Devotions of a High Heeled Warrior

Today, I had to do one of the chores I hate the most.  I had to pooper scoop my lawn.   One of the drawbacks of having a very large dog is that there are smelly landmines all over my yard.  It's not so bad during the day, but at night, it is a battlefield.  One wrong step in the dark and you're cleaning your shoes for 30 minutes with a toothbrush.  We have even assigned this job as punishment for our children if they refuse to do the jobs we have given them around the house.  Picture my son with a bandana wrapped around his nose whining about the smell and how life is unfair as he picks up doggy presents around my yard.   Because I despise this duty (sorry for the pun) so much, my husband was thoughtful enough to buy me a pooper scooper for Christmas.  You heard me right.  For Christmas, my husband bought me a tool to pick up doggy poop.  How romantic!  Believe it or not, I actually like this gift.  Why?  Because it gi...

If anyone hasn't already noticed, it's cold and flu season.  With the crazy weather of late, it may be 25 degrees one day and 60 degrees the next day.  Even if you've never suffered from congestion before, you probably have experienced it a time or two this year.  Because I work with preschool-aged children, I have a good indicator when congestion season has arrived- mucus!   If you have ever worked with young children or parent young children, then you need no further explanation, but for those who don't, I'll elaborate.  You may hear the echo of a phlegmy sneeze or see it coming.  You dive for the tissue to no avail.  Twin bungee chords of mucus dangle down the child's face.  Or there is the other type- the perpetual river of green snot running under the child's nose and onto the upper lip.  I'm not sure why the children with mucus issues are almost always the ones that want spontaneous hugs they initiate.   This is how you know I'm...

One of my New Year's goals was to clean out my closet.  I have a drawer designated for workout wear, a drawer for my work scrubs, and a space for my church/professional wear.  If I could get away with wearing yoga pants and sweat shirts everywhere, I would be a happy woman.  However, I've learned that how you dress influences how people respond to you.   I would never appear at an important conference in which I'm presenting while wearing yoga pants.  I've learned not wear my nice church clothes when working with the small children on my caseload.  I attempted to wear a long, pretty skirt once.  After I fended off a little guy who kept trying to crawl under my skirt, I learned quickly that scrubs were much more functional when working with spaghetti sauce/maple syrup coated little fingers.  When I'm attending church, this gets a little more complicated.  Churches have become a more casual atmosphere, but there are still the traditionalist ...

I have an important question to ask you.  Be truthful.  How many of you have a sock basket?  I always mean well.  I launder and fold loads and loads of laundry, but I never make it to the socks.  I throw them in the empty basket promising myself that I'll match them later.  However, later never comes.  My family begins to dig through the basket making it easier to use the basket than to match socks.  With the amount of feet in my house, you can imagine the state of my sock basket.  It soon became a sock tub (large plastic container for those not from the South).  Finding socks were like having to dig through a table of discounted clothes at the Old Navy 50% off sale.  Chaos.  I knew there was trouble when I saw one of my children wearing a Halloween sock with eye balls all over it and a sock sporting wiener dogs.  No one could find matches for their socks.  Where did they go?  I have no idea.  At a breaki...

Today is a special day for me.  Today is my birthday!  Happy Birthday to me!!  Let's not talk about how old I am, but needless to say, I am no longer (as they say in the Ozarks) a spring chicken.  I've experienced quite a few birthdays.  Some of them have been sweet, and others...not so sweet.   I remember as a kid having the typical December birthday.  I always heard, "Open up your gifts for Christmas and save one for your birthday."  If you have a birthday near Christmas, you have experienced my pain.  I always had my birthday gifts wrapped in Christmas paper, and always had two birthday cakes- one for me and one for Jesus.  Because my birthday happened during the Christmas break, I tried to have parties.  Everyone was always travelling, so attendance was spotty.  I think that is why so many people invite my family to their kid's parties.  If no one shows, keep the Tardiffs on retainer.  One phone call and our ...

If you've noticed, everyone is flooding social media with amazing, unique Christmas photos.  I look at them, thinking that would be so cute.  However, thinking and executing the perfect photo is not the same.  I had my husband take a quick Christmas photo for the blog.  As you can see, the result was not amazing.  When I looked at the finished product, I couldn't stop laughing.  I had a photo taken with my children also.   In those pictures, we had a progression of eyes closed to grimaced faces.  No, they were not the perfect, amazing Christmas photos you see all over social media, but they were fun and memorable.    They were real.  A word that is not used often anymore is transparency.  Transparent means easy to see or detect. In a society that thrives on filters and facades, transparency has fallen by the wayside.   If people perceive my weaknesses, will they think less of me?  If I don't appear perfect,...

As Christmas quickly approaches, stress levels tend to rise.    You spend your time trying to find the perfect gifts for people who have everything they need.   You wait in long lines and attend one function after another in the spirit of Christmas.  But what exactly was the spirit of Christmas on the first Christmas?  I can't help but picture the scene.  Mary is very pregnant and probably very uncomfortable after making a long journey on the back of a donkey.  When I was very pregnant with my youngest son, I visited an exotic animal park with my family.  My five year old son desperately wanted to ride a camel, but needed someone to ride it with him.  My husband didn't meet the weight requirements, and my parents were too old.  Guess who was left?  I have a picture of Trenton grinning from ear to ear on the camel with me bouncing behind him.  Yes, camels bounce.  It was not the most comfortable moment of my pregnancy...