Category Archives: Uncategorized

My Kindly Torturer

Early in the morning my kindly torturer sneaks into my bed and snuggles in beside me as I drift back to sleep.

Then she rolls over, and sighs.

Then she kindly covers me with half of her nasty, soggy, stinky, chewed on blanket.

Then she wiggles.

Then she gently rubs my back.

Then she sighs and traces the line of my pajama top ever so gently.

Then she rubs my foot.

Then she traces the letters on my pajamas with her finger.

Then she cuddles in next to me.

She never says a word, she’s very quite, very gentle, very kind.

When I give in and open my eyes and say good morning she gives me a hug and says she loves me,  I return the sentiment.

But the kind, gentle, loss of that last hour of sleep is so painful.

Keeping my mouth shut so as not to scream:  “STOP TOUCHING ME! GET OUT OF MY BED! I’M SLEEPING!” requires so much will power.

Not crushing her spirit as I throw her from the room requires so much effort from my sleepy brain.

Then I start the day swinging between guilty feelings about my decidedly unkind thoughts about my kind daughter and feeling completly justified in my irritation that my day started out with a bit of torture.

There is something magic about that last hour of sleep. Go ahead interrupt me every hour all night, pee in your bed causing me to change it at three AM, cry, whine, throw up, anything, all night, whatever, whenever.

Just please, please let me sleep that last hour.

Please?!?

Spelling

I am a bad speller.

A very bad speller.

I have not been able to spell well – ever.

I shall never live down practicing spelling words in my friend’s kitchen and getting hung up on sweater, which kept coming out as swearter.

Just so you know it is not true that reading will improve your spelling.

Reading more improves vocabulary.

Bigger words are harder to spell.

In my case, that has just made my spelling worse.

But now I have spell check to help!

Which is great help except when it isn’t.

I am sad to report that spelling a word so poorly that spell check can’t figure out what I’m trying to say is a regular occurrence.

Very regular.

It’s happened twice so far in this post.

To make matters worse, now my fingers are betraying me.

Tommorow never comes out right, nor does, untill, recomend and a slew of others. I think I’ve typed them wrong so many times that they are stored in my fingers’ muscle memory incorrectly.

And then there is my nemesis:

Minet.

Minuet.

Mineut.

Minute.

Tonight I’ve been writing about the River Run canoe race, and my nemesis has been cropping up quite a bit. So, if you ever notice that things are taking a few slow graceful dances instead of a few 60th’s of an hour, please forgive me.

I’m sure my editor will catch it, eventually…

My Flash

My flash and I are not friends.

Often when I try to use it I end up with blown out pictures, washed out faces and dark shadows.

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

I have learned that my flash and I get along best if I stand as far away as possible from the subject of my photo but even with that effort on my part we are still barely on speaking terms.

Today I was ignoring my flash who, evidently, was feeling left out and malevolent because it went off when I wasn’t expecting it.

It was a shocking event to say the least!

Jane and I have vowed not to say a word to my flash for at least a week in response to that rude surprise!

Two Years of Rainbows and Sunshine

As of today I have been blogging for two years.

Two years!

I thought about writing a nice thank you post to all of you wonderful people who take the time to see what I’ve had to say. I thought of telling you all that comments make my day bright and sunshiny with rainbows and singing birds.  Of how I wish that all you lovely people who take the time to stop by and read are visited by leprechauns bearing gold, surrounded by pink and purple butterflies and live lives free of athletes foot… And while that’s all true, it’s a bit overly sentimental for my tastes.

Then I thought I should give away something. All sorts of blogs give things away, like cameras, and ipads… then reality struck.  Reality continued to rear it’s ugly head as I realized that even a nicely priced packet of flower seeds still needs to go in the mail. Which would mean a visit to the post office. It would be sad and pathetic to intend to give away something and then never actually get it in the mail.

I try not to be sad and pathetic. So, I did the only sensible thing left to do.

I made chocolate cupcakes.

The girls and ate them in celebration of two years of fun, story sharing, picture taking, sanity saving blogging.

We shared them with you all in spirit, and they were just as tasty as barley flour cupcakes can be.

Thanks for visiting and may you all be as happy as Jane!

T is For Toad

Ivy went looking for bugs under logs and found this toad.

Note: My daughter's not jaundiced, she just likes to be a dandelion fairy!

Shortly after the big discovery Ivy ran for the house to show Clara. When I walked in Ivy was headed up the stairs, toad in hand.

Me: “Whatcha’ doin’ Ivy?”

Ivy: “I’m going to play with my toad!!!”

By the time my camera and I wandered upstairs to see what was happening the toad had peed on Ivy and the carpet.

This didn’t surprise me because not only is pee a toads M.O., the play room is the only room left in the house with carpet. Murphy’s law strikes again!

After the toad met a few of the locals…… and was completely unimpressed… …Ivy brought him back to his little toady hideout.

Toads, cameras and kids it makes for a hoppin’ good time!

A Clara Moment

The scene: It is late morning, I am in my bedroom rocking and burping a very sleepy Jane while reading my book with the door closed.

Clara enters: “I come say goodnight Jane.”

Clara puts her nose on Jane’s nose and says: “Goodnight Jane! Goodnight Jane!”

Clara looks up and points at two Diet Coke cans sitting near me: “What those doing there?”

Me: “I’m drinking them.”

Clara stalks over to inspect cans: “Oh, this one nothin’ in it. Just tiny sip for me.”

Clara walks out attempting to suck the last drops out of my Caffeine Free Diet Coke and slams the door behind her.

Jane and I return to quiet rocking.

Coming Down!

In this weeks photo challenge I used one of the pictures I took of Tyler taking down a tree for us over the weekend.  Since then I’ve been trying to post more but the computer was winning the “do I get to look at photos on the computer or not” argument the last few days and it wasn’t until tonight that I got the upper hand with the computer and was able to upload some more.  The main branch was just outside my bedroom window which accounts for the “birds eye” view of some of the action.

Before the cutting started. The tree had been trimmed many times by the power company leaving only one big branch that leaned out toward our house.

Planning the cuts.

Branches start coming off.

More planning.

My favorite of the cutting pictures.

Branches falling everywhere but on the house. Yay Tyler!

I’ve always liked watching trees get taken down, but I officially like photographing trees getting cut down best!

Thanks again Tyler!

Speech Therapy

As a mother I worry. While I like to think that my worry levels rate pretty low on the scale of mother worrying I still do it. I can’t help it. John, he’s the Dad, worry is not in his job description, so as the Mom I’ve got to pick up a bit of the slack.

Currently I’m worried that Ivy may have a speech problem.

She seems to add this superfluous  “mmmm” sound to the beginning of everything and let me tell you, in addition to worrying that her new speech issue will affect her fluency and general communication, it’s beginning to drive me crazy.

We tried working on it today:

Ivy: “Mom, can I…”

Me: ” You already have my attention just say can I, you don’t have to say Mom.”

Ivy: ” Mom, OK but…”

Me: “No, don’t say Mom, just say OK.”

Ivy: “Mom, OK, Mom can I…”

Me: “No, hear the “mmm” don’t make the “mmm” sound.”

Ivy: Mom, can I…

A speech therapist I am not.

Then we went to Farm and Fleet and she continued to make that awful “mmm” noise. Except the “mmm” had evolved into a full fledged “MMMMMOOOOOMMMM!!!!!” complete with lots of tears eliciting quite a few looks of pity from other shoppers.

I think they must have been worried about her speech problem too.

Utter Confusion

One morning I sent John and Clara out to do a little job for me with the tractor and the chickens and only Clara returned home.

After a bit, I started wondering where John went and when I headed out the back door to find him I saw this:

The amount of time that I stood staring at the pants and shoes in utter confusion, with a hint of panic, is a bit embarrassing but no doubt directly correlated to the fact that I had yet to finish my first cup of tea for the day.

Did I ask him to do one too many jobs with the chickens and he lost his mind?

Did Clara’s demands finally push him over the edge?

Had my husband truly stripped off half his clothes and run away from home?

That’s when the light bulb turned on.

Run.

He was going to try barefoot running, and sure enough when I stepped around our dirty truck, I saw John (thankfully wearing shorts) and both dogs running up the hill.

I breathed a sigh of relief and went to go find my cup of tea.