this is no longer my blog

First, I did a MUCH BETTER job with my make up today. I looked exceptionally clowny.

Okay, now that I have that out of the way, I just wanted to say that I never intended to use my blog as a means to share my clown exploits. But since that is what seems to be consuming the majority of my time these past two days, that is what my faithful readers get to read! I'm sure you are so excited and that you can hardly wait to read on.

You can definitely tell when kids move from a state of being frightened and uneasy to a state of comfort and curiousity. My suspenders were snapped, my wig was touched and tugged, and my neck tie was confiscated more times today than I can remember. Well, except for the neck tie confiscation thing. One young man had that the whole morning. And I can still count that high. Kids who were afraid or uneasy in our presence yesterday have quickly warmed up to us today, and faces brightened and there were shouts of "Clowny!" everytime we walked into the room.

But I think my biggest success story is the young boy who is the son of one of the VBS coordinators. The one who couldn't take his eyes off of me when I came into the room, and would state at me with a mix of uncertainty and fear. Finally, with some encouragement from his mother and grandmother, he gave me a five today. That would have been enough for me, that would have been a big enough step. But then, he shared some of his animal crackers with me, with no prompting from any family members. He'd walk across the room, hand me a cracker, smile, and then walk back to his seat. AND THAT'S NOT ALL! He also gave me two hugs! Of course, after most of the kids had left, I washed my makeup off and removed the wig, and ran into him in the hallway, and his grandma asked, "Is that the clown?" and he resorted back to his uneasy, quivering "...no..."

Now my office, which has turned into the unofficial clown headquarters, looks as if a clown exploded. There is a large bow tie on my desk; large glasses, a feather boa, 2 pairs of clown pants and a wig strewn on the couch; suspenders, red neck tie, neon green shirt and assorted make up and facial washes on the table; and a pair of blue shoes and a pair of red shoes on the floor. My desk itself is beginning to show some signs of neglect. Random piles of papers and pictures and coffee cups and mail. I think that next week will be spent sorting and cleaning and hopefully getting it back to it's former state of only a little messy, rather than it's current state of Disaster Area.

Anyway, I suppose I should figure out what I should be doing with the rest of my day. With my mornings dominated by clowning, I have to cram my normal day into a much shorter time span. Unless I want to stay later into the evening than normal, which is probably what I will do today since we have a youth committee meeting this evening, anyway. But the Catch 22 of the whole thing is that clowning is much more tiring than one would think, and so I need to cram more responsibilities into a shorter span of time, when I have much less energy than normal. Oh, the life of fulltime ministry...