Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background
I write my “to do” list, and everything else, on a window shaped mirror in our kitchen.
It works great.
The mirror has a central location, it’s easy to change and highly visible.
The down side is that sometimes when I feel as though my list of things to do is overwhelming, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror with the chores imposed over my face and see that it might be true.
1) When you catch a kid coloring on the stairs the biggest worry is that it might be habit forming.
2) To do lists disappear. No longer any need to update, repair or change….well… anything.
3) When the three year old pulls the screen door halfway off the house, a hammer is all that you really need to fix it.
A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
This morning Jane and I were sitting at the table eating breakfast.
Jane was contemplating the finer points of spoon use as it relates to oatmeal.
I was contemplating falling asleep sitting up as I swilled large amount of hot tea and occasionally ducking for cover when the new spoon user got enthusiastic.
It was shaping up to be a quiet, lazy sort of a morning.
Then Clara came downstairs.
She sat at the table, ate a bite of oatmeal and declared that she was going to wash the floor. I was also informed she was going to need help getting her swimsuit on “cause it might get kinda wet.”
An hour later she was suited up and hard at work.
Jane and I, fully awake a de-oatmealed by this time, left Clara scrubbing and headed out to take care of the chores. By the time we were done outside I had a much cleaner floor!
I wonder, if I feed her eggs tomorrow will it inspire window washing?
This weeks photo challenge was to use a picture taken on the day you read about the challenge. For accuracy’s sake I feel I must admit that both those things happened on Friday and then it sat unfinished here until now – such is life.
In any case, Friday John replaced our water softener. The water softener lives in the much avoided basement. Much avoided because it is really more of a cellar – as in a Wizard of Oz, hide from the twister, door in the ground, cellar. It comes complete with flagstone walls, lots of spiders, dampness and more rodents than I’m willing to admit to – in general I try to forget that it exist. The problem is, in addition to its not so inviting ambiance, every time we go down to the basement something is wrong. Frozen pipes, broken water heaters, furnace problems, floods, tornadoes – nothing good happens in the basement. (It is of course possible that my attempting to forget it exists when nothing is wrong contributes to the things that go wrong but that’s not a theory I’m willing to entertain right now.) It seems that the combination of nasty problems in a nasty environment have even inspired my husband to come up with a new life goal- a life goal of filling the basement with rocks. Not just fill it with dirt. No, he wants to move the house out of the way and then to throw large rocks into the basement one by one while laughing maniacally. The basement has not been kind to him over the last few years. (Again this may be because we chose to forget it exists for much of the time, and again, we aren’t going there today.)
Friday when I took my picture the basement was still free of rocks and John was working in a dark, damp, cobwebby corner once again fixing things and mumbling about filling the basement with rocks. I had gone down to lend a bit of moral support… alright, fine, honestly, I had gone down to escape Ivy who was cheerfully following me around demanding all my attention and driving me mad, but I was also lending John moral support and giving him important things like twist ties. I’m sure I was crucial to the job, just ask me. Jane was riding on my back in my new mei tai (Thank you Jenny!) and I blindly snapped this photo of her behind my back as she looked behind us both, up the stairs into the light.
Today is Monday, we have soft water, there isn’t a tornado in sight and the other appliances seem to be functioning normally. I shall now publish this post and go back to pretending the basement doesn’t exist.
Apparently I’ve turned into a scatter brained mother.
I’m blaming it on my kids.
It’s the only explanation I can come up with. I never used to have a focusing problem, well except when I was supposed to be writing a paper or studying for some giant test and would instead decide that I HAD to clean my room first. But that wasn’t a focus problem, more like an evasion technique. I very much enjoy having time to work on one project and keep working on it until it is done. It is one of the things I MISS in my life since having children. I used to eat meals hours late just so I could finish up what I was doing and check another job of the list. So explain to me this morning…
This morning I am blissfully alone, John is out sitting in a tree with a friend and the girls are at their grandparents. I got to sleep in, although just to what time I got to sleep in is hard to say what with Daylight Savings Time messing with life again, but that’s a whole different story.Then I decided I should make some sweet potato muffins for breakfast so that there would be some to share when John and his friend finally get blown out of their trees and until they got here I would work on one of my Christmas presents I’m making.
So I…
-checked the computer and found it was stalled out
-restarted the computer
-started water for tea
-started fire
-checked on computer
-preheated oven
-made tea
-checked fire
-did outside chores
-ate leftovers for breakfast while checking e-mail
-remembered the muffins and the preheated oven
-got half the ingredients ready
-realized I hadn’t fed the dogs
-fed the dogs
-let the dogs out
-washed three dishes
-continued making the muffins
-let Piper back in
-put the muffins in a tin without little paper liners, (why I do not know, I love paper liners, muffins should always have paper liners)
-washed three more dishes
-remembered the project
-sat down on the computer to look up directions
-wrote a blog about how I can’t focus
So back to the children, here is my theory. After multiple years of being unable to focus on any one thing for more than three minutes without hearing; “MOM,” unidentified screaming, or “Guess What?” I think it’s now just become habit that I must completely change direction in what I am doing every few minutes whether I need to or not.
Good thing we are picking the girls up tonight so tomorrow morning when it takes me 2 hours to make breakfast I’ve got a good excuse.
Now what was I going to do?
It’s a gorgeous day outside, sunny, warm, little wind, a rare treat for the first of November.
Even more rare was my urge to clean the kitchen, so I’ve been missing out on the beautiful weather to accomplish this:
Those of you who are perfectionists are probably wondering why there are still cobwebs, a back tag hanging above the sink, dirt chunks on the floor, a hole under the counter where a dishwasher should be and why we still have a counter that was chewed on by a certain Great Dane puppy many years ago.
Those of you who saw my house yesterday probably fell down in shock at the expanse of white counter top visible, pre-chewed or not!
I always run into a problem when I do a major clean, there are just some things there are no good spots for.
The binos, they live next to the microwave. Do we need 3 pairs there? No. Do I have any other place to put them? No.
The oatmeal doesn’t fit in any of the cupboards so it stays on the counter along with the deep fryer.
And then there is the bowl of miscellaneous small items. Screws from the dove cage the girls ripped out that haven’t gotten fixed, tiny bits of hardware for the ice maker water line, and the cat skull that I re-found behind the microwave.
Sometimes my life makes me wonder.
Just as I was beginning to think it was completely ridiculous that I had a cat skull hiding behind the microwave Ivy saw the skull again and said, “MOM that’s really cool! Is that a cat skull?”
Then the two of us had a conversation about what cats eat, (Eyes in front likes to hunt.) what holds teeth in, why skulls are hard and if Granny would like to see it.
Now I’m no longer wondering, we may have some unorthodox adornments in our house but it’s worth it!
(If you are wondering where the skull came from no need to worry it wasn’t a family pet, it was the remains of the cat in Confessions Of A Lawn Hater.)
A Friday ritual . A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
“Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics.”- Seth Lloyd
Just in case you’ve forgotten the second law of thermodynamics, here it is courtesy of Wikipedia :
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and explains the phenomenon of irreversibility in nature.
It involves other stuff as well including Kelvin and Clausius and stuff that looks like this:
–
In case that didn’t make things clear we can look to Woody Allen for help – “It’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Sooner or later everything turns to shit.”
That my friends was how my day went. It started beautifully, with waffles, well behaved children, a clean house and great swimming lessons….. then the second law of thermodynamics hit.
-air went out of tires
-Clara puked
-the house was no longer neat and clean
-things were forgotten
-the computer malfunctioned just exactly when I really needed to put in a DVD for Ivy
-staples could only be found for the hand staple gun while the electric staple gun was the only staple gun seeming to still be in existence
-clippers were dull
-children snuck bubble mix into their beds at nap time
-math functions failed miserably
-building supplies were short
-straw bales fell apart
-stuff broke
-diapers went from clean to dirty
-laundry piled higher
-Clara screamed, and screamed and screamed
and the day was no longer beautiful.
Fortunately by that point there wasn’t much “day” left anymore and we spent a lovely evening with some new friends while watching the entropy attack their house.
Now we have returned home, energy has been spent to attempt to reclaim some of what went awry, plans have been made for tomorrow and I have quit for the day.
Taxes don’t seem to be going anywhere, death is inevitable and one can only do so much against a thermodynamic law, I’m giving up the fight until tomorrow!
*note: The author of this blog realizes that not all of the above items are technically functions of the second thermodynamic law. Some are functions of other laws such as; the law of the kids will be the worst when you need them to be the best, the law of never give Clara anything with dairy in it even on accident, the law of Jessie can’t divide, and most importantly the law of projects with kids never go as planned.
As a general rule children are discouraged from climbing on kitchen counters. But I say…
…if you teach your kid to climb on the counter…
…and you teach another kid to bring her dishes…
…they’ll empty your dishwasher and put away all the dishes. 
Leaving you free to watch and take pictures.
It’s a good deal.
So…
Behind the Willows 