Tag Archives: John

Good Night

"Honey, come quick!’
I drop my armful of dirty laundry and head out the door to find John looking South and listening.
I join him on the back patio, bare feet chilly in the frosty air.
The full moon gives everything a blueish tinge and even the shaggy dog is quiet except for the click of her toenails on the concrete as she stand by us and we listen.
The road is blissfully silent and all the night seems to hold are the quiet noises of the cows in the pasture near our house.
Then the great horned owl calls again… and again… and again.
We grin and whisper and listen until John attempts to call back and the owl stops.
Our silence collapses into giggles and silly dancing and we head back to our respective Sunday night chores.
It is not until later while settling a fussy child that I hear the owl again.
The sound drifts though a crack in the window that I couldn’t bear to shut entirely on such a beautiful night and as I rock my baby I have a chance to reflect on the day.
And I am thankful.

The Question of the Day

John and Clara were having an exceptionally difficult time getting out of the house this morning and just when John thought they were headed outside and Clara changed direction yet again I heard him frustratedly ask the big question.

 “Why is efficiency never part of your repertoire?”

Clara didn’t answer, she just changed her mind on what hat she was going to wear one final time before they made it out the door and left me chuckling in the kitchen.

Was my laughter because John’s choice of words was so apt for the main Clara frustration of the moment or was it that I had just witnessed the pot calling out the kettle…

I’ll never tell!

This Moment – Shaving

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.

I know this was in the happy photo challenge gallery but it is too perfect of a “this moment” picture to pass by!

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy

Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy

These are a few of the things that made me happy this Wednesday.

Clara got an ant farm for her birthday. John thinks I’m obsessed with it. I think looking at the ants makes me happy!
My husband. Not only does he make me happy but I intended that he be featured in the MINE photo challenge. Sadly I didn’t manage to get a picture of him last week.
Decorating cakes
Oh, Diet Coke, how you make me happy. When combined with chocolate and a good book – bliss. On second thought ignore that book, that book is not making me happy!
Kids and Dogs playing outside together
Flowers from John
Beautiful fall days!

Notable absences are:

Trip – Who is with my brother in Montana happily hunting without me.

Ivy  – Sadly I missed the photo of her and Clara collecting eggs together. Kids playing together while doing chores makes me happy, happy, happy!

And the Ducks  -I challenge you to watch a line of duck walk around and not be just a little bit happier. I also challenge you to get within photographing distance of my ducks without panicking them out of there cute little ducky line.

Hope you also had a happy day!

Update:

In terrible mothering moments of the week I forgot to include Jane in my post. Of course she is a part of my daily happiness – she smiles lots, she giggles, she’s easy going, content and oh so easily overlooked in the chaos of the rest of the house.

On a positive note I haven’t forgotten her anywhere – yet – but I do take roll call when we get in the truck!

Look Before You Sit!

John, having been raised in a home where he was the only male, is fantastic about always putting the toilet seat down. This is a habit I have always appreciated and admired in my husband and for years I have not had to worry about what sort of condition I might find the toilet in.  But this morning my complacency almost lead to catastrophe. I need to remember that now I am in a home that is raising three girls and I must look before I sit.

You just never know who might have used it last!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Today

Weekly Photo Challenge: Today

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.

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.