This morning we bought this house:
YAY!
This afternoon I was in a moving funk.
UGH!
I’m sure it was brought on by the conflicting emotions of the day.
The excitement of the new house.
The dread of leaving the old place.
The bored children.
The underlying panic every time I look at the amount of packing and moving that still needs to be done.
UGH!
I’ve decided there is only one cure for such a problem.
Packing can wait we are going out to celebrate with ice cream!
YAY!
She picks up an item and puts it in a box.
A kid shows up.
That item has never looked so interesting before! In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before. And now, now, that it is half wrapped and buried amongst the rest of the contents of a cardboard box, it’s AMAZING! So why, does Mother insist I not touch it? Clearly she can not realize how amazing this never-before-seen item is! Probably if I took it out and showed to her she would realize – No… she does not realize.She picks up an item and puts it in a box.
A kid shows up.
Panic! It’s a favorite-almost-forgotten-haven’t-seen-it-for-the-last-six-months-best-toy-ever! Why would she take away the best toy ever?! I haven’t seen it in ages and now it’s being packed away and it’s going to get lost again! Mother doesn’t care. This is an injustice of the highest order. No other more played with and previously favorite toys will ever do! I need the toy! Mother packs it anyway. I tell her we will never speak again!She picks up an item and puts it in a box.
A kid shows up.
It is a boring item, it is her item. But wait! Why is mother not packing our things? Will we leave them behind? I know she said we are bringing everything but I also know we are not bringing the chewed on recliner or the refrigerator or the trees so what if my things are getting left behind too. Wait! ” Are we bringing my toys? Are we bringing my books? Are we bringing my toothbrush? Are we bringing the dogs?” Phew! Everything is coming.She picks up an item and puts it in a box.
A kid shows up.
It’s a boring item. Packing is boring. Nothing is fun. I’m not getting enough attention. NO, I don’t want to pack my own box. NO, I don’t want to pack your box. NO, I don’t want to clean my room. NO, I don’t want to go play. I just want your attention! I shall stomp to my room so she understands the full depth of my hatred of this packing.She picks up an item and puts it in a box.
She picks up an item and puts it in a box.
She picks up an item and puts it in a box.
No kid shows up.
Concern.
Search.
Find.
But I just wanted to play with the stuff in the box! I NEED these things! I’ll pack it again later!!!The mother is unsympathetic.
The kid is upset.
The Dad goes to work.
She picks up an item and puts it in a box.
A kid shows up…
Written in response to Prompts for the Promptless Season 2 Episode 11 -Qualia hosted by Queen Creative
These are my aunt’s horses. They have nothing to do with this post. I just thought you’d like them.
Some days I drink my fancy tea. I fill kettles and use teapots and it’s all relaxed and lovely and warm and soothing.
Other days I just need tea- now – and I go for a mug of Lipton.
Step one: Get mug out of cupboard.
Step two: Fill with water.
Step three: Microwave mug with water.
Step four: Add tea bag.
Step Five: Drink.
That’s it, five steps and rarely a morning goes by where I don’t forget my tea at one of them.
Mid-morning I find my empty mug on the counter.
I find mugs with lukewarm water both in the microwave and on the counter.
Tea bags are left unopened sitting by the sink.
And, most pathetically, I find tea, ready to drink, sitting untouched and wonder what is wrong with my brain in the morning that I can not focus through a very simple five step process.
Meanwhile I’m stumbling through my morning, hating life (like I do before 8 AM, 9 AM, 10 AM!?) wondering why I can’t get the fuzz out of my brain and get going.
It’s pathetic.
This morning I sunk to new depths and discovered a new and terrible way to ruin my cup of tea.
Running late, I was gulping my tea every time I passed through the kitchen getting ready. During one fly by as I was talking with John I grabbed my cup, gulped and as he causally mentioned that I was drinking his coffee, was already spitting it back out.
I don’t do coffee.
I quickly drank my tea – it tasted like coffee.
I headed out the door with a glass of water – it tasted like coffee.
I drank a Diet Coke – it helped.
It took a delicious lunch made by a friend and a second Diet Coke to finally scour the coffee flavor from the back of my throat.
Tomorrow I’m hoping that I do forget to drink my tea, at least until John is done with his coffee!
I was contentedly driving down the road when from the backseat Ivy asked a question about another car’s blinker. A lovely, educational conversation ensued about blinkers, how they work and why we use them. Then, as the topic was wrapping up, Ivy asked why it was still blinking after the car turned and kept driving.
I explained how blinkers usually turn themselves off after you turn or that you turn them off so you don’t confuse people and that even if it looked like it was still blinking as it went around the corner it was probably turned back off by now.
Ivy insisted she could see that the car still had it’s blinker on.
Now by this point we had driven close to a mile away from where we had seen the car with the blinker turn and that car was going in the opposite direction. The girl could not possibly still see the car much less check on it’s blinker status. This would also be the point where a smarter mother would have realized her daughter was just looking to disagree and let it slide. But my mothering skills are a work in progress so I foolishly pointed out that she didn’t know if the blinker on the car was still on because she couldn’t see it any more.
Wrong answer Mom.
Yes, she could still see it and it’s blinker was still on. Why was it STILL on?!
Slightly irritated my response contained facts about the impossibility of her seeing the other vehicle as well as the reasoning behind the high probability that the cars blinker was off.
My mothering needed much help that day.
“MOM, I CAN SEE IT! I’ve told you a million times, I have Santa eyes!”
Her eyes see everything!
Finally napping mothering skills kicked in and I realized that I had been goaded into a pointless, losing argument by my six year old.
The only way out would be sudden distraction or acquiescence.
Look Ivy!
Turkeys!!!
Saturday morning John and I did our first ever open water swim race. I will freely admit that doing a 1.2 mile swim, at a time of day I’m usually in bed, was something I was having a hard time looking forward to. But, I must say, the whole experience turned out to be much less hellacious than I feared.
The terrible-ish parts were as I suspected. You see a person, like myself, who had followed a nice straight line on the bottom of a pool for 14 years when set loose in a lake with the sun shining in her eyes as she attempted to watch for random boats and buoys to guide her, (All of which, I might add, were not conveniently located on the bottom of the lake.) might not completely enjoy that aspect of the race. But, other than that minor annoyance, the race, as well as our two weeks of “training,” was lots of fun and reminded me just how much I love to swim.
It also reminded me how difficult it is to get any meaningful time in the water with three young kids and a husband on second shift. John and I made it into the water to train every day for the two weeks prior to the race – and did nothing else. This week when I’m playing catch up with the household chores I guess I’ll just have to look at my shiny third place medal to remind myself that it was worth it!
Saturday morning after it was all over John and I were rehashing the race on the drive back home and I realized something. I realized that the best part, wasn’t the race, or the training, our time away from the kids together, our cheering section or even the shiny medal. It was that our short open water racing stint literally pointed out that John’s got my left. We swam together, training and racing, John on my left. We worked well together that way. I sighted and attempted to keep us going straight. We used each other for motivation and pacing. I never had to worry about what was happening on his side- I knew he had my left.
If that sounds insignificant to you, picture racing in semi-murky water, others swimming around you, attempting to find those rotten buoys all with limited visibility. I can breath to both my right and my left but, lacking that good ‘ole bottom of the pool line, if I would like to swim a straight line – I breath to my right. This means that I have no idea what’s happening off to the left. But with John cruising next to me it was all good.
Nobody ran into me from the left, nobody attempted to draft off that side of me, nobody made a move to pass without me noticing, and I didn’t spare a seconds thought on any of it.
Not one.
I knew John was there, he had my left.
He always does.
And, I?
I had his right.
I always do.
For those of you who are Facebooking members of society pictures of the race can be found on Rock Lake Activity Center’s page.
I went to the park and I found these noisy monkeys.
They hooted and grunted, jumped up and down, made faces and climbed the bars of their cage.
They were very entertaining monkeys.
But even all their noisy antics couldn’t compare with those of the Monkey King.
Yup, that’s my husband.
The biggest monkey of them all.
On Sunday we got back from a week long vacation and I am swimming in pictures and stories.
So many pictures and stories that most of them will get lost in the shuffle and hardly any will make it on here.
Which is why I thought about doing more blogging while we were gone.
But I didn’t because when we leave town I have an internal conversation that goes something like this:
Me: I should blog about this.
Myself: Yes, but then everyone would know you aren’t at home.
Me: So?
Myself: Well… you know they say bad people will figure out you are gone, where you live and go ransack your house while you are away.
Me: Those people have got to have something more lucrative to do than ransack our house! That would be a waste of time!
Myself: Well, they don’t know that there is nothing worth ransacking until they start ransacking.
Me: But seriously Myself, we have the shotguns with us, not to mention the camera and computer, what could they possible take?
Myself: Nothing, but they don’t know that we don’t have a T.V. or a stereo from this decade with a working power button or any other fun gadgets.
Me: Exactly, what are they going to do, steal the chickens??
Myself: You never know!
Me: I would be sad if my chickens were stolen.
Myself: See!
Me: I suppose then if it does happen all the people who told me never to blog when I’m gone will wag fingers and “I told you so” me – and I hate that.
Myself: As do I.
Me: So we shouldn’t blog.
Myself: Right.
Me: Even though it’s a paranoid, silly reason that we don’t believe in.
Myself: Right, because now we’ve had this discussion so that makes it more real.
Me: It does?
Myself: Yes.
Me: Oh…. Ok, no blogging.
Myself: Hmmm but if there is NO blogging then people could figure out we are gone because we normally blog and it’s a holiday and…
Me: Myself?
Myself: Yes?
Me: Shut up.
Myself: Sorry.
Out of the blue Ivy told me: “Mom, you know what? Almost every time you are right.”
I resisted the temptation to gloat, thanked her instead, and life was good.
But that was yesterday…
It’s a wee bit damp here.
Not to worry, we happen to have a flotilla worth of boats in the barn.
I figured the people go in the first canoe and we’ll string the rest up behind.
We’ll fill another canoe with chickens, one with the essential “stuff”, the dogs can bring up the tail in the kayak and the ducks will swim along next to us.
So go ahead, you stationary front you, drop all the rain you like.
I’m prepared.
Just please, please stop with the giant cracks of thunder at five AM, they cause… disharmony… in my household.
Sometimes I have a picture that just begs to be shared but my mind is too full of the rest of life (You know like selling our house to the DOT attempting to buy another house, packing, baking cakes, feeding kids… stuff like that.) to write something that will do it justice.
So today I’m cheating and asking you.
How would you caption this picture?
Behind the Willows 