Home Base

GEEK ALERT GEEK ALERT GEEK ALERT

There is an episode of the show LOST that has been running through my head on a constant loop this past week, kind of like the constant loop that Rousseau’s message ran on for sixteen years.

Have I mentioned my obsession with the show LOST in the past?

I have?

I apologize.

So this episode was the fifth episode of Season Four ran some time during Season Four and was called The Constant and I can’t remember what it was titled…

Ahem.

If you aren’t LOST fans, bear with me for a second. I swear I have a point. If you ARE LOST fans, doesn’t the mere mention of the show make you want to go watch the entire series all over again?!

Image from Lostpedia.com

 

In this particular episode, a character named Desmond starts experiencing unexpected side effects from his prolonged exposure to the time traveling mysterious island.

Of course he does.

Desmond repeatedly loses consciousness and when he does, he flashes to an alternate reality in the past. The time flashes become severe and, naturally, his brain cannot withstand the strain of these two realities.

On one of his “trips” to the past, he runs into Daniel, who works as a scientist at Oxford and who also happens to be one of the characters who have mysteriously shown up on the island a few episodes earlier. Thus he is both in Desmond’s past and his present.

Confused yet? This is why you should watch the show!

Daniel of the past tells Desmond of the past that the time travels will continue to occur and will eventually, likely, kill him if he doesn’t find some sort of constant to keep him grounded in one place. “If you don’t have a constant to attach yourself to, you won’t be able to tell the difference between the past, the present and the future,” Daniel of the past  tells him.

Naturally, Desmond’s first thought goes to his love, Penny, and he takes steps to connect with her in the past and make her promise to listen for a phone call from him in the future. In the nick of time, future Desmond manages to call future Penny, just as his brain is beginning to hemorrage. Reaching out to his constant was like touching home base. It stabilized him and allowed him to remain stable in the present, move forward in the future, and hold dear to the past.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

No?

This isn’t perfectly clear?!

Sweet friends surprising Sloan for his birthday.

 

Our week last week in St. Louis was like touching home base. It was reaching out and grabbing hold of our constant. Before heading back I worried if I could emotionally handle the visit. What if it made me long to go back? What if I left feeling overwhelmed and scared of the future without so many of the people I love so dearly?

It was exactly the opposite. We were loved fiercely for a week. We were poured into, prayed over, fed and hugged by the people that know us deeply. And as we pulled out Saturday I felt peace. I felt like life stabilized a bit in the present and it gave me the courage to keep looking forward.

It was a reconciliation of our past, our present and our future. The friends we have in St. Louis are a part of our past, but this week showed me they are also a part of our present and our future as well. They are our constant and after that week I feel so much more confident in my ability to continue to walk boldly into our future.

I am constantly amazed at the God-given capacity we have to love. God has woven into our beings the inate ability to love many people and many places. A piece of our hearts will always be in St. Louis and it will always be home to us, probably moreso than Texas, which is where we started our marriage.

Our first house is there. Our children were born there. Our family originates in St. Louis. That won’t go away, even if we no longer live there.

But our life is now in Florida and there is a place for us to build new memories and there are friendships that are blossoming and growing and we have a future there that is new and exciting and promises to hold blessing. Our past and our future blend together in our present and as we prepare to head home, I have no other thought than this one:

We are desperately loved and more than adequatly blessed.

How is your summer going?

LOST Image credit

I recorded Oprah for the first time ever

I’m going to step out on a limb here and potentially make a few people mad…I don’t like Oprah.

*cringe*

I think she’s a little annoying.  I watch her show maybe once a year (I must say I do like the favorite things episodes because I like all the gadgets) but in general, I don’t waste my time watching her fawn over every guest with her ever changing spirituality.

Ouch.

Last week, however, I did something I’ve never done before.  I recorded an episode of Oprah!  In fact, we rarely even use our DVR.  We always forget to set it up.  (Unless, of course, LOST is coming on, in which case we check, recheck and check again to make sure it’s prepared to catch that glorious hour of television).  But I made a very distinct point last week to set up the DVR to record an hour of Oprah and then I sat down and watched said hour of Oprah.

So what, pray tell, could have been so very exciting that I absolutely had to see it?

One word: GLEE.

The cast of Glee was on Oprah and they were singing, dancing and taking us all backstage.  Oh it was gleefully delicious to watch.  *groan*

Yes, I am addicted to Glee.  It’s a good thing too, because LOST only has six weeks left so I will need a new show to look forward to each week.  Yes, I said NEED

As I watched the adorable cast of Glee do their thing, I couldn’t help but smile…and bop my head…and tap my toes.  I may have even clapped a couple of times.  May.  You’ll never know for sure.  After it was over, I got online to check out the open auditions they were having for Glee because how fun would that be?

You have to be between the ages of 16 and 26.  Shoot.  Just missed the cut off…

Incidentally, the two guys that play Finn and Puck are actually 28 and 29 years old in real life.  Which means that the crush I have on them is totally realistic and not at all inappropriate.  Not like my crush on Zac Efron which boarders on Puma-ish…

Anyway, back to Glee.  It starts again tonight!  And there’s another new episode of LOST on tonight.  Sweet mercy, could life get any better.  Finn, Puck, Sawyer and Jack all in one night.  Smile with me, will you?

Yes, sometimes my life actually is this shallow…

Nobody said we were smart

Tomorrow is a big day.  A day when we will begin to see some of the mysteries unravel.  We’ll find out if Juliet is still alive, if Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Jin and Hurley are back where they began, if time got rebooted, if Sayyid lives, and “what lies in the shadow of the statue?”

Oh – and our daughter turns four.  Could the day be more exciting?!

In preparation for the final season of LOST, Lee and I have been staying up, ahem, rather late this last week rewatching all of last season.  And last night, even though we knew that the boys would probably wake up in the middle of the night due to colds, we decided to watch two episodes because we had four episodes left to watch and we, my friends, know what’s important in life.

And sure enough, not two  hours after I went to sleep, Landon was crying/hacking in his bed.  It was 1:01 am.  So I dragged myself up, gave him medicine, cuddled and rocked him and stumbled back to bed. 

At 2:02 he was crying again, so I brought him to bed with me in the hopes that we could both get a little sleep.  At 2:22 he was sitting up in our bed, his chubby face inches from mine whispering, “Hi Mommy.  I yub you, Mommy?  Yere’s (where’s) Woan Tia (Sloan and Tia) Mommy?”  And despite the fact that I needed a crowbar to pull my fatigued eyelids apart, I had to smile at his cherubic little face grinning at me in the dark.

So I dragged myself back out of bed and took him back to his room.  We rocked a bit more, then I laid him down and got back in bed at 3:03.  At 3:23 I stumbled back to his room to give him his doggy book, which had fallen out of his bed and he was insisting be returned to him.

At 4:04 (I swear I’m not making these times up – it was weird) I looked at the clock for the last time as Landon moaned and whimpered from his bed.  The next thing I knew, it was 6:26 and Sloan was standing over the bed.

The timing of all the wake ups was a little creepy and served as evidence that when you spend too much time lost in the mysteries of LOST, strange and crazy things start happening.  Not to mention the fact that you dream about polar bears, time travel and smoke monsters.

If we were smart, we’d forgo the LOST viewing this evening and go to bed early.  But that’s not going to happen.  We’ve made it this far so we’re committed now.  And so I shall drink my coffee, yawn so wide I suck the oxygen out of the room and power forward.  Because life is all about priorities, people!

I’m off now to pack the make up under my saggy eyes…