Real Life is Better Than Fiction

And the continuation of “Christmas at Martha's House” Three Sundays before Christmas: Practice was canceled due to the stomach bug. My sister Jennifer calls and guess what she has to say! “I just can’t have Grandma this year. My kids all work and I have to plan around them. Not to mention the rest of the family. But I do hope to see all of you sometime during the holidays.” I hope Grandma spares us her nostalgia about how they had to improvise during the Depression. There may not be a Depression going on in my house, but improvisation is still very much in style. I must remember to warn Tom not to call Grandma the Ghost of Christmas Past. At least not in front of Cindy. She repeats too much! I can hear it now, “Grandma, do you know what Tom calls you?” Monday: I find the roll of tape under Karen’s bed and wrap my gold boxes. What IS all that junk she has stashed under there? I hope none of it is food. Cindy’s teacher calls. “Candy canes for Kindergarten? Sure. I still have

In honor of Christmas I wanted to post a story that my mom wrote. She labeled it as fiction, but there are A LOT of events in this story that really happened. It is rather long so I will post half of the story this week and the other half next week. Enjoy! Christmas at Martha’s House by Jeri Doner Call me Martha. Better yet, don’t call me at all until at least the middle of January. I thought I had all the preparations for Christmas under control, until the meeting that Sunday after church. Five Sundays before Christmas: Claire, the Sunday school secretary, says, “We’re doing a play this year and I apologize for not getting together before now.” It seems the Sunday School Superintendent put her in charge and gave her a copy of the play he had chosen. It took her three weeks to convince him that it just wasn’t right for us, and to come up with another script. I’m surprised she convinced him at all. But now we’ll have to work extra hard to get it ready, if we think we can, if we

Yes, I know, it's been a while since my last entry. My life has been interrupted by...well, life. Not that I am necessarily a big promoter of Halloween, but I thought this next entry would be appropriate for this time of year. It is said that the experiences we have in our lives shape the people we become. I do not like scary things, especially movies! I bought a Christian scary movie once to watch with my husband one night. Afterward, I wouldn't even go to the bathroom by myself. Pathetic, I know. However, I do think I know the cause of my issues with all things scary: my brother. There was always a Haunted House at the New York State Fair. My brother went through that haunted house so many times he knew the path like the back of his hand. Well, one year I thought I was old enough to follow my big brother through. Mom and Dad waited outside for us. I was so excited at first and felt that I was now all grown up and ready to handle scary things. Then I looked up and noti

Summer is definitely upon us! While I thought things would slow down a little bit since we don’t have school over the summer, I was sadly mistaken. I keep telling myself, “It will slow down after next week’s events.” However, the following week has events of its own. It makes me long for the relaxed days of my childhood summers. Us kids would spend all of our hours riding bikes, swimming at the pool, and playing badminton. These are all things I still very much enjoy doing – although I get a little more winded, a little more quickly now! Last weekend I was able to spend some time with my sisters, nieces, and nephews. My one nephew, Nikolas, had looked forward to my arrival because he wanted to play badminton with me. In fact, that was the first thing out of his mouth when I saw him. After dinner I finally gave in to his requests. “We’ll just practice a little bit first.” Nikolas said. After a few minutes of trying to get a volley going, Nikolas commented, “You’re challenging.

Have you ever heard the phrase “opposites attract?” Sure, we all have. Have you ever given it much thought or compared it to your own relationship? Sometimes my husband and I both wonder how we ever got ourselves together in the first place. We may be opposites, but that only helps us react differently to different situations. We had an episode that I like to call our “fridge fiasco.” We had bought a brand new refrigerator along with an extended warranty because it was the first brand new appliance we had ever bought and we figured that with three kids getting in and out of it regularly, it was a good investment. It turns out it was only a good investment in gray hair! After only about six months, our refrigerator began to fall apart. The drawers broke and the supports that held the drawers broke. The fridge had not been misused at all. I called the store where we had bought the fridge to see if they carried the parts we needed. “No, ma’am, you need to call the factory.” So I

It’s been several weeks since my last entry. It’s been crazy around here! There are some days when life is threatening to run me over. There are some days I think it has. It makes me long for the days of childhood when there wasn’t a care in the world more than what mom was fixing for dinner that night. My family lived way out in the country. There were not a lot of people around and us kids were forced to entertain ourselves. I would often spend my days playing in the woods with my imaginary friends and those heroes I wished were my friends. As far as super heroes go, us girls did not have as many options as the boys. We pretty much had Wonder Woman, but she was all I needed in a hero. I would watch the television show each week and then go out into the woods to re-enact the episode along with Wonder Woman’s glorious feats. I pretended to hear of danger and then I would spin around and around until, at least in my mind, I turned into Wonder Woman. Then there was the time when th

Do you ever wonder if the police are on top of things? Have you ever been tempted to call 9-1-1 just to see what would happen? Well, I actually did it one time, although it was an accident. My sisters are my best friends and I like to talk to them as much as I can, especially since we live in different states. One day I tried to give one of them a call. I pressed in her area code, which should have been 9-1-9. Unfortunately, our phone was on its way out and the 1 button would almost always stick, as it did this day. I growled at the phone and hung up to start all over again, not giving the numbers I had dialed any more thought. My sister didn’t answer, so I just left a message and hung up the phone to get on with my day. I checked on my son, who was playing video games. Then the phone rang. I answered, thinking that maybe it was my sister and she just had not been able to reach the phone in time. “This is the 9-1-1 operator and we just received a hang up call from this number

You can have the most amazing conversations with your kids. Sometimes those conversations make you proud because of their attitude or show you that they are thinking about something very deeply. They can make you laugh hysterically till you are about to pee your pants. They can laugh at you until you hope they pee their own pants. That is the way most of the conversations in the sit-com I call life, happen around our house. In the middle of a spelling test one day, my son randomly asked if I could do a full split. “No.” I answered and gave the next spelling word. “Did you used to be able to?” “Yes. Back in the day.” “What? When you were two?” “No. When I was a cheerleader.” This brought about a fit of laughter so bad that we could not continue with the spelling test. I just sat there and smiled, waiting for the moment to pass. “I’m sorry. I just can’t imagine you being a cheerleader!” Again, followed by hysterical fits of laughter, only this time with tears. Finally,

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you mumbled to yourself, “Me and my big mouth!” I know I have more often than I really care to admit. One time was when a couple of friends and I were printing our first book. It was a devotional and as it was coming together, we couldn’t help but hold it and flip the pages. It had been a lot of work and it was so cool to see it come to fruition. The other two ladies I worked with had done some speaking before and up until this point I had not. We had high hopes that we would be invited to speak at retreats and conferences and sell hundreds, if not thousands of books – at least that was what was going on in my mind. I told them, “When you guys are scheduled for your events, I’ll just sit at the book table and collect money. That way you can be free to talk to your fans.” This is the part where I later said, “Me and my big mouth!” I believe God heard me when I said that, and I’ve been told He has a sense of humor. One week after

Every summer the cuzzy-wuzzies come to visit. (That’s my nephew’s term for the cousins.) We always enjoy the week together and it has become tradition that we go camping for a couple of nights during that week. We always have some sort of excitement of these camping trips. One time my nephew got burned in the face by a lantern. One time my niece made a “fishing pole” with a string and a clothespin she found lying around and caught a copperhead! Another time my daughter and two of her friends came upon a rather large copperhead. They screamed loud enough to bring nearby fishermen to their rescue. Then there was last summer. It was our first night and we were all sleeping soundly. All of a sudden we were awakened to the scariest sound I have ever heard in my life. It was a tree falling! It sounded close by and there was a mad scramble in the adult tent to find eyewear. The younger kids were all in another tent and I didn’t know if they were okay or not. We all piled out of our tent

I should probably put a disclaimer in here – I do write about real life. If you happen to find yourself in some of my blog posts (don’t worry, I won’t mention any names) that just means you’ve been a memorable (and probably humorous) part of my life. You should feel blessed. I’m borrowing a statement one lady once said to me, “If I become famous and anyone asks me if my house was clean, you tell them it was lived in.” That is probably a pretty fair assessment of my own house. It isn’t perfect, but it’s healthy. At least it appears healthy enough for people to feel comfortable enough to stop by, unannounced to use my bathroom. I know, you think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Apparently my bathroom is a hot spot in our town. Years ago, one person would stop to use my bathroom on regular basis. I didn’t think too much of it. Then a couple more people started to stop by my house to, yep, you guessed it, to use my bathroom. Apparently the word was getting out that I have some awesome bat

Welcome to my blog! I’ve thought about starting one for a long time and now here it is. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a writer. One of the first things would-be writers are taught is to “write what you know.” And I do. Many of the stories and articles I write are based on my real-life, even if they are labeled as fiction. When I was in high school, I found a pen pal who promised to critique my writing. We wrote back and forth for quite a while and she almost always gave me good advice. However, there was one time when I wrote a story about an incredibly horrible day I’d had. This woman happened to be an English teacher. She made copies of my story and had her classroom critique my story as well. As I looked through the comments, one idea was repeated over and over again. “This is too far-fetched to be real!” Even the teacher had written some comment to the effect that fiction must be believable. There was only one problem with what she said. Everything in my