What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?

      Did that title take you right back to your playground or elementary P.E. class days? Mostly what I remember from that game is a player yelling  "Midnight" and everyone screaming and running. Good times until the bell rang and it was time to go back in.

      Today is a day when it's time to go to the calendar hanging on the top half of our Dutch door, take it off the nail and flip the page. No big deal. Except that this page turn has always been one that brings a deep sigh. The page flip from July to August, means it's the time when, depending on what season of life we are in or what our personality is like, we either panic over the upcoming school year, lament the loss of slower schedules and deny the need to deal with the school supplies shopping stress or welcome the upcoming school year, celebrate more regular routines and embrace the challenge of discovering the best deals on jeans long enough for the giraffe children whose pants somehow became pedal pushers over the summer. And I just dated myself calling them pedal pushers, didn't I?

      For me, it's a good time to dust off my old blog, Jottings From Joyce, revise and rename it, and get writing again. I've missed it. I let the busyness of the last few years crowd it out. Good stuff was happening, but my kids were also in their last years of high school and college and maybe, just maybe, I thought I could slow it all down by not writing about it. Not only did that exciting plan not exactly work, but I also regret not capturing it all. Their adventures through my Mom lens. Sigh.

     And another day I'll write about the fact that I'm realizing this is the first time in a good, long stretch of years that I don't have any kids having a first day of school. Last year was the last first day of school.

      Don't blink.

      But for now, I'm excited to be 'scribbling' again and am trusting that enough of you have missed my jottings, are tired of my re-posts of oldies but goodies and will enjoy reading about the cats I herd, the plates I spin and the kind of ordinary adventures that seem to persist in arising. I'm sure I also will not be able to resist sprinkling in some stories that seem to like to start with "Have I told you about the time?" as well as some thoughts about gained wisdom and lessons learned along the way, for God surely has plenty more ways for me to grow in His love and grace.

        It's time, Mr. Fox, it's time.