Nearly every weekend we stuff our three-year-old into snuggly pajamas, sit him down on the sofa, push a plastic box of popcorn in his hands, and then flicker animated images in front of his innocent face.

He doesn’t fight us on this. In fact, he begs to do it. He looks forward to these parent-approved sessions of terror and trauma.

I say “terror and trauma” because almost as soon as the movie’s plot is revealed, the lower lip starts to tremble and the tears start to eek out around the edges.

In case you didn’t realize it, almost every movie (Up, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Hoodwinked!, Monsters, Inc.) is built around the theme of getting lost (big kids and adults see it as “going on an adventure”) and then trying to find the way home.

The Baby Nickel takes these “getting lost” adventures very seriously. He worries and cries up until the end when the joyful reunion (that we have foretold) occurs. He asks, over and over again in a voice wobbly with tears, “How will they get home? How can they do it?”

We hug him tight, explain how it will end, and ask him if he wants to come into another room with us, all to no avail.

He remains glued to the screen all the while he is coming unglued internally.

It’s enough to break a mother’s heart.

But not enough to cancel movie night.

About one year ago: Gripping the pages

Cookie Baker Lynn gave me a sweet little award, but sadly, I don’t know enough computer mechanics to fetch the box of pink cupcakes and post it here. But that’s okay; I’ve learned to function despite my limitations. I can still play the game.

I don’t usually play games (board, pass-the-recipe, or otherwise), but for some reason this one caught my attention. I think it’s because after I get through telling you about some of my favorite things (hum along now: raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens/crisp apple strudel and warm woolen mittens) (I think I garbled those lyrics), I get to tell you about some of my favorite blogs—blogs that make me smile and think and be a better person (not necessary all at the same time). Then those tagged people can, if they chose, follow suit, and in this way we waltz Maria-style through the blogosphere.

So here we go. My ten favorite things, in no particular order:

1. Mr. Handsome’s smile. It’s dashing and lights up the room and he’s kind of stingy about flashing it which makes it all the more special (though I think it would still be special if he chose to beam me with it all day long).

2. The UPS truck.

3. My baby’s cheek-pats and lip-smooshing kisses (when they aren’t overdone).

4. The relief that comes after finishing dread jobs, such as window washing, sorting kids’ clothes, and wet mopping the floors.

5. Homebound dates with Mr. Handsome—when the kids go elsewhere and we have the house all to ourselves and can do projects, watch movies, and eat what we want, when we want.

6. A good read-aloud.

7. Going on walks with my sister-in-law.

8. Good ol’ Mennonite four-part singing. For a joint Christmas service, the masterful song-leader had us sing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah and suddenly all those ordinary people sounded so glorious that I thought they must’ve sprouted wing buds underneath their suit jackets and polyester blouses. Mr. Song Leader was a blast to watch, raising his hands in the air, fingers fluttering, to make us hold the notes extra long, and eyeballing certain people so they’d slide their voices up to the tippy, tippy, tippy-top of the scale.

9. Getting comments on this little blog.

10. Food.

And now, for the fun part: bloggy friends who inspire, encourage, and delight me. Again, in no particular order.

Life in Transition: Sarah is Mr. Handsome’s older sister. He adores her and makes it no secret that he wishes I were more like her—adventurous, relaxed, and a self-starter. Sarah is the type of person who paints the living room of her mother’s house with a two-year-old and six-month-old twins underfoot—and laughs about it. She has been known to travel cross-country with five kids by herself … multiple times. (She reports that earplugs and graham crackers play a key role.) She’s one of the most accepting, least presumptuous people I know. After being with her for a few days, I find that I lighten up more, start new projects, and spend more time with my children. She doesn’t update her blog that often, but when she does, I’m inspired.

Jumping Off the Food Chain One Box at a Time: Mavis, otherwise known (by me, in my head) as The Dot-Dot-Dot Lady, daily pours out the details of her high-energy existence. She’s forever setting new challenges for herself (walk-a-thon, grow 2000 pounds of vegetables, figure out more ways to annoy her husband), and has an unhealthy obsession with formal wear. I love her.

Breed ‘Em and Weep: Jennifer writes candidly and humorously (often at the same time) of her divorce and bipolar illness. An exceptional word craftswoman, she inspires me with her writing and brutal honesty.

ThyHandHathProvided: This is one of the few friends I call when I can’t take life anymore. She is sweet and gentle, but take note—there is nothing wishy-washy about her. Her blog is full of recipes, glimpses into their life as a homeschool family, tales from the garden and chicken butcherings, and right now she’s doing a spiffy giveaway. Even though we live only six miles from each other, our paths rarely cross, but this past Monday she invited me out to coffee (her treat) and we talked for four hours straight. Mr. Handsome called at 11:00 to find out where I was. Since I said I’d be home between 9 and 9:30, he had a right to be worried. When I got home I apologized and then lit into him, “You mean you waited a whole hour and a half before calling to see if I was okay?!” He grinned sheepishly, but quickly switched back to being the martyr: “I just sat in the chair, watching the road, waiting for the police to drive in…” Okay, okay! I’ll call next time!

Subsistence Pattern: Mr. H (another Mr. H!) and his wife work year-round, growing all the food they need. They’re forever trying new foods, or variations of the old standbys, and are currently storing oodles of potted plants in their basement—they bring up different pots at different times, give the plants good light for several days, and then pick the leaves to make incredible salads.

The Home Grown Journal: Mama Pea lives in the boonies with the wolves … and her husband. She quilts and grows things and lines her make-up drawer with bright red paper to elevate her mood. You need to do things like that when you live in brr-Minnesota.

Seven Spoons: Tara takes beautiful pictures, writes well, and gave me my new favorite popcorn recipe for which I am eternally grateful. (Though snorting cayenne pepper is not a good idea. I accidentally did that last night when I was fixing the popcorn to go with our shoot-‘em-up movie, and then immediately started batting at my nose with the back of my hand, like a dog, I realized, so I added a couple snorts and head shakes for good measure and then busted up laughing.)

Clover Lane: Sarah, a mother of five, is a crafty, industrious, thoughtful, insightful, opinionated woman living in a big white house on a clover lane somewhere. Half the time (okay, not quite that often) I don’t even agree with what she says, but I love that she thinks and writes about more than, oh, I don’t know, sniffing cayenne powder.

Dinner with Julie: I knew it was time to switch from lurker status to follower status when I kept clicking on her site to see if she had written anything lately. This is one of those ladies that blows my mind with all her productivity. She’s gifted, too, with both words and food. And lately she’s become more vulnerable than ever before.

Paprikahead: Rosanna writes sparingly, beautifully, about the food she creates, foods that (sometimes) take a long time to make because she employs old-fashioned methods. She has a cookbook coming out soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

That’s ten, folks, so my job is done. Go on and visit my friends and then please do introduce me to yours. I got five hours sleep last night, it’s sleeting, and the kids are hacking their lungs out—I could use a cheery diversion.

About one year ago: Baked Brie

I’m a firm believer in the old-fashioned thank-you note, handwritten and mailed with a stamp.

You probably immediately thought of a time when I could’ve/should’ve written you a thank-you and didn’t. I’m not perfect, and I didn’t say I was obsessed with writing thank-yous. I didn’t even say I liked writing thank-yous. I said I believed in them.

My brother didn’t use to believe that he should have to thank people. He felt like it was an unnecessary action, a stupid one. He thought that if he did something nice for someone, or they for him, then they both knew it and there was no need to talk about it. The extra words were superficial hoopla to him, empty fillers like “how are you?” —a phrase that neither of my parents ever employ. But my parents told my brother that he needed to verbalize his thanks because it was important for other people to feel appreciated. What it boiled down to, my mother said, is never to scrimp on being nice even if it sometimes seems stupid or frivolous.

Of course, the flip-side to all this thanking is that you act so polite that your niceties ring hollow. Which reminds me of the I’m Sorry Phase I went through in middle (high?) school: every night before going to bed I apologized to everyone in the family for any way in which I might’ve wronged them that day. I didn’t necessarily have a particular incident in mind when I said I was sorry (though there were no shortage of mean acts on my part); it’s just that my mother had drilled into my head the scripture Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and I took it to heart. My little neurotic obsession didn’t last too terribly long, and nowadays I could probably do with more frequent bouts of humility.

Not all thank-you notes are of the same caliber. To my way of thinking, there are four kinds of thank-yous. Here they are, in order from most common to least common.

1. The obligatory thank-you note for birthday, wedding, and graduation gifts. Often these gifts were given without too much forethought (hello, gift registries), so it stands to reason that the subsequent thank-you notes end up sounding a bit rote. These can be a chore to write, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile.

2. Thank-you notes that aren’t prescribed but aren’t unexpected, either. In these cases, the person, upon receiving the note, is mildly surprised, but then switches easily into thinking, “Well, yeah. Of course they’d write me a thank you for that [meal I delivered after the baby was born/the weekend they spent at our house over Christmas/etc].”

3. Thank-you notes from children. Although almost always forced, these notes carry tremendous weight for two reasons: one, they are so dang cute, and two, you know all the work that the parent went through to get the kid to write the card, and as a result you’re thrilled that there are people in the world who think it’s important to teach gratefulness and who are willing to spend time with their kids doing so. In fact, upon receiving a thank you from a child, you feel so touched that you almost write a note to the parent to thank them for making their kid write a thank you note to you.

4. The best thank-you of all: when someone is just doing their job but they do it so thoughtfully and intentionally and well that you just have to say something. In these cases, writing the notes is wonderfully fun, a delightful act stemming from sincere gratefulness. In fact, I’d go one step further and say that these notes are much more fun to give than to receive (though I think receiving them is probably pretty grand, too).

I rarely do thank-you notes of the last variety, but when I do, I get such a buzz that I don’t easily forget them. The last person who inspired a Number Four Thank-You was my pharmacist. Yep, a pharmacist. My pharmacist is not just any old pharmacist. He is Completely Amazing. Take into account the following:

*He knows our names.
*He makes sure I get my coupons and double coupons and that I don’t forget to use them.
*He warns me when medicines are extra expensive and when they won’t be covered by insurance…
*…and then he goes and looks up why they aren’t covered by the insurance and what brands are covered and then fills me in on all those little details, without me ever even asking.
*He cheerfully answers questions about serotonin levels and weight gain, sleep problems and allergy meds, and stimulant overdoses (not the coffee-induced ones).
*When a certain medicine doesn’t come on time, he calls to let me know. He wants to save us the trip, he says.
*Once when I tried to fill a prescription for a sick Baby Nickel and it turned out that Nickel hadn’t been entered into the computer system yet and I didn’t have his insurance card with me, my pharmacist told me to just go ahead and take the medicine anyway (I did not suggest this)! He didn’t let me pay, either. He just told me to stop by with the card the next time I was in town and then waved me away. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I thought to myself, Well, I NEVER! I’m not sure, but I think I may have gotten a little teary-eyed over that one.

After that amazing kindness I had no other option but to make the man (and his team) a pan of ooey-gooey sweet rolls. When I walked into the store and plunked the tray (with the accompanying thank-you note) on the counter in front of the dear man, he looked up at me startled, and I don’t think it was because it was the first time he had seen the lower half of my body (I always go through the drive-thru) (and wow, that TOTALLY came out wrong—I’m not implying that he was looking at me in any special way because he wasn’t). (Goodness. This is getting stressful.)

Anyway, he said, “You didn’t have to do this,” and I said, “I know, but I wanted to; you guys are amazing,” and then I walked out.

Everything is the same as before (he doesn’t slip me free drugs or anything), but he did go about getting Yo-Yo’s pill in a smaller dosage despite what the doctors told us—that our insurance won’t cover for sixty small pills instead of thirty large ones. When I told him what the doctors said, he cocked an eyebrow and told me to wait a sec. Then he came back and said he could do it for me, no problem.

You know what else I heard about this pharmacist? (This will be the last rave in this review—promise.) I heard from an inside source that in order for an elderly woman to keep getting the same color pill (because apparently older people often don’t know what kind of pill they are taking, just the color of the pill), he had to order some crazy-huge number of the pills (like 8,000) in order to be able to get it in the right color…and so that’s what he did.

People who do their jobs really, really well are all too rare. But there are exceptional people out there. So often I focus on the people who are lacking—the clueless social worker, the clerk who can hardly run the groceries by the scanner because she’s coddling one of her ridiculously long nails that just broke, the brusque, insensitive doctor. But no one says I have to dwell on those people—I can “pick on” the ones who are doing a stellar job. It’s my choice.

This post is getting long and rambly and slightly off-track, but I don’t feel like wrapping it up all tidy-like. Instead, I’d rather hear your take on the thank-you note business. Do you think they are silly, stupid, and superfluous? Do you love them to pieces, writing notes to everyone for everything? Have you ever given or received a thank-you of the Number Four caliber?

(Are you hungry for sweet rolls now? Never fear, I have just the recipe for you! You didn’t think I’d leave you hanging, did you?)

About one year ago: Capturing the moment