I pretty much promise this post will disappoint you.

Edited May 2019: We were a part of a wonderful Classical Conversations community for the first eight years of our home education journey. Now, due to poor state leadership and questionable corporate business practices, our family has elected to “consciously uncouple” from our association with the organization and we cannot recommend any others get involved at this time. 

I have written five first sentences to this post.

That’s not normal for me. Usually I sit down, have a cleansing breath and my fingers start flying on the keyboard, trying desperately to keep up with the thoughts that shoot out of my brain.

It’s similar to how I imagine a squirrel on meth would move. Fast, furious and sometimes squeaky.

I’m a pretty fast typer, it’s true. I still can’t keep up with the thoughts most of the time (hence the typos and missing words you see far too often here!) but I think my background in classical piano helps.

I do not do finger exercises.

And tonight is not the night for thoughts to flow freely from my brain.

In fact, tonight is a terrible night but not for any particular reason.

The girls and I drove up the mountain tonight to cook out, socialize, and enjoy nature around a campfire.

A girl melted her shoe.

It was not one of my girls.

But, needless to say, there was a campfire, there was a shoe, and that’s not even an “opposites attract” kind of relationship. It is simply not a match made in heaven. Shoes and campfires… no go.

I had a similar experience in college and lost a shoe to a campfire, so I absolutely understood the drama involved in the shoe melting episode. Thank goodness her foot not injured, though the shoe is a goner.

Typically I’m a fan of activities that involve people. I mean, that’s an opportunity to embarrass myself and make new friends, plus I enjoy good conversations with smart people.

Tonight was not easy. I was dodging the campfire smoke, carrying Tres in a backpack while she smeared roasted marshmallows into my hair, listening to Uno and Dos complain about being cold, worrying that they would catch their shoes on fire or just fall into the flames, and trying to decide what to say to someone else when the soundtrack in my mind was playing so loudly it was hard to hear.

It was socially awkward. I was that girl in the corner who is all alone and giving off a strange vibe. I knew I was that girl in the corner giving off a strange vibe and I couldn’t do a thing about it because I was too busy worrying about flames and cold and children and backpacks and, and, and, and…

And it was too much for my brain to handle all at once.

Big thank you goes out to Cindy, who I sometimes call Cathy for fun (especially when I’m being socially awkward) for rescuing me from my self-imposed banishment on the side of the fire without the smoke. She saved me. I was able to talk, she talked back, a slow dance of pulling back into the group.

I’m proud to report by the end of the night I actually had a conversation with some wonderful, normal people, and it’s all thanks to her.

She took one for the team and I think it worked out well. At least for me.

Now I’m sitting here, trying to write a post and coming up with nothing. I’ve started, deleted, started, deleted, and I’ve now wasted 500 words and a small part of your life writing about nothing but melted shoes and my inability to mingle appropriately.

I’m going to call this the new low for StealingFaith.com.

I’m sorry.

Don’t give up on reading, come back tomorrow. I promise I will go to bed early, sleep soundly, and wake up full of deep insights and funny bits. In the meantime, feel free to browse through some other posts because, my, oh, my, there is some good stuff hanging around his website. If I do say so myself.