This statement is truer than I ever believed. Life lessons I’ve learned from our recent 10-day, cross-country odyssey:

-Just because someone is yelling your name in your ear as loudly as he can does not mean you won’t hit a deer.

-Be sure of your driving ability before you go above 9000 feet in early October. Whether or not you can believe it, the temperature is below freezing up there. Pulling off the side of the road to change drivers isn’t very helpful when the sides of the road are slush-ice puddles. Angry words don’t help you get the car out of slush-ice puddles.

-Sometimes it will be a sunny, dry day. You’ll be able to see for miles up the highway, watch the scenery, sing road songs with the family, and feel invincible. More often, it will be nighttime. You’ll be the only one awake, visibility will be limited to the front edge of your headlights’ range, and there will be nothing but the monotonous sound of the tires and the endless oncoming road to keep you company. Sometimes when you’re desperately tired, fighting to keep your eyes open and your tires on the road, you can ask the other driver to trade places with you so you can nap. Sometimes he is exhausted too, and you have to go on alone.

-Some facts are indisputable. You cannot argue with a 5-year-old who needs to use the bathroom 10 minutes after her last stop. Well, I suppose you can, but if you don’t stop, and she’s right, I’m not cleaning up after her.

-Quality family time is like pomegranate juice. Encased in a whole bitter peel and lots of useless seeds’ worth of quantity time is the lovely red juice of joyous family memories. Spend all that time bickering, and you may eventually find yourselves standing in awe together looking out over Yellowstone Lake.

-The sign that says “Dense Fog Ahead” is no guarantee that, once you get into the dense fog, you won’t come across another sign that says, “Bridges May Be Icy”. Nor are both of those guarantees that you won’t come across another sign that says “High Winds Possible.” Keep your eyes on the white lines and hang on. The fog does end eventually. When it does, how much more grateful you’ll feel for simple night driving.

-Some parts of this earth were not meant for women. (Or girls.) On long stretches of Wyoming highway there are endless miles of bathroomlessness, restaurantlessness, and hotellessness. If you wanted to shoot yourself something to eat, sleep on the ground, and use all the open country as your “facilities”, Wyoming would welcome you. Otherwise, hold it, stay awake, eat granola bars and move on.

-There’s a point when all the novelty and fun of being on a road trip has worn off. You’re saddle-sore, worn out from trying to sleep straight up in your chair, weary of fried food and ketchup. Suddenly the place you were trying to get away from becomes the only place you want to be. Lots of lessons can be gathered on the long highway between here and there. But the really great thing about a road trip-and life-is that at the very end of the road is home.

They say that 85% of women in the US are wearing the wrong size bra. Shocking. The other 15% must either work at or for Victoria’s Secret. So, assuming for just a moment that you are part of the 85% of American women who create this vast underprivileged class, let’s try and figure out, shall we, why this might be so.

You suddenly decide you need a new bra, for whatever reason. (Probably because yours suddenly became, or was always actually, the wrong size.) So in shame at your ignorance and self-neglect, you hang your head, get one of your girlfriends, and go on over to Victoria’s Secret to get yourself into the privileged class who wears the coveted Right Size. But wait! Be careful which of your friends you choose to take with you. The moment you walk into the store, a chipper (correctly-fitted) saleslady will come right over and slap her measuring tape right around both of you. And then, with a “you’ve just won the lottery” tone of voice, she’ll proclaim to each of you your perfect bra size. If you happen to be a relatively flat-in-the-front sister, and your friend happens to be on the buxom side, this pronouncement is sure to produce in both of you a vague sense of embarrassment that will make you both blush and turn away to pretend to be browsing around the merchandise. The merchandise almost always happens to be purple and black lace teddies, being found looking at which is sure to have the effect of increasing your confusion.

So you take the saleslady’s advice. Trying to find the blandest, whitest, most boring bra possible amid the strapless, backless, leopard-print ocean is an adventure all by itself. You finally find one that fits, go back and get another couple, glance at the price tag, and put back all but two. Then you go and collect your friend and the two of you check out, unable to meet each other’s eyes and hoping you won’t see each other for a few weeks.

Then you get your hard-won bras home. And because the punishment you endured simply procuring the bras wasn’t enough, the pink lettering on the bubble-gum pink satin tag reads, passive-aggressively enough, “Hand Wash. Drip Dry.” So sure, you can throw them in the family wash with the kids’ socks, but they won’t be responsible for the consequences.

So you do it anyway, and in a matter of months you’ve got a lumpy mess of a bra, are embarrassed going out in public, and are considering buying bras again. Sigh. You can’t take that friend, you’re just now starting to talk to each other again. So you try to buy bras online. Sure. They’ll come straight to the door in a lovely unmarked box. But you’ll have to go to the website to get them. At a time when your children aren’t standing around, because they will gape and point and you’ll sigh and weigh the cost of a smooth new bra against the psychological damage you’ve done to them, and leave bra shopping for another time. Because although YOU just came for a simple piece of sturdy underwear, all the come-eat-me women on those websites seem to have other ideas for you. (On second thought, those bras really don’t fit those women at all.)

So you’ve picked out the blah bra you want to purchase, but you’ve got to tell the website what size you are. So you take their cryptic instructions and go in the bathroom and try to wiggle yourself into the right position to get the right measurements while holding the door shut and shouting at the children who are banging on the door, “Really, dinner’s in just a few minutes, guys...” And you do not consider asking your husband for help in measuring yourself for a bra because he’s sure to completely miss the point.

Eventually, late at night, you do get all the right sizes in the right slots on the website and you’re sitting there with your credit card out and your husband saunters through and happens to see that you are buying something online. “SIXTY DOLLARS!?!” he shouts, his eyes bugging out, one hand grasping at his hair. “Why do you need a bra that costs SIXTY DOLLARS?”

So you put your credit card back and figure, well, I’m going to Wal-Mart this week for groceries, I’ll just get one while I’m there...

But you have to take all your children with you, and as soon as you’re crowded in that tiny dressing room, they will have forgotten that over the short little wall is another woman dressing, and over the next wall, another, and they can all hear everything you’re saying. You’ll remember the last time you went shopping for bathing suits and as soon as you took off your pants your toddler said, at the top of his lungs, “OH MOMMA, you have a BEAUTIFUL BACKSIDE!” And you’ll hold your breath and hope they hold theirs.

You try one on...it’s the wrong size, and you think you’ll go get another one, when one of them gets that thoughtful look on his face and winds up and shouts, “Momma! If you are a white woman and you wear white bras, do women who are BROWN have to wear BROWN BRAS?!?”

At which point, you throw the wrong-sized bra in your cart and leave the store as quickly as possible, vowing never to buy a bra again no matter what happens as long as you live. So I guess I can understand why you'd go along wearing the wrong size for so long. Because actually, given what a new bra costs, the old one fits just fine.

...today I would have kissed her. I came home from the library to find this bounty waiting for me at the house. A big soil-filled bag of blueberry bushes and strawberry plants. A whole box of little packets of seeds. And, as though those things weren't enough, a newly-sharpened pair of my scissors, come home to me with whoosh-click precision in its shiny, razor-sharp blades. I hardly know where to start.

I guess it's a good thing she is a woman, after all.

There it is. I just want to get my sharp pair of Ginghers and cut it all up. These children have a cutting fetish. Anything that can be cut (and quite a few that oughtn't) will be cut with their sharp little scissors. I don't think I ever got over my cutting fetish. Just the way that really nice fabric feels as it goes through my sharp, heavy scissors is therapeutic, somehow. Ahh, to have something to look forward to.

My good list for yesterday is short. We went to the library, and toddler-bird actually sat still for maybe two stories out of the storytime. Progress! Usually he's running from one side of the room to the other, or out the door, or pushing other people's strollers around and going through purses. So the fact that he sat and listened is a great stride.

When we were leaving the library, I had baby-bird in his carseat under one arm, the two older birds behind me, and one hand for toddler-bird. I tried and tried to pick him up, but he kept melting out of my hand into a screaming puddle on the floor. Just as I was about to have to put everything down and start over, a friend saw that I needed help. She carried toddler-bird (and pushed her double stroller) all the way to the car and helped me put him in. I was embarrassed not to be the everything's-under-control mom, but it was so nice to have somebody reach out and help.

Last on yesterday's list-rain. Light rain that started in the late afternoon, steady rain that drummed on the windows while I made dinner and cleaned up, sonorous rain that pounded the roof while I lay in the dark waiting for sleep. When I woke up again at midnight to find a pacifier, the only sound was the constant, monotonous beat of the heavy rain, pouring down on our house where everybody was sleeping. In a place where there hasn't been enough water for a year, every raindrop is a gift, and yesterday they came down in buckets.

I wonder what today's gifts will be?

I love the tactile luxury of lying in bed on Saturday morning. The warm sheets and the weight of the blankets. I love the half-light of dawn and the fragrant, deep pillow that invites me to procrastinate a day’s worth of relaxing and odd jobs for just a few more minutes. It’s cold out there and warm in here. No, I won’t get up. I’ll just turn over and snuggle up to....Father Bird? Where is Father Bird?

Gone. Up, showered, dressed and busy by 6 am at the latest. Even on a Saturday morning.

I do not understand this.