Conspiracy Theory

There are bugs in this state that is considered "Midwest." Lots and lots of bugs. Large bugs. Large bugs that are noisy. Smallish bugs that are poisonous. Very large bugs that are completely benign (and even quiet). Most of our bugs, however, are really qualified to be bugs of a southern state caliber. And let me qualify something here--while this is considered a "Midwest" state, we live in the far southwest corner of this "Midwest" state, and this far southwest corner is a mere 30 minutes north of a "Southwest" state, and a mere 90-ish minutes west of a "Southwest" state. I don't think the bugs here understand that they are not occupying a southern state, or most certainly they would pack up and move a bit more south, or west of us. It must be Global Warming that is confusing them. I realize I post each year at about this time about the bugs where I live. But the bugs here this time of year really are headline worthy.

I won't make this another post about the thousands of massive buzzing green June Beetles that hatch and overrun our neck of the woods each summer for about three weeks. And yes, we are infested with those as I speak.

What I really want to comment on has to do the poisonous spiders that live in the area and which are apparently especially prolific this year, and which we recently discovered have set up house--in OUR house. These spiders are known as Brown Recluse, and in all the years I've lived here, I've never felt the need to know anything more except that such a "boogey-spider" existed in this area. I assumed them to be some big hairy largish critter with large googly eyes, and about the size of a tarantula, and living only in the backwoods of the remotest hunting and camping spots of the region. Or something like that. This was all I needed to know or believe about such spiders. Afterall, while I've been known to hang out in, and thoroughly ENJOY, the backwoods and remote hunting and camping spots in wilder places of the United States (such as the northmost points in Idaho), I didn't live among bugs there. Oh sure, there were Grizzly Bears and the like. But there weren't bugs. And if there were bugs, they must have been quite small, as I never saw them.

When our pastor was recently bit by a Brown Recluse spider, requiring a visit to the Emergency Room, I became morbidly curious. Google is equally handy and horrifying when a person is morbidly curious. I apparently now know more about the Brown Recluse spider than the professional exterminators who have come to our home recently, and who exterminate Brown Recluse for a living. After reciting a couple Brown Recluse facts, he informed me that he had learned something from me that day. That's when I decided I didn't need to talk to Google anymore about Brown Recluse spiders. Too much knowledge isn't always a good thing.

First of all, for those of you who are NOT familiar with these curiously NOT big hairy or googly-eyed spiders, here is a picture of what they look like (don't worry, I'll keep it a small picture):

See? It's not at all hairy. They don't even have barbs on their legs. And while they have six eyes (rather than the eight that spiders typically have) their eyes are not at all googly. And they are not even big. At full growth, their leg span is not typically much wider than a quarter, but they may only reach about dime width. That's a small specimen who can create quite a big injury. I'm not going to talk about the bites here. Suffice it to say that they are quite painful and can cause a big mess. In some cases even death, though more common a necrotic wound that will heal successfully if treated quickly. Nearly everyone I know around here either has been bit themselves, or know someone who has been bit.

After our pastor was recently bit and I launched my research, feeling relatively sure that I had never seen a spider like this, I happened by the sink in our basement kitchenette, where a spider caught my eye. I did a double take, as it looked exactly like the one in this picture. I stooped over as close as I dared, to examine the back of the critter to see if I could see the token "violin" shape. Indeed, there it was. I screamed for Dear Husband, who didn't spend near as much time or get nearly as close as I had to it in order to confirm the identification of it. He swooped in with a folded paper towel and squashed it, shrugging his shoulders and saying, "So?"

So? SO? SO???!!!!!!

Rest assured that I had already ordered some Catchmaster glue traps over the Internet, deciding that I was determined to see what we would catch. The traps arrived the day after Husband squashed the spider in the sink, saying, "So?" I ordered him to place them around the house. Lots of them. I had ordered 60 traps. Within a couple days, we started catching them. We went from not knowing what they looked like and never suspecting them in our home, to catching them by the dozens. I quickly made an appointment with the exterminator, and by the time he arrived, we had caught over 50.

At this point, we had spent two long days tearing apart our large basement storage area and garage. We store out of season clothing and linens in our storage room. And things were stored in cardboard boxes. Isn't that what storage rooms are for? Clothing and linens and boxes? I learned that is what Brown Recluse like to hide in. We tore it all apart, re-storing clothing in vacuum packed space bags and plastic bags with zip ties. We got rid of all the cardboard boxes. We went through everything. We only found about 2-3 Brown Recluse in the process. But in all, in the past three weeks, we have caught or killed about 75 of these critters. I've learned that they are known to be common HOUSE SPIDERS in this area, living in MOST-if not ALL-houses in this area. Who knew? Hairy backwoods spiders, indeeed.

If there can be any comfort in all of this, the vast majority of what we have caught are dime sized or even smaller. There have only been three or so quarter or larger sized. There have been many tiny ones the size of ants. I would guess we've had more than one relatively recent hatching, as we have juveniles at different stages. However, the exterminator told me that even the juveniles are capable of biting and causing damage to human bite victims.

And it provides a bit of comfort to know these spiders are called "Recluse" because they are, by nature, reclusive. They are shy, nocturnal predators that prefer to hide during the day and live in quiet undisturbed corners and crevices. They are not at all aggressive, and are incapable of biting unless their bodies are compressed, as would happen if sat upon, rolled over on in bed, or smashed against your skin when putting on clothing. So this is why bites often happen when you are sleeping at night. Yeah, suddenly my comfort level wanes a bit. In order to be bitten while sleeping at night, that means that the critter has to be IN your bed.

Most of what we've caught have been in the basement--but we have the kind of basement we LIVE in. Our family room, kitchenette, kids' playroom, office--all are in the basement. We have caught them in all of our bedrooms upstairs. We have 60 traps planted strategically around the entire 3,600 square footage of our home. I check them every morning and every night. I am the vacuum queen--vacuuming diligently in every corner and crevice regularly. I'm confident we are now having a dramatic decline, though I won't be satisfied until they are GONE from my home-something I've been cautioned is practically impossible in this area.

And common, indeed. So far, most people in this area I've commented to about our Brown Recluse battle respond that they have seen and killed them in their homes as well or are battling an infestation of their own.

I was even greeted by a largish Brown Recluse in the sink in the ladies' restroom at my office last week. I thought I was losing my mind. I'm pretty sure I muttered, "You gotta be kidding! These things must be following me!" before I wearily sought out one of the guys around the office to take care of it. Guys like to do those sorts of things--it feeds their egos.

Thankfully, no one in our household has been bitten. I'm vigilant to check bed sheets each night and rub the kids down with peppermint oil (speculated to be a deterrent). The exterminator will be back in two more weeks, and I will call him back every two weeks for as long as it takes.

I'll mention only briefly here that during the week that we caught the first 50 Brown Recluse in our home, I also killed a huge Black Widow in the garage. There are two poisonous spiders that live in this region--and both types apparently like our home.

I've thought a bit recently about moving back to the wilderness area of northern Idaho where I never saw bugs, and where I could leave Brown Recluse, massive golf-ball sized buzzing June Beetles, and other assorted very large and very noisy insects behind, and live peacefully in the mountain forests with the Grizzly Bears.

Looking at the Bright Side...

The chicken coop and woodshed project is done and we are now on to cleaning up a massive pile of logs that Dear Husband decided to pay someone to haul and dump in the side yard early last May. Yes, I said early last May. I have looked out the kitchen window onto a 15'x35' pile of logs for the past FIVE months. He apparently saw its potential as firewood. I, on the other hand, have only observed that it is a complete and total eyesore. An embarrassment at times. It sometimes reminds me of a time when I was in late grade school years and my dad decided to buy an old classic VW Beetle. Included in this purchase was a second VW Beetle that did not have any potential as a car that could actually drive. No, the second Beetle was solely for parts for the one that could (usually) have the potential to drive. And so there the "parts car" sat alongside the garage. My dad, quite pleased with himself. My mom, notsomuch.

And so the pile of logs.... Because I want this mess cleaned up, and because I actually enjoy physical and manual labor, and because I've been bored ever since I finished roofing the shed/chicken coop, AND because I love to run a chainsaw, I have been out helping Husband clean up the overgrown mess of wood that now has a place to be stacked (the new woodshed, of course). We wouldn't want "homeless wood" now, would we?

Until about two months ago, I wouldn't have known a Black Widow spider if one would have approached me and asked to shake my hand. I knew they existed around here, but that was in rumor only as far as I was concerned.

Then one day I had a client inform me that she spied a Black Widow on the sidewalk immediately in front of the door to my office building. But she reassured me that she killed it. Being a bit of an arachnaphobe, I was relieved to know that she had killed it. I did ask her how she knew it was a Black Widow, and she said it was black with the telltale red hourglass on it's belly. I actually did not know this information about how to identify a Black Widow, and never had the need to, as I avoid all things spider as much as possible.

A few weeks later I took the kiddos on a field trip to the local nature center, and on display was a Black Widow spider, and a Brown Recluse spider--the only two poisonous spiders that I am aware of that live in this area. I might add that the Wolf spider is much huger and much uglier, but not poisonous. I might also add that until very recently, I did not know that there is also a type of Tarantula that lives in this state. I think I am supposed to be reassured by the fact that this kind of Tarantula is not poisonous. However, I am really not at all consoled, as it is still a huge hairy spider.

A few nights ago I was digging my way through the wood pile and cleaning up debris when I dropped a pretty good size piece of bark that had peeled off a log in the pile. On the underside, which landed up, was a very large Black Widow spider. I recognized it immediately with it's fat round shiny black body, and it was turned at just such an angle that I could see the red hourglass. AND there were two largish egg sacs near it as well. I later learned that these egg sacs each hold approximately 750 babies waiting to hatch. That's 1,500 Black Widow spiders, my friends!

I did what any sensible woman would do whether she is wielding a chainsaw or not: I put down the saw., tried not to pee my pants, and yelled frantically for my husband to come and save me.

I can't help now looking at this still massive pile of logs as the absolute perfect home for thousands of Black Widows and Brown Recluses and whatever number of "non-lethal," but nonetheless horrifying, creatures certainly make it their home. But I try to stay focused on the bright side, which is that if we ever can get the mess cleaned up, chopped and stacked, even if I get bitten by a poisonous spider in the process--one with the potential to kill (don't bother trying to convince me that the odds of dying from such a bite are remote)--at least I will be warm as I lay dying by the roaring fire in the wood stove.

The Fanfare Begins

Summer arrived around here with great fanfare and hustle bustle, and I've gotten swallowed up by it all. As Dear Daughter was wrapping up her first grade year and her homeschool co-op came to a close, there was much upheaval on the home front that really had nothing to do with the school year coming to a close--it just all happened at the same time. The summary of it is that I had to uproot and move my private counseling practice. The move itself was actually the easy part. It began with finding a lease in my budget--which isn't all that easy considering I have a very small budget and do not borrow money to subsidize my business. I also set clear boundaries which, in effect, limits my income potential from said business. My kids come first, I don't use daycare, I love to be at home with them, and I homeschool. That would seem to make owning my own private counseling practice impossible. It's not. I just have to be creative, multi-tasking, diligent, organized, committed, deliberate, and as my pastor would say, "intense with my time." Dear Husband thinks I especially have that last part well covered. I once told him that I longed to be bored, even just for a short while. He informed me that it is not possible for me to be bored. When I considered this, I realized he is right; after all, I have a mental list of stuff I would love to do if I ever got bored, thus making "bored" a non-existent anomaly for me.

As I was saying, the physical move was the easy part. It's the notification of such a move to all the health insurances I provide for that makes changes like this a nightmare. It shouldn't be that difficult. But that has become my theme over the past several years when it comes to working with health insurance companies: "It shouldn't be that difficult!" I'll leave it at that.

So...move is done, dust is settling on that front.

However, in the midst of this upheaval, I managed to leave the dog unsupervised outdoors long enough for him to massacre our entire flock of six two-month-old chicks which we had raised from day-old hatchlings. I was dragging clothes baskets and clothes pins back in from the clothes line, had two kids and two dogs (or so I thought) on my heels as I re-entered the house, and my phone rang. Remember that part before about multi-tasking? Well, when it's a business call, I often have to take it--regardless of whether I have laundry baskets, kids, and dogs in tow.

In the process of all this, Cooper got left behind. Outside. Out of eye sight. I didn't realize it for another 40 minutes. It was 90 degrees outside. The windows were shut, the a/c was on. I was distracted by a phone call and oblivious to the outside world. When I finally opened the front door to look for him, there he sat on the front step. With a dead chicken beside him.

As the realization sunk in, I panicked. I screamed at the dog. I ran outside and discovered he had gotten into their pen and killed them all (or so I thought--until I found one lone survivor who escaped into the garage and was huddling behind the table saw). It was morbid and disgusting, and I felt sick as I cleaned up the carcasses of five dead chickens. I was sure the other one fled while wounded and then laid down to die somewhere on our five acres. I figured I'd find it out on the mower in a few days. If I had had a gun, it would have taken a lot of self-control not to take the dog out back and shoot him in the head. I was so mad. I couldn't even look at the dog without spitting at him for three days. But it gets worse....

The next day I put the lone survivor out in the yard in the rabbit cage to graze. Husband hasn't finished building the coop yet, so they live in the garage at night in this rabbit cage for now. I placed the cage where I could see it from the front windows in the house. It was out of reach from Cooper's dog leash on the zip line Dear Husband put up for them. Baby could reach them, which I intended to remedy by shortening her leash, but hadn't gotten to yet. She never pays any attention to the chickens, so it wasn't a big concern. Cooper's had been shortened that morning already.

Unfortunately, I forgot that there were two different length dog leashes on the zip line. In a rush to get ready for work, I assigned Daughter the chore of putting the dogs on the zip line to go potty before I left. She arbitrarily put Cooper on Baby's leash. That meant he could reach the chicken cage. It would take me ten minutes to pull myself together for work. However, only five minutes into the process, Daughter came screaming into my bedroom, "Mommy Mommy Mommy! You are going to be sooooo mad! I'm afraid to tell you, but Cooper is playing tug-o-war with the chicken's head!"

"WHAT!???!!!!"

I ran to the door and found the last living chicken with his talons curled around the edge of his water bowl, hanging on for dear life. His shoulders were pressed against the inside of the cage, and his head.... Well, there wasn't one. Not on his body anyway. It was lying on the outside of the cage where Cooper had apparently dropped it after ripping it off its body. I quickly surmised that the chicken had poked his head out of the cage to graze on the grass outside of the bars (is the grass ever REALLY greener?). Apparently this is all it took for Cooper (on Baby's leash) to grab it and rip it off its head.

If I thought I was mad the day before, I was beyond livid now. I'm pretty sure I drop-kicked the dog across the front acreage, but it's all a blur now as the rage apparently dulled my memory. I had to leave for work, so I left the bloody mess sitting right there for Husband to clean up. I'd had my fill of dead chickens from the day before.

I still don't know if Dear Daughter was most traumatized by watching the dog rip the head off the chicken, or hearing me scream at the dog and insist for the next two days that he was going on Craigslist to find a new home.

That evening, Husband began building a chicken cage that could compete with Fort Knox. Well, actually not at all close. Nonetheless, he was attempting to build something that would defy the cocky dog (no pun intended--these were hens and not roosters).

We started with a new batch of day old hatchlings, which are now old enough to go out to the yard during the day hours...in their fortified chicken cage that Cooper cannot penetrate. And he is getting his furry butt kicked if he so much as looks at them.

This wraps up the drama for the first week of summer. Next time I'll tell you about the drama for the third week of summer.

Random

****WARNING--Random Brain Dumpage Ahead****

I recently joined the iphone cult. I have to admit, the Koolaid is pretty good.

I'm working hard at staying focused. Thus, my FaceBook perusing has been suspended. I think I've made a couple brief appearances in the past two or three weeks, but my self-control has impressed even me! If I stay focused on the kids' schooling and managing my counseling practice I can manage to scrape up a small amount of down-time each weekend.

I'm visiting my nutritionist regularly to deal with my thyroid and hormone imbalances. Progress is decent. Still have adrenal fatigue, still not assimilating proteins well, still seriously deficient in magnesium and potassium, still not getting adequate thyroid replacement into the cells...but things are better. I'm in month three of my no-grain diet. My nutritionist put me on an interesting diet that includes next to no carbs, moderate protein, and high amounts of healthy saturated fat. I've seen some pretty impressive improvements over the past almost three months. Most interesting, perhaps, is the way my workouts and stamina have increased. According to my nutritionist, our bodies are designed to burn fat for our primary fuel source, thus we need to feed it adequate healthy fat. While I have been nowhere near the amount of exercise I think I should be getting (it's awfully hard when I school the kids all day and work all night), I am working at it. My nutritionist says "No 'breathless' exercise" as that creates too much lactic acid. I can now achieve a slow jog for quiet a long time without becoming "breathless." I couldn't even do that when I was eight years younger, 10 pounds lighter, and before I ever had any babies. Perhaps the best part of all is that I've finally begun to drop that weight that my hypothyroid condition usually prevents me from losing. I'm down 12 pounds so far. About 17 more will put me at my 25 year old weight. That's my goal: to weigh what I weighed at 25 by the time I turn 40. And getting my hormonal issues under control would be nice, too.

We took a brief hiatus from the grind in late March. I took a couple pics with my new cult-ish iphone and never posted. The "ipics" will include a couple of the kids go-carting and a couple of the kids holding the baby chickens.

Yes, we finally took the plunge. I've been begging Dear Husband for chickens for over two years. Last month we got six day-old hatchlings. Dear Husband has approximately 10 weeks left to get a chicken coop built, and with a bit of providence we will have our own farm fresh eggs by fall.

...and with that...I'm back to work. I turn into a proverbial pumpkin at midnight....

My Testosterone is Raging

Dear Husband keeps pushing for more power. He started out with a puny one for the purpose of cleaning up the woods around our property from time to time. Then he got the brilliant idea to install a wood stove and had to buy a bigger one. When he realized that he needed even more power for falling trees and splitting huge rounds, he had to get a bigger one yet. I have to admit, I've protested a bit that the stove project (that Husband talked me into on the basis of how much money we'd save not buying propane) is taking longer and longer to pay itself off with all these chainsaw purchases. Maybe that's why Husband put the new big ass saw in my hands today--he knew if I got to try the thing out I'd be sold. Either that, or he was just too wiped out to use it anymore himself.

This afternoon he pulled up in the side yard with a truck bed full of rounds, some of them at least 36" in diameter. The kids and I pounced on him, helping him unload. There were a few smallish pieces the kids got to help with. Husband and I rolled the biggest ones off the tailgate onto the ground. I'm not a good judge of size, but I'm guessing these rounds weighed between 100 and 150 pounds each. I didn't ask how he got them on the truck in the first place.

When it was all unloaded, Husband asked if I wanted to try out the new chainsaw. Now, anyone who has been reading me for very long, or who knows me at all well, knows that I love me some big ass power. I also enjoy me some good chainsaw therapy. But I looked at the 4 1/2 foot saw skeptically for a moment, wondering if I could manage the thing well enough. I didn't pause for long before I ran to get my steel toed boots. Husband buckled me into his chainsaw chaps and gave me a quick demo. It didn't take much, I know how to run a saw...I just hadn't run one that big before. Before I knew it, I had sawed at least six 36" rounds in half and my adrenaline was pumping. That's when I knew why Husband said he needed bigger this winter. This thing took on those monster chunks of solid wood like a hot knife sliding through butter. Sawdust flew all around me as the motor roared. It was almost effortless.

As I stood back to rest and admire my work, I thought to myself that I should have been a lumberjack! I'm still longing for that log cabin on the side of a mountain in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, living off the land and away from society as I currently know it. I can grow a garden, I can run a chainsaw, I can drive a big ass lawn mower pretty good, too (not sure there'd be much need for this on the side of a mountain). I can also pull fish out of a lake, but aside from fish, I've never killed anything in my life (unless you count that gigantic raccoon I accidentally hit several months ago with the family mobile). Despite all these skills, unless I decide to become vegetarian, I wouldn't survive living off the land without learning to shoot a hunting rifle or a bow...and having the nerve to kill wild game. While I have my strong reservations about that last part, if someone offered me a log cabin on the side of a mountain in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, I think I might just decide to learn.

For the record, if I suddenly disappear without a trace, I haven't been kidnapped; just follow the hum of a big ass chainsaw into the Rocky Mountains and you'll find me.

Whack-a-doodle

It's been a "dry year" at MGM. Many of those that used to follow me faithfully over the years have gotten bored with the chirping crickets here. There are a variety of reasons why things have changed at MGM. The most obvious one is that time has been so limited. My "career by a thread" became much busier than I planned or expected. Then I stumbled into a disaster just over a year ago, which I have eluded to, but cannot--for a variety of reasons--describe in this venue. Not that I could find the words anyway. This "wrong turn" pretty much swallowed me for more than twelve solid months. Add to that the demands of homeschooling an extremely precocious child and her little brother, not far behind her. Then I launched my own private clinical practice last spring. Because I contract with more than a dozen private insurances, each of them requiring me to re-invent the wheel of establishing a partnership to provide services for their members, this has been no small feat. Providing for insurances, including the claim filing and bookkeeping involved, is exhausting. In short, the stress of the past stretch of life has pretty much zapped my joy, energy, time, attitude, and creativity. It's been pure survival!

Somewhere on the path of almost completely losing myself and feeling so swallowed up that I didn't know if I'd ever discover myself again, I have just recently begun to feel "resurrected." Glimpses of myself that I haven't seen for a year and few months are surfacing. I find myself able to enjoy my children every day the way I used to, and I try not to dwell on feelings of anger or resentment at how the past year and few months have been robbed out from under me and my family.

Yesterday, Dear Daughter set up a "tea party" and invited her little brother and I and the two Boston Terriers that live here to the party. The tea party morphed into a birthday party for Baby (the recent doggie addition to our home). I thoroughly enjoyed the act of playing this out with the kids, complete with birthday cake and song. Yes, we all three sang Happy Birthday to Baby at the tops of our lungs while Baby sat nervously in my lap. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that after the wee ones quit singing, I went on at the top of my lungs in my most obnoxious voice and as much off-pitch as possible. Baby so enjoyed it that she began to howl in her little soprano doggie voice. Thoroughly amused by her little quivering chin as she thrust her head to the sky and yowled along with me, I pressed on in competition with her. Cooper sidled up to my knees and lifted his little chin to the Heavens as well and began to howl along in his more tenor-ish voice. I apparently enjoyed these moments of howling with the dogs so thoroughly that I paid little mind to the fact that my children had covered their ears with their hands and were making horrified faces at their mother who had fallen off her rocker. In fact, Dear Daughter decided to practice her safety lesson of a few weeks ago and picked up her toy phone and announced she was calling "9-1-1." I quieted enough to hear what she was going to say. "Yes, hello!" she said to the imaginary emergency response person at the other end. "Please send an ambulance for my mommy! She's gone whack-a-doodle and needs to get to the hospital."

Yes, as backwards and ironic as it may sound, when the kids think their mommy is insane it means things are actually returning to normal.

Not only am I enjoying howling with the dogs, but I can once again find joy and humor in the little things of life. Like when Dear Son climbed into bed in the wee morning hours a couple days ago and did his wiggly jiggly thing that shakes the bed and shakes me awake. I try, in these moments, to stay still with my eyes closed and not let myself be awakened by whatever he is up to. It's pure denial as I try to gather a few more moments of sleep, lest I allow full consciousness to leave me wide awake for the day. Finally, realizing that I could not deny myself back to sleep, I gave up and opened my eyes. The wiggling and jiggling was not subsiding and something lumpy was being shoved under my pillow. I saw my dear boy child looking back at me, his bare feet shoved under my pillow. "What ARE you doing?" I inquired with irritation. "My feet are cold!" he responded matter-of-factly. Of course they are. Dear Husband put the boy child to bed without socks the previous night, despite the fact that the lows for the night reached somewhere around the freezing point, and despite the fact that I requested that the husband would put socks on the child's feet. I'm pretty sure the husband also neglected to put the extra blanket on the boy child's bed. And now he was shoving his very cold, naked feet under MY pillow at the crack of dawn! Of course I could not stay irritated at the child who stared back at me with his yellow curls in a frizzed mess and a combination of a shy-impish grin and incredulousness on his face that I would not find this act of shoving his feet under my pillow completely appropriate and understandable.

These are the things that have escaped the past year. Some of them I'm sure I didn't even notice. Others may have been noticed in the moment, but lost in the sea of stress and left to float for all eternity in some vast pergatory where all the missing pieces of my life go during periods of great stress. I hope one day when I find my eternal resting place I will be able to gather all these pieces back to myself and set them in their proper places in my memory. At minimum, these are the things that I had no time or energy to find joy in over the past year and few months, let alone blog about.

Yes, after a year and a few months of previously unknown levels of stress and exhaustion, it feels good to once again be aware of the small joys in each day, and in my enjoyment of them to re-discover my old "whack-a-doodle" self.

Lunch Lady Land

It was a family bonding moment. After enjoying a late Sunday lunch of chicken enchiladas, pico de gallo, guacamole, and the like, we had us a mess on our hands to clean up. The whole family pitched in, and we were getting pretty goofy and having fun. I suggested to Dear Husband that we needed some music while we cleaned up. Suddenly a few lines from an old song that I haven't heard in nearly two decades crawled through my head. "We need 'Lunch Lady Land'!" I exclaimed. "'Lunch Lady Land'?" Dear Husband replied with a what-in-the-world-are-you-talking-about tone in his voice. "Yeah! That old Adam Sandler song. Don't you know it?" He didn't, which I still find odd, but he quickly pulled it up on YouTube on the kitchen desktop computer and we listened while we worked. The kids found it hysterical, and while I couldn't remember the words when I first suggested the song, my memory came back after a line or two, and pretty soon I was singing "Sloppy Joe...Slop-Sloppy Joe..." into a big soup spoon. Dear Husband wasn't impressed. Amused perhaps, but not impressed. In fact, he refused to play it a second time, much to my chagrin. In addition to having the stoopid song stuck in my head all day, I've also been innundated with all kinds of odd college memories.

Apparently I'm not the only one who hasn't been able to get the song out of my head. Just before bed, Dear Son was wandering around humming the Sloppy Joe line, too. I seem to think this is a lot funnier than Dear Husband does.

It's Gonna Haunt Me!

For those who do not already know this, Dear Daughter is precocious. I hear she comes by it honestly, but I don't like to share that part often. She doesn't miss anything and asks those sorts of questions that stop you in your tracks because you hadn't really ever thought of them yourself until the moment that she asks them.

We indulged Daughter this weekend with her first visit to the community swimming pool. She's been begging for weeks. I personally am not a big fan of swimming in the first place, and certainly not in public pools. To me they seem a cesspool of public piss and spit with some chemicals thrown in. Like I really want to float around in that. Bleh. The whole family went, and as I was getting on my crocs and heading out the door, I spotted Dear Husband's chosen footwear lying in wait. It made me pause, as I had not seen these particular sandals for a couple years--not since we moved to casa de country. I snickered and snorted to myself at these really bad Addidas soccer slide knock-offs, compliments of Walmart. And then I immediately broke out in a version of "I'm Too Sexy"--adding in, "for my shoes" as I did an exaggerated hip hop dance around my husband in the kitchen.

Minutes later, as we pulled out of the driveway in the family-mobile, Dear Daughter asked from the middle row, "Mommy, what does 'sexy' mean?" I just about spit my Coke Zero all over the dash. I didn't think to screen my words amidst the mockery of my husband's fugly shoes and I wasn't quite ready to explain "sexy" to my not-quite-six-year-old daughter. Dear Husband twitched in his fugly sandals and smirked as he said, "Yeah, Dear. Tell your daughter what 'sexy' means." I stammered for the words before settling on the quick explanation that it means "looks nice." Then I changed the subject FAST, and silently prayed she wouldn't tell the pastor's wife at church the next morning that she looks sexy, which would be about as embarrassing as the time she randomly told the pastor's wife that there really is a bird called a "Booby."

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Tonight Dear Daughter and I were saying bedtime prayers, which included prayers for a friend's boy who went through a major life-saving surgery recently to remove considerable length of small intestine. He is now well and demonstrating a miraculous recovery, and as I talked with my daughter about how they had removed a length of intestine twice the length of my body, she asked me, "Mommy, where did they put that intestine that they removed?" I had to clarify what she meant to be sure I understood the question. It also allowed me some stall time to think about what the answer might be. Then I had to admit to her that I am not sure, but that I think hospitals have special containers for human tissue and body parts that are removed, which are called "bio hazards," and that they are probably disposed of in an incinerator. She digested this information for a few minutes (no pun intended!) before asking, "...but what if someone had to have their brain operated on?" She was kind of giggling when she asked it until I explained to her that sometimes people really DO have to have their brain operated on and brain tissue may end up in the same place. She was really serious as she studied my face in the dark. I was concerned she would have some wild nightmares, so I changed the subject again and tried to end on a lighter note before kissing her goodnight. When I walked across the hall a few minutes later, I heard her talking to herself in her room.

Somehow I have a feeling that both of these topics are going to come up again.

I Guess He's on "Boy Time"

Before I explain, I have to admit that I got confused by the instructions (no big surprise there, huh?). You see, I was tagged by Ed at Zoe's Dad for a really fun meme. Only, I couldn't figure out what the sixth file in a person's "documents" had to do with the sixth picture. I didn't have a sixth picture in my "documents" file, and I couldn't figure out what to do with the sixth document either. Sooooo...instead, I went to my "pictures" file and chose the sixth one. This happens to be a pic that I considered blogging about a couple months ago, but decided against it. That was apparently a fortunate choice at the time, or else this post would have been redundant. First of all, here are the rules of the meme:

1. Go to your documents
2. Go to your 6th file.
3. Go to your 6th picture.
4. Blog about it.
5. Tag 6 friends to do the same.

Here we go....

I did not realize how easy my Dear Daughter made potty training seem until my Dear Son reached his own right of passage. Dear Daughter sat on the potty relatively patiently by 18 months of age. She was fully potty trained in a single day by 20 months and never had an accident. Really.

As most things go, I did not fully realize the precociousness of my daughter until my son entered the picture. Since I had not spent much (ANY) time around babies or small children until my own came along, I did not know what was "normal." Apparently whatever "normal" is, it is NOT my daughter. She spoke in clear, full paragraphs well before two years of age. She knew her entire alphabet and counted to 20 by twenty months of age. She also knew all her colors (including brown, peach, and other more "exotic" shades), and shapes (including PENTAGON and OCTAGON) at this age and could sing several nursery songs correctly from beginning to end --including Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the ABC song, and Jesus Loves Me. Really. I am not exaggerating. I have many witnesses who will vouch for my honesty in this, and lots of video footage to back me up as well.

Dear Son is not dumb by any means, he's just not precocious like his big sister. He knew all his colors (especially BROWN, which he originally defined as "turd") by two years of age as well as all his shapes (the standard fare here...I'm pretty confident he does not know pentagon and hexagon), and somewhere around two and a half we was able to count to 10 correctly. At just-turned-three years of age, he can sing the "ABC" song and get it mostly correct. He's no dummy...but as far as I can tell, he's much more in line with typical developmental abilities.

This, I dare say, is also apparently true about the potty training thing. Around two years of age we began the training thing.... I figured we were late to the show as his sister had this mastered well before two years of age. We gave up relatively shortly with Son, realizing he just wasn't ready yet. I started reading books about how to train boys and asking LOTS of people how they trained their boys. Nearly EVERYONE told me that their boys were not trained until three and half years. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" was my response. When the first mom told me this, I just thought her child was an imbecile. When the second mom told me this, I figured she didn't pay enough attention to her child or get involved enough in his little life to train him properly. When the third mom told me this, I began to get very worried.

At two and a half we tried training Dear Son again. He would not always agree to sit on the potty, but after several attempts one day with no luck, Daddy arrived home from work. I suggested Daddy put Son on the potty, and wouldn't you know it. Not ten minutes after Daddy walked in the door from work, there was a turd in the potty chair. Dear Son has been a die-hard Daddy's boy for the past year and a half, so it made sense that Daddy got the turd and not me.

SIX MONTHS LATER we are STILL trying to wrap up this potty training thing with him! We are at the stage now where Son will pee in his Peter Potty training urinal every time we ask him or require him, but he has only ever ASKED to go about twice. His code is usually, "My ding dong hurts." What can I say? Yes, I am responsible for teaching him to call his boyhood a "ding dong," but I didn't necessarily MEAN to. I called it that once in some conversation we were having regarding his parts, and it apparently stuck. In that split second, I just couldn't bring myself to say the "p" word to my child. I have no idea why, but it just felt wrong (not that "ding dong" feels quite right either). But I digress....

Son got into a rut. While he would pee in the potty and frequently stay dry in between, we could not seem to get him to sit through the symphony long enough to complete the second "movement." Going into Halloween we started to get all these junk mailings with costumes and Halloween paraphernalia in them. The kids loved to study them. Son loves to play dress up and has an infatuation with costumes. So I stashed a few magazines in the bathroom and bribed him with these when I wanted him to sit long enough on the potty. Sometimes it worked. Other times Dear Husband and I simply grew weary of sitting in the bathroom for long periods of time analyzing Halloween costumes while waiting for the elusive turd to finally show up to the party (it rarely did).

The picture? Don't blame me, it was the sixth one. And anyway...doesn't every doting parent snap at least one pic of their potty-training child on the potty?

Who's up on my tag list?
1. M&M at Maternal Mirth
2. CaraBee at Land of Bean
3. Serena at Zip 'n' Tizzy
4. Riahli at My Life with Boys
5. Nyssa's Mommy at Julie, Cameron, and Nyssa's World
6. Whoever reads this and would like to play along (insert your name here)

Boys (er, MEN) will be Boys!

Dear Son, in all his boy-ness, has discovered Transformers. I owe it to McDonald's. I've indulged the kids a couple times in the past few weeks when they've been really well behaved while we ran morning errands. The most recent Happy Meal reward was this week. Dear Son noticed the Happy Meal Transformers display case within seconds of walking in the door. He spied the "rocket" and began to express with great intensity that he wanted one. I began trying to prepare him in case he didn't get a "rocket" in his Happy Meal, and I was secretly quite concerned about what would happen if he didn't. I don't know which one of us was the most delighted to discover that he did indeed get a Transformer "rocket" in his happy meal that day.

He's gotten two of these Transformer toys over the past few weeks. Each time he could not be separated from it for days solid. He fidgeted with it nonstop. It's a truck. No, it's a robot thing. No, it's a truck. Each time it transformed, a proud "I did it!" followed.

As Dear Husband and I lay in bed a few nights ago debriefing the events of our days, I commented on just how pleased our son was over his new discovery of Transformers. I described to Dear Husband the whole story of Son spying the "rocket" as soon as we walked in the door, and the relief I felt when I discovered one of his own tangled in French Fries in the bottom of the bag, and his delight each time he transformed it from a plane to a robot guy to a plane to a robot guy. I paused a moment before saying, "The plane's name is Lugnut..." and before I could finish with , "isn't that cute?" I was cut off by Dear Husband's enthusiastic, "Umm hmmm!" I noticed his enthusiasm, but went on to say, "I don't know what that little truck one is called that he got last time..." and I was again cut off with an enthusiastic, "Optimus Prime!"

Huh? Puzzled, I asked Dear Husband how he knew this stuff, and he stated matter-of-factly that he had watched the movie. Okay, so I was thinking he watched the movie in like 1980 or something and just had a really great boyhood memory of the experience. So to be sure, I then asked when he watched it. Because we've been married for 11 1/2 years after all, and I'VE never seen the movie, and I couldn't remember knowing when he might have. He said, "I borrowed it from Ron." Okay, again. So Ron is one of Husband's co-workers. This means he is also an adult male, and I would estimate him in his mid-forties or so.

I was equally puzzled and amused. You mean grown men in their mid-thirties and mid-forties still get into this stuff? You mean my two-year-old son can literally bond with his thirty-seven- (and a half)-year-old Daddy as if on a peer level about this Transformer thing?

Oy! Who knew? I'll have to order an extra Happy Meal next time.

He's a "Keeper"

I saw it again last night. There it was, at the bottom of a stack of clear plastic storage bins. I hadn't noticed it for a very long time, as its contents are never needed. Yet we must hang on to it "just in case." My husband, you see, is a "keeper." He's a keeper in many senses of the word...in terms of himself being one quite worth hanging onto as well as in terms of being one who thinks nearly everything on God's green earth is worth hanging onto. *Sigh*

Last night when Dear Husband was rummaging through the closet for a jacket and tie, something rarely required for his work anymore, my attention was brought to it again. I wouldn't have noticed it if Husband had not quizzed me as to where I had stashed his tie collection, as it has become a part of the routine scenery in our large walk-in bedroom closet. I guess, with time, I somehow managed to become desensitized to it. I scanned the length of the wall and the contents of the clear plastic storage bins, thinking to myself that I had not put Husbans's ties in one of these bins, and that's when my eyes registered the long forgotten one that lies dormant in wait of being needed again someday. The one we must keep "just in case."

"Well..." I began with a twinge of smart-ass in my tone, "you may not be able to locate a tie, but surely the circumstances call for a little something out of your extensive tube sock collection!" Husband gave me the you're-being-a-smart-ass look, and I responded that I felt a blog post coming on.

I remember a couple years ago when I cleaned and reorganized the drawers of our bedroom dresser, and I began pulling socks out of one of Husband's drawers. I could not believe the sheer mass of them. There were hideous pairs of funky dress socks from the 80's, which I labeled "pimp socks" as I thought they would go quite well with the "pimp shoes" (you know the ones...those slim style slip ons with the little tassels that bounce around at the toes) that I managed to extricate from my husband's wardrobe during the first year of our marriage. He must have been hiding the "pimp socks" under his pillow for the past decade, because I do not know how they survived the next several years including a CROSS COUNTRY MOVE for crying out loud!

As I sat buried in a massive sock drift, I made quick survey of the situation. Without further adieu, I relegated the "pimp socks" to the trash, but I paused on the tube socks. At first the pause was for nothing more but to consider what, in the name of all that is good and holy, could lead to a person having a tube sock collection of this magnitude! Then I began to sort them into piles and categories. I think I was in shock and grasping at how to make sense of it all. I threw out the ones with holes in the heels (despite what Husband might think, I could not think of a time that they could possibly be needed one day). There was a pile of extra heavy winter tube socks, the kind that is super thick and gray with the neon red band at the top, a pile of white ones (the ones with the stains got tossed), a pile of not as heavy gray ones without neon red bands at the top, a pile of heavy black ones with rubber grippers on the bottoms (don't ask), and a pile of assorted colored ones that wouldn't fit in any better category.

Now that I had them in piles, I thought about what I would do if left to my own: I would save about two or three pairs and banish the rest from my home. After all, I'm not an avid tube sock wearer. Neither is my husband, despite his "it-might-come-in-handy" outlook. And since neither of us are avid tube sock wearers, I found myself stuck again in the answerless question of how it had come to this. Then, in an effort to compromise with my keeper of a husband, I found a large plastic storage bin and saved in it all the tube socks in new or nearly new condition. You just never know when you might have trouble finding a tie and decide that a tube sock will do.