Melton Wok Halloween

Yogi Bear

Amazing amazing brilliant pants made by my friend, Rachel at Shining Shakti.

Scary, Scary Witch

Vampire

I only put this one in so you could see how very serious my pop-eye gets when I try to make a scary face.

Red M&M

You know, these costumes are quite representative of how I feel about my Littles. I have one very sweet boy and two girls who scare the bejesus out of me.

Pictures of Craig in shirtless Milli Vanilli outfit on their way soon.

ohhh wait...found one.

Love You.

G

Holiday Hands

“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.” Acts 4:32

After reading Tova’s incredible essay about her baby Joy, I started feeling a little sad. Because I thought that one day I’d be writing an essay like Tova’s about my family’s adoption. I had the essay all planned out. I even had our Christmas Card designed. It was going to be a family picture in front of our beautiful LOVE WINS sign and underneath our family of six it would say:

JOY TO THE WORLD! Love, The Melton Pot.

The Melton Pot. I mean, seriously. You KNOW how excited I was when that gem lit up my little brain.

But it was not to be. It is what it is, and it’s not what it’s not.

One night while I was pouting, Craig said, “Honey, you know, we’re still the Melton Pot.” And I rolled my eyes and said, “OH, C’MON. NO WE’RE NOT. We’re Asian and white. We might be like a Melton skillet of some sort but we needed Africa to be a Pot. We are So Not a Pot.

Kay, fine. Not a Pot, he said. Sorry, hon.

Anyway, skillets are fine, I guess. I’m just saying that adjusting to the recent changes in my life has been a little tougher than I thought it would be. There is something that I really, really wanted that I gave my all for and I ain’t gonna get it. Because of LYYYYME. Boo. I feel very five years old sometimes.

Like Tish. Tish is quite dramatic. And I am always telling her that sometimes she is so focused on what she doesn’t have that she misses all the wonderful things she does have.

Whenever I tell her this Craig raises his eyebrow at me. SO annoying.

But he’s right. I do that too. I feel sad that I didn’t get the new person I wanted to love, and so I overlook the hundreds of people God gave me to love. YOU PEOPLE.

It’s crazy, really. I have this sickness (it’s back, of course) that doesn’t allow me to get out much, but God gave me this computer, and this community, so that I can reach out and STILL offer myself to the world. No matter what, He always gives us a way to stay open. Stay open. This is what I’m learning, Stay Open By Any Means Necessary. Do not allow anything that life throws at you to close your heart. Heart wide open. Always. No matter what. If you can do that, good things will come.

Today I want to talk about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa . . . the December holidays.

I know, it’s not even Halloween, one holiday at a time, I know it.

But we do Christmas preparations a little differently at the Melton Skillet, and it works for us. It is the Melton rule that all Christmas business . . . gift buying, wrapping, etc . . . is done by Thanksgiving. Yep, we miss some sales. But we also spend the month of December in peace, together, making memories instead of trips to the mall. Our minds are not full of to do lists and so stress is low. And since we tell the kids that Santa stops taking gift requests at Thanksgiving, they don’t spend all of December talking about what “they want.”

Each of our kids gets three gifts and if there are ever any future complaints, we plan to ask them if they think they deserve more gifts than BABY JESUS GOT. ON BABY JESUS’ BIRTHDAY. After that, any further complaining will result in each child receiving actual frankincense and myrrh instead of Wii games and skateboards. Have fun with your spices, kiddos. That’s the plan.

Staying out of the stores in December is healthy for our family in many, many ways. This year we’re shutting down the computers in December, too. So we have lots of work to get done at Momastery before the shut down happens.

Back to Monkeedom.

I love you. I really do love you, Monkees. I don’t express how much because I’m afraid of coming across as a dramatic, crazy, cheesy computer lady. But I really do. This community has saved me and made a believer out of me. This community has made me feel safer and braver and cozier out in the big world. You have changed me, supported me. You are like a world –wide family to me, which is the truth, right? We are a world- wide family. That’s how we should all feel. Cozier in the world.

I was watching a news story about the economy recently and there were many families talking about how they were going to have a hard time buying gifts for their children this year. Some said that having their usual Christmas dinner was not an option, because they didn’t have the money for the turkey and the stuffing and the yummy desserts. Some said they were worried about paying the heat bill during the holidays. One man said he just wanted to buy his wife a little necklace, a little something to show her how much her work at home meant to him, but he couldn’t. There just wasn’t any extra. None.

All of this made me want to stick the fork I was holding directly into my eye.

Then I started thinking about how there are probably many Monkee families in these situations, and that made me want to put my fork down and start brainstorming. Because no way, Jose. Not on my watch. Not my Monkees. We might not be able to fix everything, but we can do some things. We can acknowledge each other’s needs, hear them, and then help each other in little ways, because we belong to each other.

You know, I’d rather my kids have three Christmas gifts and your kids have three Chistmas gifts, than my kids have six gifts and your kids have no gifts.

And that’s the bottom line here, for me. And I bet it is for you, too. I think I know you well enough to know that you agree.

I figure that everyone reading this has a need this holiday.

Some of us don’t have enough this year. These Monkees need a hand putting food on the table and buying gifts for their kids.

Some of us have a little extra this year. These Monkees need to reach out to other families and share, in order to wake themselves up and connect and really experience what the holidays mean.

And some of us have just enough. These Monkees need to sit back and witness some miracles, to keep believing in people and love.

We all have needs. When we don’t share our needs, out of pride or fear of rejection, we deprive other people of fulfilling their needs. Sometimes we need to receive and sometimes we need to give. Seasons change. So please decide which type of Monkee you are this year, and participate accordingly.

This is how I’m hoping this Love Extravaganza will work:

Craig and I would like to start the party off by offering checks for $75 to six Monkees who could use the money to make the holiday a little brighter for their families.

SO:

If your family could use this money, leave a comment about how you will use it and then email me at momastery(at)gmail(dot)com with your address. Our check will arrive at your home by Nov 1. The end. No strings. Just tell your story, anonymously or not, not so we can judge how worthy you are of the money, everyone is worthy, just so we can know each other and love and understand each other better.

Now.

Obviously, I am expecting more than six requests.

That’s where you come in.

If you are a Monkee who has some extra this year. . . read the comments. Find another Monkee who touches your heart and reply to her comment. Tell her you will help. Then you both email me and I’ll put you in touch.

**Also…if you are a Monkee who would like to donate money to this cause and let me distribute it….email me. I’ll take care of that, too.

At this point you might ask yourself….how is all of this really gonna work?

Well, how could I possibly know that?

I’m going to do this like I do everything else . . . I’m going to ANNOUNCE THAT IT IS HAPPENING and then wait for crazy things to start occurring and then I'm going to become completely overwhelmed with JOY AND PANIC and start crying and hide under my bed and then Craig will try to teach me to make a spread sheet and a Pay Pal account AGAIN and I will yell at him: WHY DO YOU KEEP TRYING TO CHANGE ME?? and he will say I am not trying to change you, I just think there are more efficient methods of record keeping than writing things on piles of used paper towels and scraps ripped off of Chase’s homework papers, to which I will reply: GOOD GOD, THIS IS NO TIME FOR A LESSON ON CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY. I AM JUST TRYING TO BREATHE, HERE. And then Craig will take the kids away, for their own well-being, and let me work for a couple days.

And it will all get done, in spite of me . . . the same way that this Holiday Love Project got done and this Holiday Love Project got done and this one and THAT ONE and everything else worth doing gets done. One deep breath and little miracle at a time.

And we will wrap all of this up by Thanksgiving, so that we can rest and celebrate, knowing that our sisters are cared for. And our sisters can rest and celebrate, knowing that their families are cared for.

That’s the plan. Help, please. All ideas welcome.

I LOVE YOU.

GDo

PS. Thank You, Bloggess, for inspiring this idea, and so many others.

Joy - To the World

A Guest Post from Tova

Dearest Monkees,

Do you remember when Glennon and Andrea started this auction for Joy (Rocky at that time) and Evy? And then a friend joined in with a book sale? And prior that a friend auctioned an Ipad for us? And after this auction we raised another $1,400 by selling paperbead necklaces that had been donated. And then, we received an adoption grant of $10,000.

Yup.

That all really, really happened.

You need to understand that adopting Joy was a complete and total leap in faith. I remember emailing with Glennon and mentioning to her that I felt like we had no business starting this adoption because I felt like we had none of the resources needed.


And we didn't.

No savings, no investments, no loans available, no credit available. Heck, we STILL have our adoption loan from our first adoption. We managed to save and fundraise our way through our second adoption. It was such a gift.

I had no faith for a third adoption. I figured we had maxed out our resources. All of them.
We had those moments where adoption payments needed to be made and we literally didn't have the money.

And it came. Every single time. Surprise gifts from friends. Organized fundraising. The grant. This is the first time we are drowning in debt after an adoption. We are flat ass broke and about a month behind, but I am fine with that because it feels so good compared to what we've experienced in the past.

If you think that I was the faithful, peaceful and trusting adoptive mama through this, you are wrong. I hedged all my bets. Did all the fundraising saying that if this didn't work we would give the money to another family or return it to people.

The process of adopting Joy brought pain. Struggle. Fear. Questioning.

As you might remember, Joy has HIV. We were asked by our agency to consider adopting her. They did everything they could to make it possible for us.

We had relatives freak out. People said the dumbest, most thoughtless things. I wrestled a lot. With what we were doing. To our finances, our existing children, our community.

There were two things that kept me facing towards Joy.

1. The question was 'is this harder for me, or is facing the possibility of my child not getting adequate medical care harder?'

2. Can I do this? Can I raise my daughter to be kind and gracious, but firm, in the face of some of the most stupid, stubborn ignorance that I've ever seen? In order to do that, I had to learn to be kind and gracious, but firm.

The first question required more wrestling than I care to admit. But it really was the easy one.

The second one? That required a lot of support. Some from my counselor who walked me through appropriate and allowable responses to different people's comments. This was an amazing experience for me and impacted all aspects of my life. I had friends who let me bitch, whine, complain and rage. And I have this community that tells me over and over to 'look for the good', 'try not to be a jerk', that 'We belong to each other' and that being gracious is a huge gift. That looking beyond the stupidity and ignorance often leads to healing and redemption.

And it's all true.

At one point we had enough reasons to justify leaving our church. People suggested we do that. But I got stubborn. And maybe a tiny bit tired. We stayed put. We kept trying to talk and to listen. It's not been perfect, but the overwhelming majority are supportive and wonderful. That would not have existed if I had left when it was just overwhelmingly horrible. That's what this Monkee community has given me. Stories from all of you to lean on. To hold onto. Stories of staying still, stopping to listen, or just taking that one more uncomfortable step.

So, thank you.

Going to Africa to bring Joy home was excruciatingly difficult as I have a PTSD diagnosis that results from a home invasion/hostage situation I was in the last time I was in Africa.
Going to bring her home was the bravest thing I've ever done. I could have stayed at home, but I knew I would regret that more than pushing through the fear.

It was fantastic. Our trip was hard, but I was both strong and vulnerable. I was present for my new daughter. I found a lot of personal healing on my trip. There was a lot of weeping, but so, so much joy.

And she is.

Since coming home I have watched my little peanut win hearts, break down big huge grown men, and crumble people's fears and hardness. I literally watched one person who was dead set against her, start to cry when seeing her for the first time.

Our child is so special. This is brought home to us again and again. The nurse at her Children's Home told us that they called her their miracle child because they almost lost her. Her pediatrician here, told us at her last visit, that she cannot explain why this child is alive or doesn't have massive brain damage. That her medical records show three times when most other children would have died. That she does not understand how this is possible.

But she is. She is healthy, happy, thriving, getting chubby, and mentally, emotionally, and physically on target. Not one medical professional has been able to explain her. She is now labeled as technically HIV + but unable to transmit. How's that for shifting people's preconceptions?


This makes my heart so glad. I've learned so much on this journey, grown a tremendous amount, discovered strength I had no idea I had, learned that vulnerability is the baddest ass strength of all, and done so much healing.

Thanks Monkees, wish you could all come over for a cup of tea and meet her.

Note from G:

Hm. If Toves hadn't made herself vulnerable here . . . we would've missed all of this Joy. Hm. Hmmmm.

God Bless You, Tova.

STOP DOING ANYTHING

So - the past month has been pretty bad, I’m not going to lie. I mean, I did lie, like all day, every day, in my cozy bed. One weekend I went to bed at eleven am on Saturday morning and woke up at six pm on Sunday. I was really, really, super sick. Scary sick. We figured that my Lyme was becoming dramatically worse. Craig and I were looking for nannies because I couldn’t care for the kids anymore. We let the adoption go. We adjusted to the idea of playing one man down. We did our best to stay positive, but we were scared.

I saw my doctor last week. When she came into the examination room I was curled up in a ball on the table and couldn’t even raise my head to say hello. Her face looked pained and she said, “Oh, baby,” and she put her hand on my forehead. I thought that was really nice. Doctors should do more of this sort of thing, I think. Then she said, in a nutshell – “You look awful. All your shine is gone. Something is wrong with your medication. This isn’t Lyme. Your body is shutting down because it can’t process your oodles of antibiotics anymore. Let’s stop everything for a few days and see if you feel better, and then if you do, we’ll cut your meds in half.”

I woke up the next day feeling like a million bucks. Literally. The first thing I did, obvi, was go shopping. Craig came home and saw all the bags in the foyer and said, without gusto, “yay. you’re better. yaaaay.”

I am better. I mean, I still have Lyme, but I’m my old Lymie self, which is to say that I’m pretty much normal with added confusion, absolutely no depth perception and extreme bouts of fatigue when it’s time to vacuum or grocery shop or bathe the kids. And I’m so grateful.

But I’m also extremely grateful that I got so sick for those two months.

Each morning for the past few weeks, I have peeked out my door with giddy anticipation to discover a gift on my doorstep. Candles, inspirational poetry, organic fruit, stationary, gift cards, cozy pink socks that I’m wearing right now. Each gift came with a note that said some variation of . . . You are loved. We’re praying for you. Love, Anonymous. My neighbors. They got together and planned a Love Ambush for me. I just moved to this neighborhood last year. It just amazes me. And it helped me. Just to know that I was literally surrounded by all that anonymous hope and love. And that I didn’t even have to write thank you notes because the gifts were anonymous. I’m a grateful person and a writer, but I despise writing thank you notes. How’d they know? I was thinking yesterday- if I hadn’t gotten so sick, I wouldn’t even know where I live. I wouldn’t be aware of how beautiful this place is, and the people in it. I might not be bursting at the seams to pay it forward, to find the next hurting mama and plan Love Ambush #2. I now have new eyes with which to look at my neighbors, who are miracles. Thank you, Lyme.

Craig and I started marriage therapy two weeks ago. It’s been hard, but good hard. We feel new- like we’re starting over. We needed this, bad. Craig’s been a single parent for a bit and he’s been scared. It’s taken a toll on him, but he wouldn’t admit it before- he was so busy being hopeful and strong. He’s a hero, I think. We are fine, but we don’t want to be fine. We want to be great. Like my friend said, we don’t want to just be good people, we want to be good partners to each other. And I have a husband who wants this as badly as I do, and who is willing to work and fight for it. But we wouldn’t have known this if my illness hadn’t forced us to face our fears. I now have new eyes with which to look at my husband, who is a miracle. Thank you, Lyme.

I put my kids to bed last night. I know it’s supposed to be precious time - bedtime, but I usually hate it. I read and sing and finally get them down and then they pop up one at a time for an hour and it’s like a twisted game of whack-a-mole. But last night I didn’t hate it. I loved reading to them and singing to them. Because it was the first night in two months that I’d had the energy to put them to bed. To tuck them in. And it was sort of wonderful. I’ve been given new eyes with which to see what an honor it is to care for little souls and hearts and minds. Miracle, really. Thanks, Lyme.

And the Monkees . . . Oh, you Monkees. All your comments and love and emails and encouragement and understanding. One of you sent me a book that is saving me right now. And a beautiful sign that says, “Look For the Good” in decadent hot pink calligraphy. I plan to follow directions.

Now - losing the adoption. Trying to get perspective on that one is interesting.

We explained to Chase that it was over a few nights ago. That there was no baby boy coming home. That God had said nope. We explained that we didn’t know if it was actually a No. or a Not Yet. But we told him that either way, we were fine and hope he’d be fine, too. We told him we were already the luckiest family on Earth and we didn’t need anything other than what we already had.

Chase sighed and said, “Mommy, this doesn’t seem to be working out for us. Maybe we should just adopt a highway.”

For the record- this is my favorite thing that anyone has ever said to me in my whole life, and I am currently researching whether one must pass a background check to adopt a highway. I can see it, honestly. All the Meltons in orange vests, picking up trash on the side of the road. I might rope us all together like a chain gang. I hope we get our own sign: This highway Has Been Adopted by The Meltons. Too perfect.

There is actually a whole lot of beauty in letting the adoption go, and I’m finding it. Look For The Good, right, Molls? The baby would have taken up all the energy and time and love that I can now offer to the people I already have. The people I’ve grown new eyes for. My parents, my friends, my neighbors, my husband, my children, my Monkees, myself.

Something about the past two months has shifted my perspective dramatically, for now.

I’m a spaz. I just am. I’ve lived my entire life, up to now, as a complete spaz. The voices in my head are always going a mile a minute and I’m just all over the place. I’m well intentioned, and sweetly all over the place, but still. It’s exhausting to be me, and sometimes I feel like a hamster on a wheel. Like God just gives me projects to use up my energy so I don’t explode or drive people too nuts. I don’t want to live like that anymore. I need to find a way to channel my energy into peace, because I deserve that.

So. I am going to stop trying to save the world, and instead use my energy to notice how beautiful the world is just as it is. It occurred to me recently that saving the world might not be my job. It occurred to me that my only real job might be to slow down and notice the world, to be amazed by it. It’s almost too good to be true, but it might just be true.

So I think I’m going to try, for the next year, to live with the belief that the world is all right. This is a tough paradigm shift for me to attempt. Because I usually think, one million times a day…Oh My God, the world is falling apart, the world needs my help. I MUST HELP. EVERYONE NEEDS ME! AAAAHHHH!!

This, as I reflect upon it, might be the teeniest bit egotistical.

And with the lost adoption and the Lyme and all the confusion and Anna and huh? I just feel exactly like Homer Simpson, in one of my favorite scenes ever, when he’s tripping on magic peppers.

I just need to Stop Doing Anything for awhile.

I just want to look around. Love my neighbors. Get to know people. Listen, look, breathe. Appreciate my blessings instead of trying desperately to create new ones.

In short - I need to calm down. Which may be my biggest challenge to date.

I’m excited. But not TOO excited. Calllllmmmmlllly excited.

I’m off to do my yoga and then spend my day soaking up my blessings. Looking, listening, breathing, smiling.

Remembering that the world is all right and that it is my privilege, as a child of God, to soak it all up fearlessly.

The world is a gift to me, not my problem to solve.

Love, G

Hello Lovies.

You are now entering Cliché City. You’ve been warned. When the goin’ gets tough, the Doyle/Meltons fling around clichés.

Today I thought I’d try to answer the G, how are you doing? questions. Thank you so much for caring.

About the loss of the adoption- so far, I’m actually fine. It’s funny, you want all of these things, and then you get sick and you realize that the only thing you really want is to be healthy.

It’s true that every once in a while I feel a little flabbergasted, when I consider the hours and days we spent on paperwork and the nights of lost sleep and the thousands of dollars and tears and prayers that we’ve used up on this adoption during the past two years. It’s strange to just - all of a sudden - walk away. It tempts me to wonder if all of it was wasted. But deep down I don’t think that any of our efforts to love or to follow our dreams are wasted.

One time an American visited Mother Teresa in Calcutta and looked around at the hundreds of people dying in the streets and he said to her, “You’ll never save all of them. You’ll never even make a dent. How do you continue this work when you know you won’t be successful?” And Mama T looked at him and smiled and said, “I am not called to be successful. I am called to be faithful.” And I think that’s a good thing for us to remember.

One of my best friends, Jess, sent me a prayer recently about how in the West, we are so focused on goals, on results, on outcomes. But we can’t control outcomes, almost ever, so that’s probably a waste of time. I think we can only be faithful, today, to ourselves and to our families . . . to our friends and our dreams, and at the end of the day, we have to let it all go. We have to quit worrying about what becomes of it all and just be grateful we had the guts to do our little part, as we understood it. And we have to try to remember that it’s better to travel than to arrive, anyway. I think I was faithful for the past two (six) years to what I thought God wanted me to do. I spent my whole mind, soul, and strength on that dream. And so I feel pleased with that effort, and I won’t judge the outcome. It’s okay. I’m a different person than I was when I started this adoption journey, and maybe that’s the point anyway.

It helps me to see stories LIKE THESE: to see my friends who started this adoption journey at the same time I did and are home now, raising their Rwandan angels. And to watch this story unfold...one of our own...a MONKEE.. in Rwanda, picking up her baby right now, as you read this. As I read these stories - through tears of joy and loss - I am reminded that when and if it’s supposed to happen, it does. There are no mistakes. I did not fall through the cracks, it just wasn’t meant to be for me. Not now. If it’s God’s plan, nothing can stop it, and if it’s not God’s plan, there is nothing you can do to make it happen. Trust me. I've tried everything.

And still - The universe is unfolding as it should.

My dad used to say to me: Life is what happens when we’re making other plans.

I’m not sure I really believed that completely. I sort of thought that you could write your own story. Make your own plan, make it happen. Nah- I thought. Life is not what happens to you….life is what you make it.

But now, in the fallout of the adoption and the Lyme and on and on . . . I have come to believe that both are true. I think Life is what you make out of what happens to you.

Lyme is what is happening to me right now….and I am GOING to turn it into something good, something beautiful and helpful. I read this quote recently . . . people can tolerate suffering, but not meaninglessness. That’s how I feel right now. It’s fine . . . I’ll be sick, I’ll heal, I’ll let a few dreams go in the meantime. I’m a big girl and I know that nobody promised me that life would be easy. But I’m not letting any of it go to waste. I am going to make it all mean something. Someday.

Maybe not today, cause I’m too freaking tired.

I’ve never experienced anything like what Lyme’s done to me during the past month. I wake up tired, and I spend my morning tired, and then around 2 o’clock I feel as if someone has placed one of those heavy bibs they use for dental x-rays on top of me, and all I can do is crawl up the stairs to bed. And when I get to bed, sometimes I’m too tired to reach for a pillow, or to roll over. Too tired to roll over. It’s true. A couple of times I actually thought . . . I’m dying, I am definitely dying right now. I have what seems to be out of body experiences. My body feels so heavy that my soul seems to hover above. And during these near death experiences I always have two thoughts: OH GOD. They are going to come to take me away and everyone’s going to see how filthy the bathtub is. And also, if Craig remarries someone who can cook I will be so pissed. I will HAUNT THEM. I will mess up all her casseroles.

I don’t know why these are the deepest thoughts I can muster when I’m near death, I’m just telling the truth.

So anyway, this Lyme Time has sort of brought me back full circle. I feel like a baby sometimes. I am learning how to take care of myself, maybe for the first time ever. I spent the first half of my life tearing apart my body, then the second making and feeding little bodies, and now, for the first time, I’m learning how to help my own body and soul thrive and grow.

So that’s what I’m doing over here these days. I decided to stop saying “I’m sick” and start saying “I’m healing.”

This is how I’m going to make sense of all of this – make it mean something.

Through my own healing process, I plan to learn what people need to heal. Because I believe that all suffering is the same, and that we all suffer from something. Disease, abuse, shame, depression, pride, anger, stress, loss, hopelessness, loneliness and on and on and on forever. And I think we all need healing. Every last one of us.

So I think that if I can heal, if I can unlock the keys to healing for myself, that I’ll be able to help you, too. I don’t really understand that plan completely yet, but that’s my plan nonetheless.

So far: this is what I’ve got. I’ve got a sign in my kitchen that says:

Deep Breaths

Take your medicine

Feed yourself

Water

Fresh Air

Sun

Bath

Friends

Yoga

Pray

That’s all I’ve got so far.

What are you healing from? And what helps you heal? Let’s help each other.

Who's On First?

You know these little bags that the Lupus foundation sends in the mail? Great. Hold that thought.

Recent Melton Marital Conversation:

Craig: Glennon, why do we still have these things in the pantry?

Glennon: The Lupus bags?

Craig: Yeah. They’ve been in here for years. We have 27 of them now. Are we ever going to do anything with them?

Glennon: I don’t know. I don’t want to throw them away, but they probably won’t be yummy anymore.

Craig: Um. What?

Glennon: I don’t know. They’re pretty old.

Craig: Oookay. Well, do we have anything to donate?

Glennon: Huh? Donate?

Craig: Yeah, I mean, we should use these. We should donate something. That’s what they’re for. Why are we just collecting them in our pantry?

Glennon: You think the Lupus foundation wants me to donate them?

Craig: Not donate THEM, donate something IN them.

Glennon: What? How? Donate them to who?

Craig: TO THE LUPUS FOUNDATION.

Glennon: Wait. The Lupus foundation wants me to donate the popcorn they gave me BACK to the Lupus foundation?

Craig: Silence.

Glennon: That’s weird. Fine, what do I do, just leave all the popcorn on the porch? Will they come pick it up? What do they do with it? Why did they send it to me in the first place if they just want it all back?

Craig: Silence.

Glennon: What the hell? What? WHAT? What is going on??

Craig: Jesus, honey. It’s not popcorn. It’s not popcorn, Glennon.

Thanks for nothing, Tricky Lupus Foundation.

*Craig has sworn to God that he will not discuss these sorts of conversations with our therapist.

Happy Weekend, Monkees.

G