Today's Outlook: Not Good. Tomorrow's Outlook: Well, Shoot.

This day is best described as a strong gust of wind that left me out of breath and barely standing.  I have a day like this about every two weeks and I'm fairly certain that it's life's way of balancing things out.  This allows the next thirteen days (give or take a few) to be calm and run smoothly.  So as I type this, I am lying in bed, completely exhausted and with one eye propped open with duct tape.  I keep remembering all the things I forgot to do because there was just so much not-on-my-list stuff that decided to make its way into today that twenty-four hours just wasn't enough.  But whether I'm ready or not (I am), this day is coming to an end so all that was forgotten can just remain in yesterday.  I won't even try to take you on a verbal tour of the day's happenings.  Let's just all be glad it's over.

Tomorrow: another funeral.  This is not exactly how Day 1 of Calmness usually starts out after a day like today, but here's hoping.  My favorite part of funerals (yes, I have a favorite part) is the reminiscing.  It's amazing to hear everybody's favorite stories of one person from all different aspects.  And  my favorite of all funerals (yes, I can have a favorite funeral, too) was my Uncle Marvin's.  The pastor admitted that he didn't know my uncle all too well, so he opened it up to 'the floor' to share favorite memories of him.  My uncle was a very hilarious man.  So it was only fitting that his friends and family members stood up one by one and told funny stories of him and things he did.  Imagine (unless you were there, in which case: remember) being in a funeral home where it is so very common to weep and there we all are, letting out our most hearty, deep-down belly laughs.  It didn't even feel wrong.  In fact, it felt great.  It felt like he was there laughing with us (and I know he was).  Ever since then, I have only wished at every funeral that has followed that we could have joy like that again instead of the constant sadness that typically lingers around funerals.  But I suppose that depends on who the funeral is for and whether they would appreciate laughter over tears.  For the record, I would appreciate laughter. 

Healthy again. Darn it.

Much to my dismay, I am not sick today.  Hmmph.  It had been two days since I last ran, but it felt like months.  I have yet to end the day saying, "I wish I hadn't run today," so I grumpily put on my jogging shoes and headed for the treadmill.  But the safety key was nowhere to be found.  I suddenly flashed back to Sunday afternoon when my nephew told me, "Kyler hid the safety key so I can't run on the treadmill."  Except I took no action.  So this is what I get.  I had two choices.  1.  Don't run.  or 2.  Run in the hot sun.  And as much as I didn't want to, I did it anyway.  Guess what?  I don't regret it.  Though, my timing could have been better.  Our front yard is a corn field and of course the day I am forced to run outside is also the day they're plowing the field.  And as luck would have it, the plow exited the field at almost the same exact time that I finished my run. 

The dogs have been barking at nothing quite a lot lately.  Today, Kenny decided that he, too, would bark randomly at nothing.  Of course, this really got the dogs going, howling and running from window to window and trying to figure out what Kenny was barking at.  If the dogs started talking people-language out of nowhere, I would stop and consider how strange the whole situation is.  But when Kenny starting barking dog-language out of nowhere, they just ran alongside him, happy that somebody was talking to them.  How strange.

And now I am off to the shower.  You know how they say each person has a specific smell when they sweat?  I'm proud to say that I have pinpointed my exact smell today.  I smell like a tortilla chip.  Not all the time; just after I run. 

The Greater Three

I am sickly today.  And loving it.  You heard right.  Being sick means that I don't have to work and my family waits on me, bringing me endless bowls of ice cream and taking over all household chores for the duration of my illness.  I will probably still be sick tomorrow and maybe even the next day. 

My husband...not that it needs to be said, but he is a goofball.  He finally brought something up to me that's been apparently bugging him for years.  He told me of a text that my sister, Tania, had sent earlier in the day.  He then read me the text.  Next, he said, "I'm the lesser of the family, aren't I?"  I asked what he meant by that and he said, "You, Kyler and Mae are the greater three.  I'm the lesser."  I let him know that I was totally confused and he said, "Tania's texts.  At the end of every text she sends, she puts greater three.  Sometimes other people do it, too."  I knew immediately what he was talking about.  <3.  I told him to turn the phone sideways and he will see a heart.  He said, "Oh crap, you're gonna put this in your blog, aren't you?"

Revisiting my hometown this weekend was as usual.  Everything's the same.  Exactly the same.  Except they changed the name of the bar but nobody calls it by its new name.  They still call it the old name, completely ignoring that somebody new has taken ownership and changed the name.  So I suppose when things do actually change, the change is just ignored. 

Something I love:  A semi-driver decided that he wanted some snacks from the gas station just off of the highway, but the parking lot wasn't big enough for his truck.  He pulled over on the side of the highway.  Wearing only hawaiian boxer shorts, a wifebeater and flip flops, he ran across the highway as fast as he could, beer belly nearly smacking him in his own face.  As he swan-leaped past me while I was pumping gas, he thanked me for laughing at him and he was really sincere about it.  Honestly.

And here comes Kyler with a bowl full of chocolate ice cream made especially for me.  I guess that means I should end this. 

Back-to-school Blues

I feel that I have been neglecting my blog over the past week.  School started, a new baby niece was born and...staring contest!

There, now you're up to speed again.  I have also been on a very uncharacteristic organization mission.  Every kitchen cupboard has been emptied, cleaned and organized.  Every closet is clean.  Our trash barrels are overflowing and the nice workers at Goodwill know me on a first-name basis by now.  I hope this doesn't mean I'm about to die or something.  You know...how they say people do stuff out of the blue before they die that doesn't make any sense, like clean up life's messes so that nobody else has to deal with them?  Yeah, I hope that's not why I'm cleaning.  But if that's what happens, you read it here first.  And if I die, tell Kenny to look inside of the blue treasure chest.  There is actually no blue treasure chest to be found, but it will give him something to do instead of sitting around being sad.

A photo that my sister showed me last week brought back one of my favorite childhood memories.  She took a picture of tadpoles swimming in a ...creek?  Pond?  Something like that.  It reminded me of how we used to catch a whole slew of tadpoles each summer.  We'd put them in a fish tank in our room and watch them morph into toads.  It was really the coolest thing to witness.  Like watching a child grow in fast-forward.  So, a couple days later, when Kenny and I took the kids to the river and he said, "Look, tadpoles!" I just couldn't pass up the opportunity.

Except catching them wasn't as easy as I remember.  I had no net and the small pool of water that held the tadpoles was surrounded by mud.  Kenny started picking up large rocks and throwing them in the mud to make a path.  When the path was completed, he stepped onto the first rock and went sliding down the mud hill on his back.  Best entertainment ever, he is.  But to be completely honest, by the end of the day, Kyler was the only one who hadn't fallen in the mud. 

After I carefully slid down the mud hill in my bare feet, I used a plastic Wal Mart bag (it's all I could find!) to gently sweep up the water.  The first fifteen tries produced three minnows and a snail.  I finally decided that I must have scared the tadpoles to the other side of the pool, so I trotted around with my now bigfoot-looking mud-sopped feet.  (This is where I fell victim to the mud myself and Kenny made sure that I heard him laughing).  I said out loud, "This is my LAST try", because I was becoming frustrated and Kenny was still laughing at me.  And what do you know?

I caught some!  The funny part is that in the mucky water, we counted two.  When we got home and dumped them into clearer water, as you can very well see, there are more than two.  The kids are loving watching them and feeding them, but I am sitting in front of the cage most often.  They are just so interesting.   Or maybe I'm just so dull.  Either way, I'm happy.  And they get to live, which they wouldn't have if they'd been left in the puddle by the river that was quickly drying out.

Moving on (though I'll be sure to upload pictures of our morphing little friends)...

On the morning of the first day of school, it seemed like the perfect start.  The kids dressed in their new clothes and ate breakfast and talked excitedly about what the day would hold.  Kenny even walked with us to the end of the lane to see them off.  I waited impatiently all day for them to get home so I could hear about their day.  When they finally entered the front door, I asked, "How was school?"  Kyler said, "Good." and Mae said, "Worst. Day. EVER.  I HATE school."  I asked why and she said, "Because it's stupid and boring!"  Apparently, she set her first-day standards too high and it did not meet her expectations.  She was not at all happy to find that they would be reviewing rules and stuff they learned last year.  She wanted to learn new stuff.  I told her that maybe not everybody remembers everything from last year and she said, "Well, maybe they should just go back to second grade then and quit wasting my time!"  Oh.  Good.  She has her dad's patience.  The rest of the week went much better.  Thank goodness.

And now we embark on week two of school.  Week fourteen of running.  Week five hundred nineteen of marriage.  Week one-thousand five-hundred seventy-five of life.  I clearly have too much time on my hands now that the kids are gone all day.

Scared and Prepared.

It was the perfect fall-like morning to go running.  Except it's only mid-August.  The confused trees are dropping yellowed leaves onto the ground way too early.  It has me wondering if winter will come in September this year.  It feels so strange to shiver after the steaming summer we've endured. 

I made the mistake of telling Kenny that I am fearful of being stalked by a mountain lion when I run.  Not that I've heard or seen anything suspicious, but I run through the woods right by a creek, so it could happen.  This confession immediately launched him into an hour-long tutorial on survivalism.  This was, of course, followed by several role-playing scenarios, in which Kenny was the fierce mountain lion and I was me.  In one such act, he had my left arm in his mouth and was growling.  I did nothing.  He released my arm from his mouth and asked, "Aren't you gonna fight back?"  I told him I was using my 'playing dead' tactic.  He said, "I'm trying to KILL you!  You're gonna have to fight!  Now use your good arm to punch me in the throat!"  How come nobody shows up unexpectedly when stuff like this is happening?  At least then I would have somebody to laugh with because Kenny doesn't see the humor in this at all.  He takes life very seriously.  I suppose I wouldn't laugh if it was truly a mountain lion attacking me.  Or maybe I would now because maybe I would picture it being Kenny.  And then maybe the mountain lion would be like, "What are you laughing at?" and then I'd tell him and we'd be friends.  Yeah, probably that's what would happen.

I can't believe school starts tomorrow.  I feel so unprepared.  I haven't even picked out my first-day-of-school outfit.  Tonite is Open House and I'll have to go it alone since Kenny will be at work.  Ever since he got stuck on this crappy shift, strangers find it safe to assume that I am a single mom.  I even had one mom tell me, "Hey, we should go out some night.  Single moms like us gotta live it up, you know."  I told her I'm not a single mom (not that there's anything wrong with that) and she then questioned me on my husband and how long we've been married and where does he work and why has she never seen him?  She seriously seemed to not believe me.  Do people really think I'm making him up?  Like when you're on a bad date and you have your friend call you with "an emergency" to get you out of it?  Do people think I have "a husband" as an excuse to not go out?  Gosh, before you know it, I'll also be saying I have "kids" and a "house."  Pffft.

Mae is counting down the days to her birthday and making sure that I am well aware of it at least three times per day.  She wants cupcakes for her classmates and roller skating with her friends and a sleepover that night and she knows she'll get it all because it's her day.  Except it used to be our day.  She asked me about a week ago, "Mom, WHY did you get married on my birthday?"  I asked her back, "I didn't, but WHY were you born on our anniversary?"  She said, "Oh yeah..." and then thought of more stuff she wants for her birthday.  So we will be reminiscing over the past ten years of our lives amid screaming, hyper girls on roller skates.  Sounds romantic.  Here's to ten more!  (Years, not kids.)

An unexpected Thursday deal

Mae made the executive decision to sell her nearly life-sized Barbie house.  And it sold very quickly (thanks, Dena)!  This free'd up a good portion of space in her room.  We decided that in our never ending quest for household organization, a shelf would be the next ideal purchase.  So practical, a shelf.  Fills the emptiness and cleans the clutter at the same time.  And Mae has clutter like you wouldn't believe.  I am doing all I can to ensure that she will not appear on a future episode of 'Hoarders'. 

One year ago, I purchased two bookshelves from craigslist for five dollars each.  My books and framed photos have been living happily ever after since then.  So logic directed me once again to craigslist.  I simply typed in "shelf" and began browsing through the mess of shelves.  And since my item description was not very descriptive at all, of course it brought up everything for sale with the word "shelf" in it.  As fate would have it, I ran across this:

It's a bed with a desk (and a shelf, of course) underneath it.  I didn't even know such a thing existed.  If you've not been in our house at bedtime, you might not understand why this makes me so excited.  So, I'll tell you.  Kyler has bunk beds.  For the past few years, Mae has refused to sleep in her own bed (except for a couple of times on accident).  She prefers Kyler's top bunk because, "It makes sleeping fun."  Kyler complains because he likes to sleep on the top bunk every other night.  He's all about fairness.  Bedtime means I have to hear them argue.  Mae always wins and Kyler has grown used to it, but I do feel bad for him having to constantly accommodate his sister's bedtime needs.  So this is beyond perfect.

And it gets better.  The description on the ad said that the little girl who currently owns this bed is suddenly afraid of heights and refuses to sleep there so they need to sell this one to buy a regular bed.  As quickly as I could, I picked up the cell phone and texted the number on the ad.  My text said, "Would you be willing to trade beds?"  Approximately one minute later, I received this reply:  "I am sure you have the wrong number but I would like to help you.  Just tell me how."  I compared the dialed number to the ad number and sure enough, I had put a six where a two should be.  I apologized, then re-sent the text more carefully.  After an exchange of photographs, we will be doing a straight-across bed trade on Saturday.  I love deals like this that involve no money. 

And that's how a craigslist fail turns into a craigslist win-win.

And since I'm feeling especially spry today, here's another great story that is less about good deals and more about my funny kids.

Yesterday, we were driving down the highway when a tow truck pulled out right in front of us.  This happens to me a lot and I often joke about my 'invisible car' but it gets less funny each time.  Anyway, brakes were slammed on and words came out of my mouth without thought.  After I quit shaking, I said to the kids, "I'm sorry you had to hear that.  I should not have called that man a retard.  I don't even know him."  Mae replied with, "It's okay, Mom, he couldn't hear you."  And Kyler said, "You should have flipped him off, too."  And while I highly doubt he did it (though he is rather sneaky and sly), I suddenly got this wonderful picture of my son in the back seat of our car, flipping off reckless drivers along the way.  Not typical, but hilarious.  Wouldn't you laugh?  I would laugh really hard if a kid in the back seat of a car flipped me off.  I'm not even sure why it's so funny but it is.  Or maybe it's just me.  Please encourage your children to flip me off if I ever pull out in front of you.

Bored at the pool should not be an option.

I've been trying to squeeze in as much swimming pool time as possible lately.  Seven days is all we have until school starts.  I spent a good majority of my childhood at the swimming pool (hence the sunspots scattered across my face) and it sort of made the rest of my life dull.  There was no place I'd rather be as a kid. 

But yesterday, something terrible happened.  Ten minutes before closing time, Kyler pulled himself out of the pool, walked slowly over to me and moaned, "I'm bored."  I have only ever heard of one type of 'bored' used as such in this type of sentence and it is defined as follows:

bored/bôrd/

Adjective:

Feeling weary because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one's current activity.

I immediately assumed that Kyler mistook this word for something else so I stayed momentarily calm and asked, "What do you think the word bored means?"  He rolled his eyes and said, "It means I'm ready to go home."  I choked on my own gasp and stuck my fist in my mouth to avoid saying something inappropriate. 

 

Just then, Mae mosied over to us to see what was going on.  Mae: the child who is always on my side and wants to make me happy.  She said, "What's going on?"  With a quivering lip, I said, "Kyler's BORED.  At the POOL.  The POOL!!!"  I expected her to immediately tell him off while hugging me and shielding me from anymore bad talk.  Instead, she looked sympathetic and said, "Yeah, I'm bored, too."  Without further ado, we packed up and headed home.  It was a very quiet ride.

 

It occurred to me that they did the same thing at the fair last weekend.  After the rides, as we were touring the exhibits and animal barns, they complained of boredom. 

 

I hate to start any sentence with the words, "Kids these days..." but really, what has changed?  The only thing I can think of is that we are such an on-the-go family.  When I was little, we were always home. ALWAYS.  To go anywhere was a great thrill; even just to ride along to the gas station.  After returning home from the pool, I announced to the kids that we will be staying home for the remainder of their summer break.  This was meant to be a threat, but they both threw their arms in the air and said, "Yay!!  I love home!!"  And it hit me: they do love home.  So the saying is true:  Don't spend so much time trying to give your kids the things you never had or you might miss out on giving them the things you did have.  Except I did have the pool and I would never choose home over water, but to each their own, I suppose. 

 

So...who wants to come babysit my kids so I can go to the pool?

 

 

 

Eating out is always an adventure.

Tonite, we dined out, just me and the kids.  Something extraordinarily strange happened: the family at the table next to us was more embarrassing and ludicrous than us.  Kyler and Mae had a loud discussion about flatulence (their favorite subject) and I immediately pre-threatened them for even thinking about passing any sort of gas at a restaurant.  Just then, the kid at the next table belched loudly.  Of course, my kids were rolling and snorting at this and as much as I think I should be embarrassed every time I take them anywhere, I can't because I'm sidetracked by the same constant thought: I deserve this.  I can't even count the number of times that I intentionally embarrassed my mother in public ("No, Mom!  Don't hit me again!"...in the middle of the grocery store...every time we went there).  And they're not really that  bad.  Usually, their conversations are quite entertaining.  Or maybe I'm just immature.  Either way, we're having fun and I suppose that's what really matters.  And when the next-table'd kid belched, I just had to sneak a peak at his mother because it always interests me to see how other parents act when their kids aren't behaving properly.  And this mom, she was laughing.  I sort of wanted to hug her. 

After eating waaaay too much, we headed to the grocery store.  We got everything on the list.  Well, ALMOST everything.  My grocery list has been compromised and I have only two suspects.

Very nice, children.  And well-played.  Except next time (because I know there will be a next time), if you want to blame it on "Dad", try not to burst out into laughter as soon as I pick up the grocery list.  Also, "Dad" can't write nearly that legibly and we all know it.  

A plethora of blueberries.

I asked Kenny to pick up some blueberries on his way home from work.  He did.  Enough to feed at least three families.  When I saw them in the fridge (taking up half of an entire shelf), I froze for a moment, then inquired aloud, "What am I gonna do with all of those?"  I didn't know that Mae was standing right next to me so I was rather startled when she said, "Make muffins."  But I have never in my entire life made muffins and I don't know how, so why would I want to learn on a Wednesday in August?

Just then, the dryer buzzed so I went to the laundry room to retrieve the clothes.  A few minutes later, after folding and putting away (that's a lie, I didn't put away, I just wanted to pretend for a moment that I'm organized and efficient), I walked back into the kitchen to find Mae swarming the cupboards, cookbook in hand, and piling ingredients onto the counter top.  I asked what she was doing and she replied, "We're making muffins, remember?  Now preheat the oven."  I told her that I don't know how to make muffins and she patted my back and said, "I'll help, don't worry."

Fast-forward forty-five minutes.  The kitchen is now a complete mess, Mae and I have flour all over our clothes and the oven timer is telling us to prepare ourselves for what might very well be a baking atrocity.  We pull the muffins out and to my own surprise, they actually look like muffins.  The kind you can eat.  This is not a normal first-time-trying-a-new-recipe result so I am overwhelmingly happy.

Kyler just so happened to be passing through the kitchen at this very moment (his timing is really impeccable when it comes to baked goods) and he gasped when he saw our creation.  "Mom, did you make those?"  I stood tall and said, "Of course.  Who else would have made them?"  He looked toward Mae and she said, "I helped."  He breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Good job, Mae."  Heeyyyy....

The end result:  The best blueberry muffins I've ever tasted.  I ain't a-kiddin'.  We should do this again.  Maybe another Wednesday in another August.