I told my daughter to pick up the blanket and cot her friend slept on the one night. I have dowels at the end of the hall where I hang blankets.
To gather up a large blanket, fold it in a reasonably neat fashion and pull it over the dowel does take some effort, but it’s very doable, I do it all the time.
Yesterday I had a sudden, unexplained urge to reorganize something, so I tore apart our pantry and started putting in new shelving. This morning I woke up feeling impending doom, and it wasn’t because I hadn’t finished organizing our pantry yet. I think it’s because today is the last day of school.
Ahhh! Or should I say AARRGG? It’s time for the kids to be home for the summer. It can be a wonderful, bonding experience, but for the most part it is a lot more work for me.
If it were up to them, their summer would consist of staying up until their father left for work at 4:30am, sleeping until late in the afternoon, playing on the computer, Gameboy or Wii, watching TV and starting it all over again.
Last summer when we were camping in our RV, I told one of my daughters, who shall remain unidentified, to do the dishes.
So the first mowing of spring was actually done by my husband a few weeks ago. Let’s get something straight though, it took him several hours and several distractions to actually get anything like the lawn mowed down. And he only did “the edges.” By the edges I mean he didn’t move any lawn furniture and he didn’t mow the front yard.
Some days I keep thinking of all the things I need to get done, then I forget what they were. If I hope to get anything done, I have to make a list. I actually love making lists, but more importantly I love crossing things off a list. I even write down things I’ve already done just so I can cross them off. It makes me feel productive.
I have officially declared this a good week! A good week is directly determined by how quickly I finish the laundry.
I don’t have space to pile laundry as I, quite literally, only have a “laundry hall.” It is a hallway between the kitchen and the master bath.
As I’m sitting here writing this, I’m looking out the window at the sky and the trees. This is significant because I wasn’t looking out at the sky and trees last week. I was looking at a wall. The computer/craft/guest room is actually our garage. We had it enclosed 10 years ago for my mother to live with us after my father passed away. She lived with us a couple years then opted to move back to her nice quiet mobile home in the woods. Go figure. It has actually been a blessing to have this extra space as the kids have gotten older. They are housed in our former guest and computer rooms; their bedrooms. So it’s been handy to spill over into the garage as our house was only 1100 square feet to begin with.
I have forgotten how to have fun. It’s rather pathetic, but I realized the other day I struggle to have fun in my every day life. I was contemplating my inability to have fun and thinking of all the times I’ve had fun: partying in my 20’s, dating, getting married, delighting in my little kids, watching them discover the world. It was somewhere in the “delighting in my little kids” when I think I stopped having fun.
Somehow instead of living with a human family, I seem to have acquired a fledging of ducks. For the record, a fledging is a bird that is capable of flying but is still dependent upon parental care and feeding.
Sometimes my daughters asks me what I do all day. After one especially frustrating day, I decided I should write out what my typical daily activities are so they know what I do all day.
Time for resolutions; which I try not to make. I feel like making resolutions sets me up for failure and I do not enjoy going into the New Year failing. Life throws out enough challenges to overcome without adding my own.
I make about 30 pounds of almond roca every Christmas. It’s weighed and packaged in eight ounce treat bags and we give them as gifts for family, friends and teachers. I have learned to give families their own bags, as there has frequently been fighting among spouses over who is eating the most candy.
When I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, my husband and I would joke about how we were going to have twin boys. We were going to name them Gearatio (gear ratio) and Gearoil (gear oil) in reverence to my husband’s passion for street rods. Obviously, we didn’t have boys. We have two girls, two and a half years apart in age.
As I was peeling the very sticky wrapping off one of the cupcakes my 13-year old daughter made, I noticed it wasn’t just the cupcake wrapper that was sticky, it was the counter. A friend of mine told me that when her teenage daughter decides to bake, she thinks of a long lost article I wrote when our children were little. It started with “I was a good mom today, I let my kids paint.”
One day I replaced the soap pump in my daughters’ bathroom as my oldest was standing there. When I got upset that I had purchased a straight soap dispenser and not a foaming soap dispenser, my daughter asked what the problem was. I explained to her it just dispensed straight soap instead of foaming soap. She said,”So?”
I looked up at my, 5 foot, 10 inch daughter and it slowly occurred to me that the reason for having a foaming dispenser was gone.
With two teenagers who know everything and two adults who are so not cool anymore, finding a family outing where we can all have fun is sometimes a miracle.
I took my 13-year-old daughter shopping for jeans yesterday. She has grown 4 inches this past year and it seems we have been shopping for jeans every three months or so.
Several years ago, when my daughters were still shorter than me, my husband went to work sparkling. I’m not saying he has a scintillating personality, although if you need a bad joke to cheer you up, he’s your man. I’m saying big, tall, bearded, jet-engine mechanic, tough guy was walking around the factory floor sprinkling fairy dust all over. I knew about this, I just didn’t think he’d notice. Our youngest daughter got some new glitter jeans.
One October, when my kids were probably 6 and 8 years old, we took them to Carpinito’s corn maze.
The day we decided to take the kids to the corn maze was one of those beautiful fall days; the sun was shining, the leaves were turning their brilliant reds and oranges, and there was a chill in the air that reminded you of fall, but wasn’t too cold.
