did that take several weeks? That really doesn’t sound like so much to do.” I would agree with that statement if I was a normal person. If you’ve read this blog more than once or twice, you are aware that I am not what you might consider a “normal” person. I have a tendency to get sidetracked by my dreams of the perfect scenario for the given situation. For example: Instead of simply removing the papers from my kids’ backpacks, throwing all but a few away and then rehanging the backpacks on the hooks, I decided to that I needed to make these really cool backpack clipboard hooks that I saw in a magazine. And before I did that, I had to finish painting the faux tile border on the wall that these super cool backpack clipboard hooks would go on. (This particular border has been taped and ready to be painted for approximately 6 months.)

I won’t bore you with ALL the rabbit trails this particular home project took me down, but maybe this gives a clearer picture of the craziness of how my brain works. The best visual description of my thought process came from my friend Jeff (who is a tad ADD himself). Picture each one of your thoughts as random and seemingly unrelated notes jotted down on several haphazardly placed post-it notes. Some stuck on top of one another, others simply losing their stickiness and falling away, completely forgotten. Welcome to my brain.


For Christine (and others like her)…

I’ve got a few ideas for posts swirling around my head in their usual disorganized states of confusion. I’ve even written a rough draft for one in particular that I just need to research a bit more and tweak here and there. But until then, I came across a passage in one of the books I’m reading that beautifully reflected the heart of an artist who has chosen to follow Christ. “The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditations of Faith”(1) by Timothy Stoner (yes, that’s his real name) has served as a much needed reminder that the God of Mercy is also the God of Wrath. May I never forget that!

Anyway, the following passage reminded me of my dear friend and fellow believer Christine. So this is for you:

The artist who follows Jesus explicitly resides in the world and participates in culture in a truly unique way. She helps others pay attention to, take notice of, and celebrate the goodness of the good creation. She does not shy away from the dark and the broken, the sorrow and terror–but crafts it in such a way as to point toward hope. It is revealing a pathway out of despair and chaotic meaningless. Her work is a candle that flickers and flares.


Her art is for the good of the world.

She does it for the blessing of the world.

She is intent not on reinforcing the curse but breaking it. She has and is a gift. She is sent, like Jesus, to open the eyes of the blind, open the ears of the deaf, or give words to the mute. She is sent on a mission of freedom. Her mission mirrors that of her Savior. She is sent to break chains of despair, set at liberty those tied up with cords of emptiness, futility, and death, and bring sight to those who have lost the capacity to see. She is sent to give us the forgotten vision of the glory that peeks out behind the bush and branch and sea and life as it was meant to be. She sings and shrieks and falls to rise again, to give voice to what we’ve forgotten or refuse to hear.

She pours out her blood that a world may be saved.

She serves not always willingly or well but in her best moments, when she has forgotten herself, she serves.

Still, her loyalty is not here. She has had her idolatrous attachment broken. She is free to be in but not of . She is not slavishly loyal to the patterns, the values, the demands, and commands of a world in love with itself. Her eyes look up even as she looks out, and in looking around she sees through. She is not bewitched by appearances nor overly and permanently distraught. She has seen a city whose builder and maker is God, and she pines for the day when it will come here so there will be light forever.

And the light will be the love and the joy of her life.

She has this secret. Her heart has been captured by a lover who is out of this world. But He is coming back. She wants to make herself ready and her friends and ever her enemies , too. So she does her work as best she can and prays that it is good, that it will shine so brightly as to bring glory not to her but to Him.


Thank you, Christine. For recognizing the darkness and the light in my heart. And inspiring me towards greater works of art for His Glory.

(1) Stoner, Timothy.
The God who smokes: scandalous meditations of faith
published by Navpress, 2008

Top Ten Things that your friend/signifcant other with ADD wants you to know, but keeps forgetting to tell you…

Everybody and their brother thinks that they have ADD these days. You can’t swing a stick without hitting 10 people who think that they would benefit from a prescription for Adderall, or at the very least, a significant helping of Ginko Biloba. But trust me, unless you have a green, “do not duplicate under penalty of law” prescription from your doctor, drink your Red Bull cafe latte and relax — you’ve probably just got too much going on.

I, on the other hand, am the Tanya Tucker of Attention Deficit Disorder: I was ADD when ADD wasn’t cool. I fancy myself a bit of an expert on the subject. Or at least, how it affects my relationships with the people in my life. I don’t introduce myself as, “Hi, my name is Kathy and I have ADD”. But if I enter into any type of meaningful relationship with another human being, I need to put that on the table. Otherwise, they end up getting pissed off or offended, or both. Please don’t think I’m trying to make excuses for bad behavior. If I realize that I have been rude (intentionally or not), I deeply regret it and am the first to offer an apology and try to make amends. The problem is “realizing it” part.

I also recognize that there are people who think that ADD and ADHD are just made up conditions to excuse people with poor impulse control, bad manners and lack of discipline. I would invite these people to spend a day inside my head and then get back to me with their in-depth analysis. Good luck with all of THAT!

For those of you who have friends, family and spouses who suffer from this condition and choose to love us anyway, first let me say thank you. It means the world to us. You are the rocks of stability that anchor our crazy, mixed up lives, and I think God has a special place in heaven set aside for heroes such as you.

Now, on to the list:

  1. We don’t mean to keep interrupting you. But if we don’t tell you what we want to say, it’s gonna fly out of our heads and be lost forever. And, by the way, it’s really important!
  2. That comment we just made makes perfect sense. You just weren’t in on the conversation we started in our heads a couple of minutes ago.
  3. When we tell you that something is going to take about an hour to complete, go ahead and add on the rest of the day. We suck at time management.
  4. Please don’t ever send us to Wal-mart for just one thing. There’s just way too many things to see before we get to the liquid detergent aisle.
  5. We’re really not sure how a loaf of bread, a half gallon of milk and a few other things added up to 87 dollars, but we’re pretty sure we needed that stuff. Okay, we already have 6 bottles of ketchup, but you never know when you’re going to need lots of ketchup.
  6. We think it’s really cool that you’re good at complex mathematical equations, but please don’t try to explain it to us. It’s very overwhelming.
  7. If you need us to run more than one or two errands within an allotted time period, please make a detailed, step by step list of instructions, then staple it to our foreheads. And be sure to call us and encourage us while were attempting to accomplish aforementioned errands.
  8. If at all possible, do not allow us to handle the family finances. We will either drain the bank account by paying every bill as soon as it comes in, or will forget to pay any of them until we get the “red” ones.
  9. We are actually very forgiving of what we consider to be your OCD tendencies, and hope that you will return the favor when dealing with our shortcomings. (We’re actually pretty amazed at what you are able to accomplish without any gnashing of teeth, and more than a little jealous.)
  10. We crack ourselves up. Seriously, we think we’re hilarious. Please play along.

I’m sure you could add many more items to the list, but then it wouldn’t be a “Top Ten”. “Top 47” is not nearly as catchy! Since I like to add something about Jesus to my posts whenever I can, I’ll share with you my favorite quote from Him. It plays inside my head whenever I mess up (which is pretty regularly):

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

(2 Corinthians 12:9)

Just me here…

I’m not really sure what this blog is going to be about. But I’ve found myself writing really long comments on other people’s blogs, so I figured I’d start my own and not subject anyone to my rambling commentaries unless they really want to read them.

Since my walk with Jesus is what’s on my heart and mind most of my waking moments, (okay, that’s what SHOULD be on my heart and mind most of my waking moments), I will probably blog about this often. But I’m also a painter and mural artist. So I’ll probably post some pictures of recent work and give some painting how to’s as well. And, oh yea, I’m also part of a core group that’s planting a church! I’m sure I’ll blog about that a bunch!

I guess my blog entries will be very much like my thoughts: A series of seemingly unrelated post-it notes of thoughts and commentaries from my overloaded ADD mind… “Hey look, a chicken!”

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