Hey God, It's me, Ness...Can we talk?

I mean no disrespect, Sir, but I think you *might* have messed up a *little* when you gave cats nine lives and Moms only 1.

I would like you to consider raising the number of Mom lives to at least 30, give or take 10.

And the mere fact that I'm bringing this up indicates that You've already been so very gracious by allowing me more than one life, but I think that Moms deserve more lives. I would say Dads, but they can take that up with you on their own.

Maybe if I recount all the lives I've used already, You can see where I'm coming from.

There was the time we thought Kelli had kidney malfunction at age 4 and when they were doing the kidney testing, they forgot to secure her arm and the IV needle broke off in her arm and made for one heck of a fishing expedition to retrieve the needle in her arm...

And yeah, that febile seizure Michael had at 16 months when I was 7 months pregnant with Kiereney and I had to code him on the way to the hospital...when we got there they thought I was the patient in labor and not my seizing son...

And then Michael breaking the yardstick and ramming the broken part down his throat when he tripped while I was helping Kelli with her Math and his dad was engrossed in a sports game on TV...it took him forever to be able to eat solid foods again.

And Kelli diving off her window seat straight into the metal frame and breaking her nose when I brought Michael home from the hospital...

And Kiereney getting viral pneumonia on me at 3 weeks old and they told me to make funeral arrangements because she was too weak to fight it...

And I haven't even BEGUN to recant the stories when they got into school but I'll stop here.

So yesterday when Kelli called me and asked if I had spoken to Michael yet and when I said no, she had to tell me they found a young man's body in a creek at SIU at 8 a.m. where Michael had been doing PT and racing at 6 a.m. and Michael was not answering his phone and no one had seen him...

Yeah, God, that just about finished me off.

You see, when it comes to the kids, I always work a mental flow chart. Like, have you spoken to your child today-no. Go to the next line. Does he always answer his phone when his mom calls no matter what because he knows with the plethera of health probs with Mom and Roger that when Mom calls him at school, it's not to talk about the Cardinals? YES Did he answer it yesterday? NO Nothing was adding up. We found out the body was taken to the hospital morgue so I called Kathy and her doctor boss was kind enough to check it out for us and find out that the body had none of the identifying marks I had given him that Michael had and that the young man appeared to be of Oriental race. But I still couldn't get ahold of Michael.

When he finally DID call, he was INCENSED that I thought that he couldn't protect himself and that anyone could bump him off. I heard a voice out of Michael I had never heard used toward his mother before. In thinking back on it now, I think it was a voice of anger that his mom had been through hell for the last few hours not knowing where her son was and he had heard about the murder at 11 but didn't call to tell her that it wasn't him and he was OK, so he felt guilty that he could have prevented a lot of worrying. The bottom line is that he's safe and my prayers are with the family of the young man who died.

So God, you can see how, like with my spoons, I'm in a real deficit now with the number of lives I have left, and I would be most apprciative if you could add a few. Remember I have a son in the military and a 21 y/o daughter and there's a great potential that I'll need some more lives to cope with their lives. Or else I'm turning my kids over to you and you raise them as I'm running out of spoons and lives at warp speed.

Oh yeah...they already ARE Yours and have been since you allowed me the priviledge of being their mother. Thanks, God. I guess we're in this together.

Thanks for taking such good care of me, mine and my blog friends who are family as far as I'm concerned.