Thoughts From a Sometimes Desperate Housewife

Robinson Crusoe, Staring at Goats, and the Beautiful Flowers....

2010-08-11T20:58:00.007-05:00

The other day as I drove over the rolling prairie to the vast land of Stanley, ND, I somehow stumbled upon The Thomas Jefferson Hour, (your weekly conversation with America's third president) on the always wonderful Prairie Public Radio. As I listened I became enlightened as to the story of Robinson Crusoe (trusty SparkNotes can give you the synopsis). Seriously, for someone who spent six years traveling the wonderful road to a degree in literature and writing, I have never read Robinson Crusoe completely. I know, that's why even the English majors are doomed to stupidity and ignorance.

Anyway, so Crusoe passes up the opportunity to live an average life as an attorney and sets sail on the tempestuous seas. Of course, he becomes shipwrecked and is perfectly content that he was acquired enough raisins on the island to last him the entire year. He returns to the wreckage and finds a bag, a simple satchel. He shakes the bag and seeds fall out of it onto the ground. Later, Crusoe finds barley and rice growing right where the seeds had dropped.

Crusoe was able to create bread from a few dropped seeds out of a bag the rats had left behind on an abandoned shipwreck. And wisely, Crusoe takes half of the seeds from his first crop and plants them again, storing away the remaining seeds in the event of the annihilation of the crop.

The story suddenly struck me as so indicial of life and the basic principle of finding the very thing that will sustain you when you are seemingly stranded, empty, alone and without any comestibles.

God sets before us a forest of possibilities and provisions from even the driest of deserts, just when we think all we'll ever find is some raisins.

Some very deep thoughts from a housewife sitting in her sun room at almost midnight trying to watch The Men Who Stare At Goats, which is so truly hilarious and is all about the jedi soldiers the army has trained to kill goats in Iraq just by staring at them.

"So how does that work, these psychic powers?"

"Well it's different for different people," explains George Clooney. "Clear the mind. One guy, he pictures packing all of his troubles into a little suitcase...I find drinking helps."

Oh the vibrant, unexplored colors of the earth that would be appear before us if we would only choose to pull out a suitcase, lovingly place each and every care and trouble into it, zip it up, put some postage on it and send it off to Tahiti. What a biblical principle that is.

Or I suppose you could find some strong alcohol too, keeping in mind that the innate problem with alcohol is that the amount needed to truly numb the troubles will lead to a slow and painful death. I'd much rather be killed instantly in a piano-falling-on-the-sidewalk kind of incident.

Oh and then there's this line from the movie, "Then we trained for invisibility."

"You mean you can actually make yourself invisible?" asks the reporter.

"Well that was the goal but eventually we adapted it to just not being seen," explains Clooney.

Too funny. But maybe you just have to be me to find that truly hilarious.

And the view from the sun room has been great today....which has made for some deep thoughts.

Gardening is the key to any good housewifery.

Cramming it all into life....

2010-07-05T20:52:00.003-05:00

By the looks of this blog you can most likely surmise that I have been anywhere but on my trusty computer the last couple months. I rarely focus on events on this little blog but rather the erudition acquired during the events. Yet the events have been numerous here in our little life in our little town. I often wonder if the story of my life may entail more random volumes than can be contained in the life book that I assigned to myself when we made the move from suburbia to our little rural town, complete with a herd of cattle at the top of the hill and a little lake at the bottom of the hill.

This is of course evidenced by the travelings of the little green froggy chair.

In the last week the froggy chair has gone from the living room where Kaydn Rye takes his snacktime, to the backyard where we eat most of our meals during the five months a year that you may, perhaps, encounter a 70 plus degree day here in the frozen tundra, to Kaydn Rye’s room in the back corner of the upper level of our house where he sometimes sits to watch the bubbles float from top to the bottom and back to the bottom of his lava lamp while listening to classical music on his radio and munching on cheese puffs, to the infamous Blaisdell rodeo, where he sits to take breaks between barrel racing and the calf chase, to the lake, where it serves as an anchor for Gertie, once it is secure on the beach with a large enough rock in the seat so that Gertie can not send the chair catapulting into the water behind her. The week before we did not feel inclined to take the froggy chair to the music theatre production we caught on a free night we had in the middle of the week.

On other summer days we stay right here at home and I spend the mornings, and the afternoons sometimes, recording the very legal events of peoples’ lives as an official representative of New Jersey’s finest jury verdict publication.

And there’s the endless garden weeding. As Kaydn Rye explains every time a tall weed in a neighbor's yard comes into view, “The devil must have put that weed there.”
During most days spent in the yard, I find myself pulling weeds, hoeing the garden and transplanting flowers which seem better grown on the other side of the trellis, all while in a skirt and my tennis shoes. Any good housewife should be able to weed the garden in a cute sundress. Just like you should always venture to the beach with at least a smidgen of blush. (Here's me getting ready to go to the lake during our latest camping trip.)

Our last beach day was summed up properly in the words of Kaydn Rye,
“Are you having a good day mom with me at the beach?”

“Yes I’m having a very good day. Are you?”

“Oh I’m having a great day mom.”

We camped at the lake that weekend. For those who only know me moderately, it appears implausible that I would camp. Apparently I don’t look like much of an outdoor girl. But believe me, I can do nature with the best of them. I even enjoy a good horse ride through the prairie, although mostly in my fashion tennis shoes or even flip flops now and again.

Although, I do nature right next to the bathrooms, which must feature running water, showers and electricity for my blow dryer. Although, showers aren’t as imperative as you may think. While I do not camp next to unsanitary rest rooms, I am of the opinion that the lake is a more sanitary way to bathe than a public restroom. I may require that we all essentially cleanse ourselves by fire after a brief visit to a mall restroom, but a lake, only clouded by nature itself, seems much more natural and sanitary.

So, yes, I do camp, and in fact choose the cleanliness of nature over the inconclusiveness of a motel room. When I come back from a camping weekend I often feel refreshingly clear in mind and body, yet a weekend in a motel makes me want to light myself on fire.

And while camping I feel I can control the amount of processed food, high fructose corn syrup and preservatives I feed to my family even while on vacation. As any good camping housewife would, we find more to grill than just hot dogs and hamburgers. We do lemon pepper shrimp, pineapple and steak kabobs and brined chicken (and I’m always up for suggestions on previously uncharted foods).

Previous to our last camping endeavor, I weeded the garden and the flower beds, sprayed the weeds in the yard and completely hosed off the sitting porch before even thinking about the packing that would be required for us to launch into the wilderness; therefore, I packed food, clothing, fireworks and all the camping accoutrements in a matter of only two hours. I still needed to pick up some juice and various other items for the trip when we arrived at the WalMart closest to our destination. I must have been in a hurry cause the Welchs juice that I pulled off the shelf consisted of quite a bit of corn syrup. I proceeded to tell Kaydn Rye that I had accidentally purchased juice with corn syrup and preservatives and that it thus must be consumed in moderation.

He then wanted a full ingredients list and wanted to know if he should even drink any of the juice. Here we are discussing preservatives and the difference between high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup over a campfire breakfast.

Some good campfire talk there.

Needless to say, we survived the corn syrup juice with minimal bodily harm.
So what is the erudition that has been acquired during these endeavors? Very simply, cram as much as you can into your life, no matter how little it may be.

Yes, I Have Been Killing My Super-Whatever, For Your Information

2010-04-19T23:17:00.007-05:00

Oh by the way, forgot to mention that I declared myself on blogging sebatical about a month ago. It's little things like that that I seem to forget to mention, and I'm sure failing to announce my sebatical is a major blogging impropriety. In my absence, let's see, I have, like any good housewife, hosted some fabulous dinner parties, experienced a mid-life professional crisis and officially wrapped up my nervous, emotional breakdown.

I have heard it said that the true tests of character are rainy days, lost luggage and Christmas lights, and while there are enough rainy days that happen in my head without actual rain, my character seems to stand the test of anything my mind can deliver it. Lost luggage of course, is another blog story. Like any good housewife, I must at all times look as good as my tablescape, which is looking pretty darn good right now I might add. Yet how is anyone supposed to look even half-way decent without their sparkly blush, curl crème, blow dryer and rhinestone sandals lost somewhere over Cleveland? Isn’t a minor loss of character justified by the loss of such imperative things?

But things like Christmas lights, rogue printers and recipes that don’t make sense, I can handle those with a simple internal swear word and a scream of, “What the freaking heck?” complete with flailing jazz hands and my infamous forehead scowl and lip pursing. (See Save Your Marriage and Keep Wrinkles at Bay)

I manage to survive all those occurrences without jumping off a cliff into the lake, with my apron in tact ready to greet the next dinner guest. Yet the rest of my life has seemed to be dragging me down into a pit of nervous breakdown. In the midst of all the jury verdict writings, dinner guests, home school planning, neighborhood children coming and going through my front door, MOPS planning and whatever else perhaps flew into March and April that I can’t even seem to pull out of the archives of my life right now, I now realize that my mind had begun gasping for air.

But you know what nervous breakdowns are good for? They are good for killing your super-whatever. You know, your super-whatever.The super person who isn’t still in her yoga pants when guests arrive at the door for dinner. The super person who looks fantastic even after staying up until 2:00 in the morning to blog about stabbing her super whatever in the heart, 250 times to be exact, all while cooking the world’s most ambrosial beef and vegetable stew. I must be super if I can violently murder my super-housewife-self all while crockpot cooking.

I came to the conclusion that if I didn't kill my super-housewife-self, she was going to beat the crap out of me and drag me by the arm into a forest grave. It was either me or her. In the words of Rob Bell, in the Velvet Elvis, "[we] have this image picked up over the years of how [we] are supposed to look and act and work and play and talk, and it's like a voice that never stops shouting...

And the only way to not be killed by it is to shoot first...

You have to kill your superwhatever.

And you have to do it right now.

Because your superwhatever will rob you of today and tomorrow and the next day until you take it out back and end its life.

Go do it."

This blog will be here when you get back.

And the Grinch's Heart Grew Three Times Bigger That Day......

2010-03-02T20:39:00.005-06:00

I have always found it interesting that while I blog, people actually read it. It's an amazing concept, really it is. The really prodigious thing about the whole deal is that while I've been in the midst of a bit of a blogging-life crisis the last few months, there are those who have stuck with me, still lurking around the blog and reading when that magical new post does arrive. So thanks for still lurking, despite my blogging slackerness.

Last week, amid all my other obligations, I somehow caught this weird flu. Every morning I'd wake up and think, "Today I will be better. Today I will be better. Today I am going to MAKE myself feel better. The flu will succumb to my will." I don't know how well that strategy worked, but it sure made me feel like I was actually in control of the flu. Actually on Friday morning I had planned on playing a little volleyball with a friend of mine in the morning. By Thursday night I pretty much realized that I was not going to be able to will myself to attend any of my pre-arranged events, like bible study (we're doing Beth Moore's Bible Study on Esther:It's Tough Being a Woman, it's an okay study, interesting at times) or volleyball league, and I decided I had officially capitulated to the flu. But before I fell asleep for the night I thought, "I will make myself be better in the morning so I will be at volleyball in the morning." So I woke up bright and early at 7:30 on Friday morning and texted my friend, "I'm going to feel better in a couple hours so we can still play volleyball....."

By 9:00 she texted me back wondering just how exactly I was going to play volleyball with the flu. I began a text back informing her that all I needed was another half hour in bed and then I'd be on my way to feeling wonderful. Well, in the middle of that text I apparently passed out and fell asleep. Around 10:30 I woke up, phone in hand with my text still awaiting my approval to send, and needless to say, I didn't get any volleyball in that day.

But on Monday, I was feeling wonderful and even played volleyball and attended a ladies lunch at the church. After five days of practically no food in my body, I was starving, and while the chicken salad was great, I really wanted a cheese burger, a piece of pizza and maybe even a piece of chocolate cake. I finished my chicken salad before anyone had even really started on theirs and I said, "Man, you'd think I hadn't eaten in a week." My friend leaned over and said, "Ah, that's cause you haven't eaten in a week."

Right, right, I forgot about the almost week-long flu-imposed fasting I had just endured.

But today it was back to the drawing board. Yet I am prepared to beat the flu again by morning.

Maybe it was the incredible trauma of yesterday's not so uneventful ladies meeting that sent me over the edge.

So here's the story. Yesterday I'm sitting in the church fellowship hall with the ladies at the "ladies aid" meeting and I see my friends' kids running around heading to the nursery area. I begin to wonder why my kid is not running along with them, so I peak in the back area where they were previously watching a movie, and I see that Kaydn Rye is standing there in front of the huge television stand, and its beginning to fall forward on him. That that top heavy television stand with the huge television a top it has been a nightmare waiting to happen.

So I don't know how the thing started falling on him, but all I knew at that time was that there was a huge tv and tv stand about to collapse on top of my son. Meanwhile, my friend sitting next to me had just gotten up to take a phone call and I kind of forgot about her empty chair as I began my race to the back room. So I start to run as fast as I could to try and save Kaydn Rye from the television when all of a sudden I tripped and fell over that stupid empty chair. You heard me right, I fell flat on my face, completely collapsing the chair.

Not only that, but of course I then had to get completely tangled in the collapsed chair. Of course that would have to happen. Nothing like tripping over a chair and then topping it off by then getting yourself entangled in the chair. Keep in mind, by that time, I was screaming, "Kaydn, Kaydn," as I'm trying to free myself from the chair and everyone is like, "What in the world is she doing? And why did she just run into that chair?"

Nobody had any clue why in the world I proceeded to run full force out of my chair right into the chair next to me. But I did eventually get free from the chair and by that time every horrific possibility had crossed through my mind. I pictured a collapsed lung, a crushed spinal cord, a permanent brain injury, you name it and it went through my mind. In that moment I thought about how my life could be completely changed by the time I finally made it into that back room.

And when I finally got there, he was on the floor with both the tv and the tv stand completely on top of him. The television was covering half of his face and he was laying there sprawled on the floor with his leg bent in half. Instead of assessing the situation and making sure he didn't have a spinal injury before I moved him, I flung that television off of him almost across the room and scooped him up in my arms. Everyone finally realized what all the screaming and chair falling was all about and started freaking out about broken limbs and ribs. I kept thinking, "Who cares about broken limbs, I can handle that. He is not paralyzed and seems to have full lung function, so who cares about broken bones, really?

After that whole experience, while sitting in the backroom holding my screaming child, I seriously felt like sobbing. Now, keep in mind, I am not a cryer, I just don't cry. My soul may be completely broken, wrenched and torn, but to muster up some tears to show it on the outside is just something I no longer do. And if tears do somehow emerge, my eyes start spontaneously twitching in a last ditch effort to avoid the inevitable.

It had probably been years since I had cried, but all of a sudden I felt something wet on my face. I looked around and by that time everybody had given me the moment I needed to realign my zen after the television incident, so they were all back in the meeting, but I said to myself, "What in the world, I'm leaking. Who knew that was possible?"

A friend of mine then says to me, "Oh, the Grinch's heart just grew three times bigger......"

If my husband were to find out that I actually cried, he'd probably say, "Wow, it does leak after all. Who knew?"

A Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

2010-02-10T09:23:00.005-06:00

Ever feel like life is dragging you behind it? Let's just say that if life were a car, perhaps a sporty Mercedes, I'd be the one dragging down the freeway behind it, in case you've been wondering. I knew the week was going to be calamitous as soon as I woke up on Monday. I awoke on Monday after having had one of my frantic dreams. The whole thing was so frantic and chaotic it was like I had already lived a horrible Monday before I even got out of bed. When you wake up with a migraine thinking you are running from the mafia, you know it's going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Kaydn Rye was even so exhausted from the week that he basically collapsed on Saturday. He didn't even eat he was so tired, and believe me, that's something I didn't think I'd ever say.

But alas, the week wasn't without its funny moments. Kaydn Rye has had his share of deep thoughts this week. Being the son of both a legal writer and an insurance agent, he has a much different view of the world than most children. Like the other day, in the midst of traveling the more than 200 miles we put on the Durango last week, Kaydn Rye asks me, "So mommy, why is it that we don't want to get in an accident?" I proceed to tell him about how we obviously don't want to get in an accident because then I'd have to take time out of my very busy schedule to go to the hospital and plus, how would we be able to live if the truck was smashed in and had to go into the shop?

He responds, "And we wouldn't want to get sued either. That wouldn't be good."

A child after my own heart, always thinking of ways with which we might get sued.

The next day, while I'm trying to get a jury verdict commentary completed before I have to reach my next destination, Kaydn Rye asks me, "What does it mean that Nationwide is on your side?"

He responds, "Something bad, like if we get sued you mean?"

"Well, it means that if something bad happens to you, then your insurance will pay you money in hopes that the money will make you feel better about your troubles."

He responds, "Something bad, like if we get sued you mean?"

"Yep, like if we get sued we hopefully wouldn't go bankrupt because we have insurance. But we salt the walkway enough that I don't think we'll get sued anytime soon."

Hopefully this week won't involve being dragged down the road by the speed of life. For someone who would much rather spend her days contemplating the tumultuousness of life, I think some good rumination time will do me good this week.

Party Hats at the Nursing Home, Huge Snowballs and Little Blue Snowmen.....

2010-01-26T12:47:00.005-06:00

I'm sure you are all just dying to know, what have I been up to lately? So glad you asked. Here's a run down in photos.....

This is me and my grandpa looking as dapper as ever at his birthday party. My grandpa and I share a natural-born melancholy personality that most often goes unappreciated by the world at large. Apparently the sanguines and cholerics are much more fun at parties. On that note, I just recalled the funniest memory of the first time somebody called me a melancholic personality, probably more than 10 years ago now, and I was like, "What in the heck is she talking about calling me a melancholy personality?" I had just never heard that term before. I looked it up way back when and here's how we melancholies are defined: "Those with melancholic dispositions are thoughtful ponderers and while they are often very kind, considerate and highly creative in poetry and art, they can become occupied with the tragedy and cruelty in the world. A melancholic is also a perfectionist, self-reliant and independent."

Add "extremely dry sense of humor," and that about covers my entire existence on this earth.

Anyway, back to grandpa and the birthday party, I kind of fell in a little bit of a rabbit hole there...

My grandpa celebrated his (89th??) by reminiscing with another couple he and my grandma have been friends with for years. They recalled an extremely random (extremely, random) story about a trip, I think to sell cattle maybe, in which they all ended up staying in a motel room together. Apparently it became too late to drive all the way home and the only motel in the town only had one room with two double beds available that night.

My grandpa and his buddy ended up leaving the motel early that morning to do something, leaving my grandma and Rosie in the hotel until the guys came back to pick them up. On their way out the desk clerk must have been inquiring about their "wives" still up in the hotel room. My grandpa and Allan then took it upon themselves to explain that the ladies weren't their wives, they were just some girls they had picked up on their way into town. Unbeknownest to my grandma and Rosie, when they ended up leaving the motel room that day, everyone thought they were prostitutes my grandpa and Allan had picked up and spent the night with. Not sure how I feel about that story, considering the word "prostitute" is not something I'd like to associate with my grandma. But I guess there was a time when my grandparents weren't my grandparents.....

Then, on Saturday I had to kick everyone out of the house. There always eventually comes a time when I'm just not interested in seeing the face of another human being for at least a couple of hours, maybe even a whole afternoon, and Saturday just happened to be my day. I finished painting my dining room, only after scrapping the bottom of the bucket to get the final coat done, and Kaydn Rye and hubby spent their time out in the snow constructing an enormous snow ball.

You can tell Kaydn Rye is in a deep thought cause his tongue is hanging out.

When they came back in I was ready for human interaction again and all was well.

Yesterday we made blue playdough snow men while being completely snowed in.

Hubby didn't even make it to work yesterday, which somehow just made the house seem very crowded. It always makes for an interesting day when he's trying to work from home and I'm trying to work from home. I'm not used to any more than little people in the house with me during the weekday afternoons, so when I went upstairs to go into the bathroom, I must have been coming up the stairs in a little bit of a hurry because I turned the corner and rammed right into the bathroom door. I completely forgot that hubby was home and therefore could possibly be in the bathroom.

Today, I was able to pawn the kid off on the neighbors, so I have the entire day to ponder.....it's going to be a good day.

So We Can Blame It All On Adam and Eve

2010-01-12T19:24:00.007-06:00

Ever wonder if all that random stuff that floats around in a four-year-old's brain all day will ever translate into something that might come in handy in the world outside of the land of food-covered preschoolers?

Well I have confirmed that it will, and it does.

I think Kaydn Rye may someday travel the world with a cape and leotards all while trying to save the world from people with names like Dr. Doom, Magneto and Lex Luther, oh and don't forget Megatron.

With that wonderful little tidbit of knowledge you will know why I felt obliged to ask about his latest superhero man's supposed aggregation of enemies.

It all began as I'm trying to finish up a case summary for my editor by the end of week on my latest medical malpractice-liposuction gone awry-with a perforated bowel case (if I had a nickel for every malpractice case I've written on that began with liposuction and ended with a snip to the stomach, the intestine, etc, I'd be a millionaire - let's just say I wouldn't be working as a legal writer, I'd be laying on the beach in Tahiti).

Kaydn Rye comes down with his latest character from some good vs evil story and he begins to tell me about how his man implodes his enemies.

I ask, "So why does your super hero man have so many enemies."

He explains, "Well, Eve took the apple from the snake and then Adam and Eve ate the apple and then all the good people turned into bad people. That's why there are so many enemies in the world."

I guess he set me straight on that.

In other "Kate's world" news, on a completely unrelated note, hubby and I seem to have stepped into some personal growth as well this past week.

You know how before bed you may say something like, "Honey, can you please remember to [insert task that absolutely must be done, cannot be put off until the next day and which does not fit into your own schedule of working all day, conversating with a four-year-old, cooking, cleaning, enjoying an active social life and of course, blogging)? And can you make sure to do it on your way to work, or after work, or on your lunch break, or at least sometime tomorrow?"

Hubby may say something like, "Yep, I'll make sure I get er done, honey."

Well, let's just say that around here that same conversation occurs almost nightly as part of some sort of really annoying eternal recurrence. And as part of that eternal recurrence, he'll for sure get the job done the next day only after a phone call, a text message and an email, all with "reminders" about the previous night's "get er done" philosophy.

I think most often the problem we have is that while I'm explaining to him what exactly needs to be tomorrow, and he's nodding in agreeance and reciting things like, "Yep, I'll do it at lunch tomorrow, honey," he's really not even awake. I can honestly say that almost every night I have a conversation with someone who is completely unconscious.

So the other night I decided to attempt at a new strategy. I told him what I needed him to do for tomorrow and then gave him a little pop quiz to determine his degree of consciousness.

"So what's today's date?"

"Who won the Superbowl 1987?"

"What color are my eyes?"

"Who's the president of the United States?"

"Who's the president of Iran?" (You can't say Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and not be awake.)

Only after answering each question correctly is he cleared for consciousness, and with this quick little pop quiz, our problems appear to be solved.

Eight Crazy Nights....

2010-01-03T23:40:00.005-06:00

As you have probably gathered, I have had a long few weeks, and blogging has not been a priority on the list of obligations that must be taken care of before I put myself to bed.

First, there was Hanukah, which as the song goes, "while you have one day of presents, we have eight crazy nights."

But let me tell you, eight days of specialness can take its toll on any good housewife. With tons of baking, cooking and a candle lighting ceremony every night, these partygoers were pooped, well atleast I was anyway. And of course, there are the Hanukah haters - those who think, especially because we are not technically Jewish, that we're not allowed to celebrate the holiday and that our celebration of Hanukah tilts the universe to the point of us all falling off the planet someday.

I'm here to set the record straight, Hanukah will not make the world blow up, and while people think it messes with all the world's Christmas celebrations, believe me, it doesn't. Hanukah has nothing to do with Christmas. Hanukah began as the rededication of the temple after a small group of Israelites rose up against Syrian oppression and took back their temple which had been defiled by the Syrians. It is also a celebration of the provision of G-d through inconceivably difficult times. Many Israelites saw their entire families and their children slaughtered because they did not renounce their belief in G-d during the years of oppresion leading up to the rededication of the temple. The reality of the world we live in now, thousands of years later, is that there may very well come a time in our lifetime when we may witness the same atrocities. It makes the celebration of Hanukah so gosh darned real and tangible.

Anyway, another aspect of Hanukah is that at its core it is the rededication of the temple. Now that Jesus has come to earth, died and ascended into heaven, those who believe in Jesus are now the individual temples of the Holy Spirit. We, our bodies, are now the temple, and therefore for Messianics the celebration of Hanukah becomes the rededication of our lives to Jesus for another coming year.

So because we kind of celebrate the coming of Jesus and his dwelling on earth during the Feast of Tabernacles in October (when Jesus was actually born), in December we celebrate the rededication of our lives to Jesus.

Here are the highlights.

(Please disregard my volleyball duds in this picture. I had just returned home from my volleyball match and we hurried to begin the Hanukah celebration.)

In this picture we are praying the Hanukah blessings. Please disregard the pink dining room that I am still working on painting over. In a couple weeks, I should have a totally new outlook on eating - namely we will not be dining in the psychotic-inducing pink room any longer. We've come into the homestretch in the last few days.

Here we are reading the story of Hanukah.

Here Kaydn Rye is giving hubby a Hanukah book of paintings he created.

What Really Makes Me Angry With God???

2009-12-16T12:31:00.003-06:00

Winter time has officially come upon us here in the frozen tundra and again I strive toward the goal of leaving my house as little as humanly possible (Kaydn Rye, can that broken leg wait until spring, I'll drive you to the hospital when it's warmer outside....just kidding, man, tough crowd)

Really, in all seriousness, while I have come to grips with the conclusion that yes, there's evil in the world, pain and suffering, death and taxes, yada yada yada, you know what really makes me angry with G-d??? The fact that it is this cold. Really, it does not need to be this cold, there is just no reason for it. No reason. It just makes me really angry at G-d. I'm sure G-d can handle me being peeved, and I'm sure it doesn't manipulate him into changing the weather, but still, come on, this cold? Really???

Anyway, with hubby getting the mail now and even picking up a few things from the store on his way home from work, I haven't had to leave the house all week. I didn't even have to drop Kaydn Rye off at preschool yesterday. He woke up and said, "I don't wanna go to preschool today, I just want to rest. I need my rest." In reality he just wanted to stay home and play with his new GeoTrax he got for Hanukah, but it even looked like it was 30 below when I glanced out the window, so I just said, "Okay. That's fine." I interjected a stern warning though, "Tomorrow, you'd better be prepared to go to preschool, because you're going whether you like it or not little mister."

I think I'm going to ask his preschool teacher if I can get a discount on the monthly rate if I agree to only bring Kaydn Rye to preschool on days when it's above zero. She might go for it.

With preschool, the mail and groceries all taken care of, the only thing standing in my way of my goal was the dog. This house being the only house we've lived in without a fenced in yard has put me at odds with Gertie's wintertime bathroom breaks. And considering the size of the yard, a fence would most likely cost us upwards of a million dollars, so last year we settled for the next best thing - wire chicken fence. She never got the idea to really jump over it, until the snow started piling above it by about 10 feet, but it sufficed. That is, until I got really cold and Gertie began stepping out the patio door, squatting and peeing pretty much on the sliding glass door. She just wouldn't go any further.

This year, I wasn't having it, so we decided to put up the fence on the other side of the back porch. (Trust me, I am going somewhere with this) The only problem is that the sliding glass door on that side is pretty much a door to nowhere, unless you consider a 20 foot drop somewhere. I thought about just throwing her out there and seeing if she'd claw her way up the side of the house, but I scratched that idea. Instead, hubby built me this.....

I told you I was going somewhere with this. Yes, this is my wonderful, soon-to-be patented Doggy Potty Ramp. For a dog who would much rather bask in the warmth with her pet puppy, the ramp is a dream come true.

"God Loves santa, My Brain is Tricky" and Other Musings.....

2009-12-01T20:56:00.009-06:00

If there was ever a phrase for the week, it would be, "My brain is very tricky, you never know what might be in there."

In case you're wondering, it all began with a trip to Wal-Mart (doesn't everything?) when I happened to saunter past a sale on games. With my ever resourceful mind engaged, I thought about all the wonderful things I would accomplish with hubby playing games into the wee hours of the night with the little one.

Just kidding, I bought them for all the joy that is brought by family togetherness time.

Anyway, so my purchases included Battleship and Operation. I compromised: one game for Kaydn Rye to play all by himself while I attempt to spew jury verdict commentaries and another for, you know, bonding time. Nothing like sinking your kid's ships with bombs to bring about the spirit of togetherness.

Once I pulled it out of the box though I began to wonder whether or not a four year old would understand the whole A11, J10 grid concept with the red and the white pegs and the weird boat shapes and all.

Let's just say, I never cease to make myself laugh at all the ridiculous thoughts that run through my head. Within five minutes he was spouting off B11, G5, hit and sunk. So the one day while we're engaged in battle, he's thinking and he says to me, "My brain is very tricky....you never know what's in it."

He must have been thinking about his brain even later in the day as we sat down to lunch, cause he said to me, "My brain has locked a lot of stuff in it."

"So do you have lots of memories?"

"Yep, I have lots of memories in my brain."

And I believe him. Many times we'll just be sitting, perhaps playing a game, when he'll say something like, "Remember that time when....?"

Oh, and I didn't even get to the best part about the kid's "brain" this week. So on Saturday, while in the process of losing my mind at the mall, Kaydn Rye becomes intrigued by the santa exhibit. Nothing wrong with that, except we celebrate Hanukah. But he continued, "I wanna talk to that guy."

Because we celebrate Hanukah, the concept of sitting on some fat guy's lap and telling him what you want for Christmas is a completely foreign concept to the kid, which is why I wondered what he wanted to talk to santa about.

Regardless, I guess I felt like living dangerously that day.

So I told him to tell santa that Jesus loves him and I sent him on his merry way to the santa exhibit.

He did his thing in line waiting for santa and proceeded to sit on the guy's lap. They appear to be engaged in deep conversation and then santa tells him to run along and gives him a candy cane.

I asked Kaydn Rye what in the world he was talking about with santa and he said, "I told santa that God loves him."

"And what did santa say?"

"That he loves God too," he said.

"Well that's nice," I said.

He apparently thought it was strange that some guy in the mall would ask him what he wanted for Christmas because he seemed genuinely confused by the question.

Apparently he told santa he didn't "do" christmas. (Instead, we have eight crazy nights.)

I'm sure it was the strangest conversation santa has ever had with a kid on his lap.

(For more hilarious musings from tiny people, check out Tiny Talk Tuesday at www.notbefore7.com.)

The Kid Has Detached and Gertie Has Recovered

2009-11-21T11:54:00.007-06:00

In my blogging absence, much has gone down. First off, the little man became a person, a real person.

For instance, just yesterday, while I was vexatiously scrubbing Gertie paw prints off the kitchen floor, he came to me and said, "Mom, I would like to go for a scooter ride, so I'm going to go out now, okay?"

For some reason, while I was also experiencing the most horrific feeling of foreboding at the thought of this, I somehow also found it quite hilarious.I think the fact that his little brain told him to go outside, without me, was absolutely fascinating to me, since this has previously been a person who would not go to the bathroom without me for quite some time.

With visions of not sugarplums, but rather ax murderers and child molesters, dancing in my head, I in fact said, "Ah....sure. You can do that." I then commenced my 10-minute discourse on how the world may look lovely from our house up on the hill, yet down the street from our house, just past the baptist home, horrible things may be in wait. Horrible things like speeding, out-of-control cars, psychos, sociopaths, ax murders, kidnappers and rapists.

He had had an earful by the time he walked out the door, and to be honest, it was the weirdest sight, seeing him hop on his scooter and ride down the street one block, stop to talk to one of the retirement home residents sitting outside the baptist home, then come back up the street on his little red spiderman scooter, ALL BY HIMSELF.

It seems as if during the last four years he's been permanently attached, like some kind of growth on the side of my leg, yet now he has detached. I would have thought I'd be singing, "THE HILLS ARE ALIVE....." Yet, the visions of kidnappers keep this break-out-in-song from occurring.

But here's the real problem, this is what he now thinks about his mom telling him what to do all the time:

I might have a problem on my hands.

So what about my goal of having continuous child-slave labor at my disposal for the next 14 years, you ask? Well, I have somehow managed to continue to progress in this area:

Yeah for us finally getting rid of the pink dining room - stay tuned for some before and after pictures....that is....in about two months when I finally get around to finishing it.

As for our other child, she has fully recovered from her traumatic afternoon of grooming and has now decided to re-join the world. This is Gertie trying to force her way into her bed to avoid being kidnapped and returned to the dog groomer. As I'm watching this video, it suddenly seems wrong that we locked her out of her kennel-bed just to laugh at her trying to claw her way in. It's totally hilarious that after getting all her hair shaved off, she wraps her tail around her butt so we can't see her nakedness.

I don't know, you probably had to be there.

What is A Housewife and How Do I Become One????

2009-11-04T13:26:00.007-06:00

(SPOILER ALERT: GIVEAWAY BELOW!!!!)

So, amazingly, I landed a spot on Claudine Wolk's Blog Tour with WOW! Women On Writing. Claudine is the writer of "It Gets Easier.... and Other Lies We Tell New Mothers."

Claudine sent on a copy of the book for my reading pleasure, and it was definitely a stupendous read.

I've never been one to pick up a whole lot of books on mommyhood. Actually I don't know that I've ever read one till now, five years after my initiation. I'm a little late I guess.

Anyway, the book is filled with chapters like, "What is a Housewife & How Do I Become One?"

That is too funny.

On that note, here's a somewhat funny story that I found completely revealing about my inner thoughts on housewifery. I just had my 10 year class reunion (scary) and while I was someone who vowed to never have children or even get married, here I am married with a preschooler. One of my old friends, who back then shared my thoughts on marriage and children (but who is also married now...), asked me at the reunion, "So I suppose you're a stay-at-home mom now." She said it as if "stay at home mom" was synonymous with societal outcast, or a mental patient.

My response? "Actually, I still work part time, from home, for a jury verdict publication." I realized later that I said it like I had just flung a punch right back at her. How terrible is it that I felt the need to reduce myself to throwing word punches just because I "stay at home."

In addition to step by step instructions on how to become a housewife, the book is filled with info like, if you commit the abominable sin of microwaving a bottle, make sure you shake it up real good and almost more importantly - DON"T TELL ANYONE!

I always found it so interesting that while I run a homeschooling, toxin-free, organic, on schedule, work-from-home, virtually no t.v, household, I thought it alright to microwave bottles from time to time.

From the start, when I finished nursing, I always warmed up bottles on the stove, and when we had to go somewhere, I would warm up the bottle before we left just enough so that it's warmth would correspond to the time when he would need to be fed again.

Believe me, it was quite the scientific process to make sure the bottle was still warm enough, but not too warm, when he would need the bottle again. Who knew I'd ever need a science degree.

The problem was that the kid just would not drink the bottle unless it was the perfect temperature. No matter how starving he was, he would not drink a cold bottle. As if that in itself didn't make me wanna throw something at the wall, then a friend of mine had a baby a few months later, and her kid would drink a bottle at any temperature.

I finally asked her, "How in the heck do you get that kid to drink a cold bottle?" Her response? From the very beginning, she just never offered a warm bottle. She'd keep a bottle of water and some formula-filled bottles in her diaper bag and she'd mix them up as she needed them. What a genius. Would have been nice if she would have offered up that little tip when I really needed it.

Anyway, Claudine's book really is a book after my own heart, and it's so nice to know that even some of the best mothers (see Chapter 14- The Best Mother) don't know how to play "men" on the floor. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who sucks at action-figure playtime.

My son will ask me, "Mom, can you come play Transformers with me." And before I know it, my teenage mutant ninja turtle is getting completely mauled by Optimus Prime. I just hop my guy around, pretending he's on his way home after a hard day of fighting crime, and my son thinks I'm a complete idiot.

"Mom, you're not playing right," is pretty much where the conversation ends up. Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't rather cut off my toe.

So on to the giveaway.... it's pretty simple, just leave a comment here for your chance to win my very own copy of Claudine's book, "It Gets Easier...And Other Lies We Tell New Moms." Consider it a tactful re-gifting on my part.

I promise - it's as good as the day I got it. And after reading the previous week's post, you'll appreciate it when I say I completely disinfected the book! So, feel free to keep it for yourself or even pass it on as a baby shower gift. BUT MAKE SURE TO LEAVE YOUR COMMENT!

If you want, even include an anecdote from the trenches of motherhood in your comment. We'd love to hear it.

Claudine Wol is a columnist, blogger, speaker and mother of three. She writes humorously and speaks on all subject regarding motherhood in the 21st Century.

Check out her blog at Help4NewMoms.blogspot.com.

Visit her website at Help4NewMoms.com

The wonders of the neti pot and the Voodo Doctor, Part Deuce

2009-10-27T11:18:00.005-05:00

So as you can tell I've been a little absent from my blog world for quite some time, and let me tell you, it's been for good reason. For awhile there I was just wishing for my death, but I am feeling much better now.

A trip to the voodoo doctor, as my husband calls her, a readjustment of the ileocecal valve and walla, I'm all better.

As you may or may not know, ever since we moved back to this great and wonderful tundra locally known as North Dakota, I have been one sinus infection away from the decision to begin planning my own death. And these aren't your run of the mill sinus infections either, these are "want to throw yourself in the lake" kind of chronic sinusitis.

Let's just say that it begins with completely closed up and swollen nasal passages, then it progresses to a wall of mucus behind the eyes (I think I'm going to try and find a lovely picture on the internet that corresponds to the phrase, "wall of mucus," all for your viewing pleasure....or maybe I'll just settle for this photo)

so while I feel like I'm being choked to death because of lack of oxygen, I'm also being drowned in my own mucus. I kid you not, one night, I started rubbing my fingers on the sides of my nose and tears started squirting out my eyes. I'm not even joking.

When the neti pot stopped working, I knew I was in trouble. For those of you less snot-filled people, you may not know about the neti pot, but let me tell you, whatever ancient chinese medicine man thought up the neti pot, he deserves a noble peace prize for medicine. But I'm sure, like Noah, he was completely misunderstood and I'm sure people mocked him till the cows showed up as he shoved his little pot up his nose in hopes that the water would come out the other end.

But alas, millions of snot-nosed people around the world are forever in his debt.

Anyway, so I do the neti pot because apparently, I'm allergic to the dust in North Dakota. Go figure. (I'm saving all my money for my move to Tahiti. Hopefully I'll get along with the locals alright.) The neti pot is like a shower for your nose - it gets all the junk out - the only problem is that the junk has to go somewhere and it ends up coming out the other side of your nose.

But let me tell ya, when your sinuses are so inflamed, nothing'll get through. I'd shove the pot up my nose and the crickets would start chirping. The dog would tilt her head and look at me like, "What the heck happened to all that yummy water?"

Apparently, in addition, to my wonderful allergy to North Dakota, I also had a blocked ileoecal valve, which the voodoo doctor adjusted for me. Can you believe that the first time I spelled ileocecal I actually spelled it right? I must be a genius. Anyway, I have been told that this ileocecal valve is what rids the body of all the junky, gunky germs that get in. It's somewhere between the small and the large intestine and when you get sick, it's the valve that releases the mucusy gunk.

With this ileocecal valve being blocked, I was pretty much giving myself the same mucusy gunk the next month and the next month and the next month. But after the voodoo doctor did her little kung fu move on my ileocecal valve, that supposedly fixed the blockage.

Oh, and I got a wonderful bottle of Allerplex, a nutritional supplement that nips environmental allergies and viruses in the butt. And for all of you voodoo doctor supporters, you'll appreciate when I tell you I muscle tested positive for Allerplex.

I don't even know how to explain muscle testing, but I found this little lady on this youtube video who I think will explain it much better than I. She teaches you how to self muscle test, which is different from the muscle testing that the voodoo doctor does, and I will say, the concept is so ridiculous that I even found myself laughing at the idea during this little lady's video. I can't explain it, all I know is, it doesn't make sense that G-d came down to earth as a man either, but I know it to be true.

Great stuff, huh?

Oh, and the really hilarious thing about the voodoo doctor and the natural supplements? I also got a steroid inhaler prescription from the doctor so that my nasal passages would open and I could being breathing the wonderful North Dakota air once again. Moral of the story?? A little all natural medicine sprinkled with some steroids seems to be the answer to life problems.

Your Cooking is Heavenly...With Once A Month Cooking...

2009-10-07T09:46:00.003-05:00

So I have succumb to the masses and am finally doing my first book review here on From a Desperate Housewife. And appropriately enough, I've had the opportunity to cook through the Once-A-Month Cooking Family Favorites Cookbook by Mimi Wilson and Beth Lagerborg. Any good housewife, as you know, has mealtime covered with gourmet courses every night of the week.

I'm not quite sure how I hooked up with this book review gig, but before I knew it, I was cooking in my kitchen with it. All I know is that a few months ago I happened upon something about once a month cooking while aimlessly eluding a half-written verdict article on my computer that my editor had been anxiously awaiting for some time. It was then that the idea kind of hit me on the head like a rock.

Who would have thought to do all that daily food prepping all at once??? What a concept?

The book outlines "cooking cycles" with each cycle containing 30 recipes. Each cycle comes complete with the grocery list, by category, of everything you'll need for the entire cycle along with detailed instructions on exactly what your cooking day will entail.

There are even summer grilling cycles, gluten-free cycles and gourmet cycles for all you fancy red-wine-with-your-dinner-types.

The whole idea is that rather than spend a half-hour each night prepping for dinner, you spend a day, one day, during the month prepping and freezing the entire month's meals so that all that's left for dinner time is the thawing, some final preps and maybe a side dish or two.

I have to admit though, I'm still working my way up to actual once a month cooking, after having the book for about a month now I'm onto Once a Week Cooking right now. (Baby steps.)

Because I am the pioneering woman now, out in the middle of nowhere, my shopping trips go something like this, "Goodbye Pa, I'm hitching up the horses to take the kids into town for winter supplies. We should be back in a day or two." So, I shop for at least two weeks worth of groceries when I make it into "town." I say "town" because I guess I technically live in a town, while it's a small one, it is still a town per say, but in my opinion, I live in a village. Going into "town" is making the 55 mile trip into Minot where there's a mall and a Super Wal-Mart. A town just cannot be a town without Target, a mall and a Super-Walmart.

So anyway, for the first two weeks of my once a week cooking, I took ten recipes out of the first one-month cycle that I thought would give us some variety and some new flavors. Then I put my grocery list together based on everything I'd need for those two weeks' recipes. A trip to Super-Walmart and a good $200 later, and I had everything I needed.

Then I took some time on Saturday to prep for the entire week, in between pulling up my entire garden, re-planting like 1005 bulbs and bushes in the backyard, oh and the usual cleaning, laundry folding and tending to the dog, kid and hubby. But alas, I simply followed the assembly order for the required meal prep in the book, and I had five meals in the freezer for the week and a week's worth of ingredients awaiting the next week's cycle.

Another bright idea I had? Since most of my precious weekend time has been consumed with fall yard work, I have had a week or two where I didn't quite get the entire week's meals ready during the Saturday before. So on the nights that I've had to cook dinner, I've been prepping double and putting half in the freezer for another night's meal. How lame-o is that that I just came up with that idea, now, after about 10 years of cooking?

So after all that, my point is, get the book. You'll thank me later, maybe by placing a small amount of money in the mail and addressing it to me. Or maybe just a nice thank you note with a gift will suffice.

The once a month cooking has replaced a lot of my go-to meals out of the freezer section at Super-Walmart. There always seemed to be one night out of the week where I just would not have time to prep a meal, so that's when we'd whip out a frozen pizza, mix up a fruit and veggie salad, and I'd be happy enough that everyone was getting a veggie, a fruit and some protein for supper. Now, I still have the frozen pizza that I bought a month ago, just sitting in the freezer.

But the thing that saddens me about the whole cooking thing? A little while ago I brought a meal over to a friend who had just had a baby. I simply doubled a lasagna that I had made one night and I froze half of it for her. At the last minute I thought about how I had forgotten that she has four mouths that require feeding every night rather than the three I cook for every night. So I was a little worried that it might not be enough, after all, with a lasagna I get enough to feed all of us for a night with a little left over for hubby's lunch at work the next day.

Well, I got a thank you note from her the other day thanking me for the wonderful mean that fed them all for two dinners and a lunch. What in the heck?????? How is that possible?

I think what's happening is this: hubby, the massive person that he is, actually eats enough for two people, average people that is, and Kaydn Rye, massive person that he is, consumes about the same amount of food in a day as I do. So that means that I'm actually cooking for roughly four grown people every night.

Anyway, for more info on the Once A Month Cooking, check out wwww.once-a-monthcooking.com

And here's a fun little recipe sample from the book that hubby and I thought was a "mixture of vibrant flavors for the palate." That's my official food critic critique of this Picadillo Pizza recipe:

1 cup salsa
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cumin
2 boneless, skinless chx breast halves, cooked and chopped (or in my case, I required 3)
1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins
1/2 cup pitted, chopped green olives
1/4 cup chopped onion (i'm picky and don't like olives or onions, so I just left these out)
1 tbsp sliced almonds
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 12-inch Boboli Italian bread shell (I went even cheaper and got a Jiffy crust)

On prep day, combine the salsa, cinnamon and cumin in a 1 quart bag. Combine the chicken, cranberries or raisins, olives, onion and almonds in a 1 quart bag. Combine the cheese and cilantro in a sandwich bag. Clip these bags to the unopened Boboli packaging, which can be bent to fit the freezer if necessary. Freeze them.

To serve, thaw all the ingredients and place the Boboli on a medium round pizza pan. Spread the ingredients on the Boboli in the following order: sauce, chicken mixture, cheese and cilantro.

Bake the pizza in a preheated 400 degree oven for 16 to 18 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the pizza is bubbly.

Kaydn Rye described the pizza as, "interesting."

Awkward photos, Things That Can Get you Pregnant and Stuff That Can Kill You, For $1000 Please!

2009-09-28T14:43:00.006-05:00

So this last week has been a busy one, but I have still managed to make some hilarious finds on the internet and see something I never thought I'd eyewitness in this lifetime.

First off, I was cleaning out my Bookmarks in my internet tool bar (because computers have created a whole new way to clutter up your life) when I came across this site something that I think I bookmarked from Amber's site, Squash Cakes, but never really got to peruse at the time (must have been too busy, imagine that).

The site, Awkward Family Photos, has bringing hilarious laughter to my entire week.

And then, when I should have been writing my summary on the settlement case involving the guy who got sucked into the tree stump removal machine, I was instead cavorting around Yahoo! when I saw this article about the lady who got pregnant while she was pregnant. Just when you thought you were safe.......

But really, I think I agree with the skeptics, there is a much more plausible explanation, and I of course think my expert opinion should be put into the hat with all the rest....

Or then I found this article on how your shower head could be spraying bacteria. Just when you thought you were safe....

Well, never fear all you ablutophobiacs (ablutophobia is the fear of showering, by the way), Newsweek just did an article titled, "Don't Panic: Showerhead Germs Won't Kill You (Or Make You Sick).

I sure hope it's some hard earned tax dollars that are funding all these germophobe studies that ultimately all lead to one conclusion: The world is just one giant microbe, and we are powerless to stop it. I think I may have missed my calling in life; why write commentaries on tort jury verdict cases when you can swab the entire world's surfaces for a living. Stay tuned for tomorrow's headline, "Waking up in the Morning Could Kill You," oh and the day after's headline? That'll be, "Wearing Pants May Cause Your Death."

Oh, and of course I cannot forget about my promise to deliver on the one thing I never thought I'd see in this lifetime.

I don't know how it goes in your house, but most often at the end of the day I'll come out of my office and find something random just lying on the floor, sitting on the table or possibly lying in the stairway. Sometimes I think, "That squirt gun has been there for three days now, I wonder if anyone's going to pick it up?"

So I then began conducting a few experiments. Once a little green book of Kaydn Rye's sat on the ledge above the fireplace for a month and a half before I finally put it back in the bookshelf. Nobody even noticed the little green book, completely out of place on the mantel, and no one seemed to notice that it was gone either.

With my latest experiment, a nerf gun lay at the very bottom of the stairs for three days. No one tripped over it, slipped on it or otherwise noticed its presence. Deeming it to be too hazardous to remain in the experiment, with it being at the very bottom of the stairs and all, I proceeded to place it in the window sill on the stairway landing. I'd like to say that I set it there as part of the experiment, but instead I think I must have been onto another project that didn't involve going all the way up the stairs, so I just left it there for a later time when I was actually going up the stairs.

A few days went by and every once in a while I'd think about how the next time I went up the stairs I'd remember to grab that stupid nerf gun. Not long after, on a trip up the stairs with some laundry, I noticed the nerf gun was gone.

Sure enough, I looked in the toy box, and there it was. Somebody - hubby, Kaydn Rye, the dog, a squirrel - somebody, had actually thought to grab the nerf gun off of the window sill, bring it all the way up the stairs and place it in the toy box.

I was amazed and decided I am now going to pursue a government grant for my new research study on what prevents us from bending over and picking stuff off the floor. I'll let you know how it goes.

Show Me Your Web Site and I'll Vote For You!!

Water leaks, Oral Surgery and the In-Laws....

2009-09-16T16:04:00.003-05:00

We have now properly fixed the leak, have no more teeth problems and the in-laws have left.

We kicked off the weekend with a wonderful plumbing leak. Never had one of those before, but it begs the question, why do bad things, GERM-RIDDEN events, happen to good people.

I came home from, something, can't quite remember at this time, to find a little puddle of water in the kitchen next to the wall. I went through the usual questions, "Kaydn Rye, you didn't potty on the floor, did you? And Gertie, you didn't potty either did you?"

After some thought about the events of the day, Kaydn Rye officially ruled out that he had pottied on the floor and Gertie gave me a look like, "Wasn't me, man."

It was then that I looked up, and sure enough, the water was dripping down the wall. I immediately started tearing down the kitchen ceiling tiles like some kind of crazy monkey at the zoo, and realized yep, that pipe is definitely leaking.

The question then becomes, so what kind of water exactly is coming out of that pipe? I tried not to have a panic attack, wiped up the water, and stuffed a towel (now appropriately sitting in the landfill) up there until hubby could come home.

My fears were confirmed when yes, of course it would be the drain pipe from the bathroom that would be leaking. So I had a grand mixture of used sink, tub and toilet water in my kitchen.

After a few breathing exercises, I was doing alright, until hubby fully assessed the situation and concluded that the pipe would need to be snaked before we could fix it.

A plumbing "snake" as everyone calls it, seems to be an item that one should purchase, use once and then burn. But to avoid the $500 we'd probably spend on this magical piece of plumbing equipment, my husband decided to rent one from the hardware store. If only that snake could talk.....

So while he's dragging the thing up my beautiful hardwood stairway to the upstairs bathroom, I am right behind him disinfecting every surface that may or not be contaminated.

He then proceeds to rip up the toilet and snake the pipe through the toilet, and after standing in water only fit for the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, he then thinks he's going to walk down the basement to see if he made it through the entire pipe with the snake.

My immediate reaction to this?

STOPPPPPPPP! WHAT IN THE WORLD DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?? YOU HAVE CROSSED INTO THE CONTAMINATION ZONE AND NOW YOU CANNOT LEAVE WITHOUT SETTING YOURSELF ON FIRE!

I don't know what disturbs me more, the fact that his feet were covered in toilet germs, or the fact that he was okay with just walking down the stairs, through the kitchen and down to the basement while defiling the entire house with toilet water.

But the toilet was in the tub and he made it clear that he was not going to try and wrangle each of his 100 pound legs in the bathroom sink to hose them off.

I think he used some choice phrases including the words, "Crazy, need therapy, little blue pills, psycho," or something along those lines.

But we ended up fixing the problem with some $7 goop at the hardware store and the contamination zones have now been purified.

Then the in-laws came. I have taken more time off of work this summer to galavant that I was in no position to take any more time off, so it was pretty boring around here. Nothing much to see except me sitting at the computer writing about jury verdicts in botched tummy tuck cases. Pretty exciting stuff.

And just when the in-laws were on their way back to Idaho and Kaydn Rye was all nestled into his preschool routine so that I could actually have a few hours to myself after a summer rife with moments in which Kaydn Rye literally sat with his elbows on my desk, watching, and waiting for me to be done with work for the day so we could "go play," well, that's when I get a call from hubby that went something like this:

"Um, I saw the dentist for my toothache, I'm in Minot (55 minutes away) at the oral surgeon office and they're going to need to put me out for surgery, so you're going to have to come get me cause I won't be able to drive."

My response, "It's just a tooth pulling, can't you just get some novocaine and be good to go?"

Needless to say, that didn't go over well and I ended up making the hour trek to town to load up hubby, who was mumbling something about driving a bobcat or a tractor or something. Not sure what was going on there. He was pretty happy though, apparently the drugs made him forget all about the screaming incident in the bathroom with the toilet water.

Actually the tooth pulling went well. You just never know with hubby, he'll maybe say, "the pain is like a 9 one the pain scale," but really, what is a 9, in his mind exactly? For all I know his 9 is maybe more like a 2, you just never can know. But I made sure he took at least the minimum dosing of his vicodin (who gets a vicodin prescription for a measly tooth pulling anyway??) so that I wouldn't be awake all night with his pain moanings. And I was perfectly honest in telling him that I needed him to take the pain medication not for his own sake but for mine, I was going to sleep that night, and I was going to sleep good. And I did, and it felt good. I went to bed that night with all the hope of a new day with no interruptions, no teeth pulling, no water leaks and no decontamination procedures.

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So How Do We Change the World?

2009-09-02T22:11:00.005-05:00

So I haven't driven off the face of the earth, which wouldn't take much, considering I live in the middle of nowhere North Dakota, not far from the official end of the face of the earth. Seriously though, I think I actually saw myself going out the door the other day.

Here's a recap of what's been happening around here. Kaydn Rye now speaks in my language, with sayings like, "Okay, here's the deal, here's how this is going to work." Yep, pretty scary, he now tells me how things are going to all go down.

And just the other day while we were waiting in the newspaper office Kaydn Rye stood at the counter and asked, "So how do we change the world?"

Uh, (blank stare) we be kind to absolutely everyone we meet and (blank stare) tell as many people we can about how much Jesus loves them? Does that about cover it? I don't know that I've ever done anything to change the world, oh, except that I introduced another person into it.

So then we get home and he notices all the big kids playing across the street and he says, "So I think I'm going to be five now." As opposed to four-and-a-half, of course.

"Maybe then I can beat Austin and be older than him." Like age is a race we can win.

I of course told him that we cannot control how old we are.

"Yeah, cause only Jesus can control how old we are, cause Jesus controls the world."

He is indeed a very smart boy. He has figured out the key to the meaning behind the entire universe, THAT JESUS CONROLS THE WORLD." There, I've done my job, he figured it out, now he's ready for his own apartment across town.

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Life lessons: Do Not Lick Your Friends......

2009-08-20T19:53:00.004-05:00

The last week has been rife with life lessons here in the middle of nowhere, North Dakota.

First off, life lesson #1: Do not pee all over the floor while playing with the neighbor boy.

Before I move on I suppose I must explain. This week Kaydn Rye has been absolutely obsessed with the neighbor kid. Well, I suppose he's been obsessed with the neighbor kid for quite some time now, but the problem has always been that he is seven and Kaydn Rye is four - big difference there. It's like the difference between the tropical rain forests and North Dakota. Kaydn Rye may look like a 7-year-old, and herein lies the problem. His little friends are always appalled when he starts acting like, you guessed it, a four-year-old.

So anyway, the neighbor kid has taken much more interest in Kaydn Rye since his first and favorite friend moved across town. So yesterday he was here for most of the afternoon, which I didn't mind because it's like a having a free babysitter.

It was finally time for supper, and I kept yelling at Kaydn Rye to come down to eat. When he didn't come and he didn't come, I knew something was awry, so I proceeded up the stairs to find him in the hallway, with his pants down, and a huge puddle in the hallway. Apparently he told his friend he had to go potty, but instead of going into the bathroom, shutting the door and sitting on the potty, he just pulled his pants down right there and proceeded to shuffle to the bathroom. He must have had to go so bad that he couldn't hold it any longer and alas, the pee on the floor emerged.

Then, from what I'm told, the two had a conversation about how Kaydn Rye should just wipe up the mess, change his clothes and pretend like nothing happened - until I came up the stairs and ruined their plans. And the neighbor kid, who had been playing alongside a naked kid for who knows how long, was just going about his business completely undisturbed by his friend's freestyling. This is exactly why I don't allow little girls to come over and play.

Which brings me to life lesson #2: Don't lick your friends.

The neighbor kid finally left after he had pinned Kaydn Rye down to the ground and when he wouldn't let him up, Kaydn Rye licked him. Yep, he licked him, and the kid left in absolute horror.

On to life lesson #3: Always be prepared to put yourself in time-out.

If you read this blog regularly, like you should, you know that I've been trying to catch up on some home school we missed during the course of the last couple weeks of slacking off, and we have definitely had our rounds the last couple of days.

First off, last night we ended up doing his reading lesson around 8:00 at night since the neighbor kid was here for forever and then we had to eat supper and yada yada yada. So by the time we started, we were both ready to veg mindlessly in front of some television or something to that effect. It's like there comes a certain time in the day when his brain begins to spew nothingness, which is a brain effect I'm quite familiar with.

But believe it or not, Kaydn Rye was going with the flow, but I on the other hand, was completely WIGGING OUT. He'd read a word and then when it came time to read the very same word again, he would become incapable of reading it!!!!! How completely frustrating.

Finally, I had to give myself a time-out. Ironically, by the time we made it through our 20 minute lesson (which ended up taking us 40 minutes), Kaydn Rye's response was, "That was fun."

Yeah, it was real fun.....

Oh, and today, he was obviously prepared for the fact that mom might wig out on him him and when he came to a difficult word, he sat up straight, cracked his knuckles and said, "Okay, let's do this. Just take a deep breath." He then proceeded with some lamaze breathing.

And finally, life lesson #4: Do not discouraged when your desk goes from this

to this....

in a matter of an afternoon. But alas, I can just put everything in the inbox and the desk is magically clean again in a matter of minutes.

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Oh no, Silly Me, That's Not Right.....

2009-08-10T23:17:00.003-05:00

It's time again for another installment of Confessions of A Four-Year-Old. Today we were busy catching up on some much needed home school since we were away at The Gathering with the Firestarters in Ottertail, MN (more details and pics to come). I could tell he was a tad too sleepy to be reading about rats and cats and sacks, but we made it through.

We are going through the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and even though he's only four, Kaydn Rye thinks it's great and usually doesn't give me any problems. Usually I'm the one who ends up in time out if anything. Seriously, you may never know just how frustrated you can get until you start home schooling. Right now, Kaydn Rye has "Hmmph Syndrome," and when he doesn't get it right the first time he crosses his arms and says "Hmmph. I didn't do it."

While I'm trying to curb such wonderful enthusiasm with regards to failure, since it's probably going to happen a few times in his lifetime, at least one of us usually ends up "taking a break" in the process.

Yesterday was such a day, and when we congregated again at the home school table, he was still struggling to read his second sentence and said to himself, "Oh, no. Silly me, that's not right. You just have to keep trying and then you'll get it right."

And then after home school he was still talking about this weird little ball toy that he lost at my mom's house about a month ago. Here was his solution to the missing toy, "Mom, can we just go all over the world and look for it? We'll find it somewhere in the world."

I'm not exactly planning a trip around the world in search of his $4 little toy.

Then I went upstairs to fold some laundry, which is an improvement over our usual system of just pulling whatever we need out of the clean clothes basket. That system has worked well for me for years, and when we've pulled everything out of the clean clothes basket, I just pull some more clothes out of the dryer. But I guess I actually decided to put the clothes in drawers and while I was busy, busy with the laundry, Kaydn Rye was doing karate in his room. I asked him what in the world he was doing in there, and he said, "I'm learning how to be a Jedi master."

"So you don't want to first learn how to be a Jedi?" I asked.

"Nope, I wanna be a Jedi master."

Now we're off to take Gertie to the vet. I came home from my week long trip to Minnesota to find my hostas plants being completely eaten alive, weeds in the garden, dust rolling across the hardwood floors and Gertie with open wounds on her back.

As Kaydn Rye says, "Gertie is damaged." So we're off to the vet.

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Are You a Duck???

2009-07-24T18:43:00.003-05:00

So with last week pretty much being just me and hubby, we were in some dangerous territory. Without a four-year-old shimming in between us, the week could have gone something like this, "So." (funny head nod) "How about this weather, eh." (more funny head nods)

But alas, we escaped the treacherous time spent without a wedging four-year-old and have made it to the other side.

I'm sure every married person has had the experience of waking up in the morning, brushing their teeth and wondering, "How did I end up here, with this person, forever? (Please tell me you have)

Actually, for me I think it's more like a longing for a little variety, like maybe if he could just morph into somebody even a tad bit different for a day just to change it up a little. Heck, I'd even go for different mole placement for a day sometimes, just to keep it interesting.

Yet despite the fact that I would like a morphing husband, we seem to do alright. He does know how to make me want to hurl his massive self into the lake sometimes though. Like just the other night, I was up late and he had already gone to bed (thank God, sometimes it's like trying to get a little kid to go to bed) and after reading my Bible and some F. Scott Fitzgerald for awhile, I turned out the light and rolled over to go to sleep. Just when I was nice and cozy, he asked me, "Are you a duck?"

"What in the heck are you talking about?"

"Are you a duck." "Do you like to quack," he asked.

Then he started mumbling something about ropes and belts or something. I don't know. See, his conversations when he's 1/3 coherent (which could be the middle of the day for all I know) just seriously irk me. Am I duck, no, I'm not a duck, and if you are having some weird dreams about ducks, keep them to yourself.

So I guess his half-coherent-ness isn't so predictable, and now that I think about it, Kaydn Rye and I have been together now for quite a few years, yet I don't seem to get as bored with Kaydn Rye. I guess maybe because he looks an inch taller everyday, so that's changing it up enough. And he'll ask me things like, "Can you quack," but I guess I don't find it as annoying. And Gertie of course can go from shaggy to shaved in a matter of hours, so whenever she gets boring she's pretty easily changeable.

I don't know, hubby's probably thinking he has the opposite problem. He could probably use a little more stability, but alas, I am what I am. I'm like a box of chocolates, if only they were all the gooey caramel nut clusters.

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A Slip and Fall, A Ride Around Town and Mating Dogs

2009-07-21T10:39:00.005-05:00

Right now the kid is at grandma's and it's a great feeling to eat junk food for lunch, on the couch, and stare at the wall for five minutes without "Mom, wipe my butt," or "Mom, Gertie won't share her toys with me." If you don't know Gertie, check her out here. But because my life has been completely consumed by mind numbing activities like t-ball and swimming lessons for the last two weeks, I had to completely fill my day with work. Gotta love work. I had some nice case summaries to write up including an "Oh no, I slipped on some water in your building and strained my back and now I'm suing you for $90,000" case and there was the Department of Transportation case where some teenaged girls sped over a monstrous dip in the road, flipped the car and were killed. The parents subsequently sued DOT for not tending to the dip in the road, which apparently has been there about 50 years now. The parents have lots of money now.

So anyway, with a couple case summaries written up, I started a nice supper of pizza and salad when hubby returned from his day of hunting and gathering all the money he possibly could out of the insurance business. Without having the worries of the little guy tagging along on his scooter, deflecting off of it and subsequently screaming bloody murder, we went on a bike ride/roller blade run around town.

Hubby hadn't been on his roller blades in quite a few years, and since we live in the hilliest town in an other wise not-so-hilly state, as you can imagine, he was having quite a few problems getting back on the saddle on the 90 degree hill our house sits on. So, he walked down the hill, found an old parking lot near our little "downtown" area and we rode/roller bladed around for probably an hour, me on my Wizard of Oz bike and hubby flailing around on his roller blades.

He finally got the hang of it again and we proceeded back home. He did eventually lose all his speed going up the big hill to our house, and it was then that every little pebble and stone became a giant obstacle, but he made it just fine.

(This is Gertie in her mating-time diaper.)

It was when we got home that I realized I had left Gertie tied to a tree the whole time. Now, normally that wouldn't be a problem, obviously. I took down the little chicken fence I had her confined to in the backyard because I was tired of tripping over it, and tying the dog to the tree is definitely cheaper than the millions of dollars I'd spend putting up a real fence in my massive yard. But the dog is in heat, and I guess it hadn't dawned on me that I was tying a hormonal sex machine with her butt in the air to a tree where anyone could have her way with her. So with that lapse in judgment, you wouldn't believe what I found standing next to the tree with Gertie - a little white dog. I came around the corner and they were both looking at me like, "We didn't do nothin."

Hubby thought though that since Gertie hates all creatures great and small, she probably would bite the eyes out of whoever tried to even sniff her. Whether it's a leaf floating through the yard or a 200 pound dog across town, she will eradicate it. Plus, Gertie uses us as mating partners, so she's not really looking for an actual dog to mate with, but it looks like they were having a pretty good time before I came around the corner. So it looks like we'll be contributing to the pet over population real soon. Hubby's idea last week that we should maybe get the dog spayed was definitely not the best timing.

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Shouldn't This Be Happening to A Much Less Intelligent Person??

2009-07-10T10:49:00.005-05:00

We have had an eventful week. We almost died and I almost started my grandma's kitchen on fire, all in the same day, oh, and I completely spaced out a t-ball game. Kaydn Rye doesn't exactly know what day it is from one day to the next (luckily) so he didn't know he had a t-ball game that day, and I never told him about it. Ignorance is bliss. Next year at this time, if I miss a t-ball game he'll probably freak out on me, so I thought I'd take advantage of the situation while I still can.

With the airing of my little t-ball secret out of the way, the near death story goes something like this. We were on our way out to my dad's rental property that I manage, Kaydn Rye, Gertie (see The Dog, Our Old Chinese Man) and I all in the Durango, when Gertie proceeded to try and jump on my lap.

Gertie has some separation issues which prevent her from being more than a foot from any one of us, and I tried to give her the boot into the backseat when I proceeded to drive into the ditch. Gertie was clinging to the center console for dear life while I attempted at shoving her onto the floor of the backseat. You'd think she was hanging from a cliff for pete's sake. We were almost fully in the ditch when I looked ahead and realized we were almost fully in the ditch and seriously over-corrected. While we then almost entered the ditch on the other side of the road, we were definitely on two wheels, I'm sure of it. We were all over the road for quite a while before all was well again, and Kaydn Rye was on the edge of his seat when I asked him if he was alright. He said he'd be alright but that he definitely did NOT want to do that again.

So with that behind us, we proceeded to swimming lessons in neighboring Stanley. My grandparents also live in Stanley so I thought during swimming lessons I'd make them a nice puff pancake, egg and bacon dinner. No problems there, right? Well, the puffy pancake tends to poof up a little too much sometimes, and this was one of those times. The melted butter that coats the bottom of the pan must have also started dripping on the bottom of the oven, and I ended up with a seriously serious oven fire. Everyone once in a while, the puff pancake will drip on the bottom of the oven, but I still have absolutely no clue what in the heck happened, I've never had an oven fire before.

I opened the oven and there was a fire, and by the time I got the puff pancake out of the oven, the fire was completely engulfing the inside of the oven. My grandma's idea was just to shut the door and let it burn itself out, but something about sitting down to eat a nice dinner while the oven was on fire just didn't sit well with me.

To make the situation even better, two of my great-aunts were also over there that day. To save my life I could not remember how to put out an oven fire, without a fire extinguisher of course.

"Anyone have any idea how to put out an oven fire?" I asked.

"Put salt on it," said my great-aunt.

"Pour some flour on it," said my grandpa.

The salt was handier, so I threw an entire container of salt on it, which significantly decreased the fire, but didn't put it out. My grandma was getting pretty upset that I was wasting all the salt, apparently not thinking about the fact that her oven was on fire. That's when I grabbed the tupperware container of flour and doused the oven in flour. That did the trick, and with more than a century of combined cooking experience between my grandma and her two sisters, none of them had ever had an oven fire before. My guess, somebody in the bunch is lying. Really, how is that I am the one responsible for their very first oven fire experience?

Sadly, the oven fire was not the end of a day gone seriously wrong; it was perhaps the pinnacle, but not the end. After everyone was stuffed with puff pancakes and we had ruled out making a trip to the hospital for smoke inhalation, I then began the hour and a half cleanup of the oven fire.

There was a pretty big heap of salt and flour in the oven, so I thought, "Hey, let's just vacuum up the heap and I'll wipe out the rest." Well, my grandma failed to tell me that after every use, her little vacuum with all the wonderful attachments needs to be completely cleaned out. So not only did the vacuum not really do much to suck up all the crap in the oven, but I then had to spend a half hour cleaning out the vacuum.

Once I had spent more than an hour with my head in the oven, scrubbing as ferociously as I possibly could, I then had to clean up the mess I had left on the floor by the oven, and once that was done I had to clean out that stupid vacuum.

I proceeded to the porch for said vacuum cleaning task and accidentally emptied out half of the vacuum cleaner dust onto the porch, which then needed to be cleaned up as well.

Once the oven, the floor, the vacuum and the porch were as good as new, I headed home, where before I left for grandma's I had sprayed oven cleaner in my oven. So, you guessed it, I had a dirty oven awaiting me at home.

It made me wonder, why is it that things that would typically happen to stupid people, keep happening to me?

Oh, and for future reference, flour cleans up much better than salt in a scorched oven. Thought you'd like to know.

Oh, and that puff pancake recipe, here it is:

Pancake:
1 1/2 cups all purpose-flour
1 1/2 cups milk
6 large egges
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
To make pancake: In a bowl, whisk together flour, milk, eggs, sugar and salt until no lumps remain. Let stand for 30 minutes. (You can mix batter the night before, cover and refrigerate. Remove from refrigerator when you begin preheating oven.) Preheat oven to 450 degrees. While the oven preheats, place a large slope-sided baking pan or ovenproof skillet into oven with the stick of butter. When the butter is melted, remove from oven. Pour pancake mixture into heated pan and return to oven. Bake pancake for 15 to 20 minutes until edges are puffed high and golden.

Apple filling:
2 large apples, peeled and sliced (I leave the peelings on though)
2 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
To make apple filling, While pancake bakes, in medium skillet, sate apples in butter until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Add brown sugar and stir until dissolved. Transfer to serving bowl.

To serve pancake, be sure everyone is at the table when you bring it in, as the pancake will slump quickly. Cut pancake into quarters and fill each serving with sauteed apples. Pass the whipped cream on the side if desired. Serves 4.

Here's to a fire free day!

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The Blaisdell Rodeo Has Again Come and Gone....

2009-07-02T20:43:00.003-05:00

Last weekend was rodeo time at Blaisdell, ND, population 12 I think, since it's had a population spurt the last year or so. The town is probably the sorriest thing I've ever seen, but the rodeo, high on the hill on the outskirts of Blaisdell, is for some reason a no-miss event.

You'd never know it by my done-up hair, wedge sandals and crop pants, but I can actually ride a horse, being from a ranch and all. I usually ride horse in my cute little blue running shoes, and I usually attend rodeos in wedge sandals or some cute flip flops, I guess because cowboy boots and wranglers just aren't in my DNA makeup, and I'm sure I looked absolutely ridiculous behind the shoots getting Kaydn Rye to hop on a sheep in my wedge sandals, but that's just how I roll.

Kaydn Rye has been in the kid's showdeo for the last two years, and this year he graduated to sheep riding, which turned out to be a terrible experience. My Mr. Safety was pretty psyched about riding a sheep, which I thought was utterly shocking. He didn't last more than a second, but he did it.

I don't really know what the point of sheep riding is, but for some reason it is socially acceptable. Of course, it's not exactly like bull riding where you get your arm in the air and swing it hoping to look cool and stay on the bull. Nope, sheep riding is a sport that is only won by hopping on, grabbing the sheep by the neck and hanging on for dear life as long as you can.

Kaydn Rye was fully prepared to grab the sheep by the neck and hang on for dear life, until he actually got on the sheep and became utterly grossed out by all its fuzziness. I'm sure he thought, "Oh my word, how many germs are lurking under all that fur?" Which is why he got on, put his hands in the air like the sheep was a bomb ready to go off, and he of course fell off before he even really made it out of the shoot.

Here are some more Blaisdell Rodeo pics for all you rodeo fans.

Kaydn Rye's the kid on the end with the brown jacket who looks like he's in some serious pain.

Here he's getting ready for the big stick pony race.

Here's him taking a much needed break from rodeo-ing.

And I can't forget the wonderment that is t-ball. We've been busy with that the last couple weeks, and we've been hard at work practicing in the yard things like, this isn't football so don't tackle your team mates for the ball. Oh, and when you bat, don't run and grab the ball just so the other team can't tag you with it. Things like that are always helpful pieces of information.

Oh, and of course there's the wonderful yard fishing, can't forget that. I don't know how many bushes he caught in the yard, but he was pretty proud of his casts.

That has been my summer vacation so far...now we're off to the lake.....

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Drumroll Please......

2009-06-24T09:56:00.002-05:00

The time has finally come for before and after pictures to prove that while I have not had time to force even one creative thought into my brain, I have been a busy, busy girl.

First off, for the last two months I have been trying to tame my overgrowth of a yard, and I must say, for someone who has no more experience with growing things than watering houseplants and constantly stuffing food into a little monkey-boy, I'm pretty proud. I even put in a garden, all by myself. Yeah, my mother used to force us to garden, but she was the brains behind the operation then.

So I proceeded to the garden spot with my straight-line string, a hoe, a tape measure and some seed. I was busy measuring it all out and making sure all my rows were absolutely and perfectly straight when my grandparents decided to show up and thought I looked ridiculous. My grandmother's suggestion?

Just hoe a roe and put the seed in.

Apparently stuff grows better in crooked rows. I couldn't bring myself to plant crooked rows, but the rows in which I didn't count absolutely every single tiny little carrot seed came up much better than the rows in which they were meticulously counted and evenly spaced. Who knew?

Oh, and remember that crappy (literally) little pond I had in the backyard? Well, we did a little sprucing and here's the transformation.

Drumroll.....

Here are some more flower garden shots....I thought I'd better snap them so at least I could prove I can grow stuff like a good little housewife.

And of course, the pirate house....

With that done, last week I tackled the bathroom. We had finished the tile, after ripping out CARPET out of the bathroom quite a few months ago (see Holes in the Bathroom) but in a week's time we tore off that terrible wallpaper, replaced the countertop, installed new fixtures, spray painted some of the old fixtures and redid the tub area. We had planned on just doing kind of a concrete overlay on the countertop to make it look like concrete, but we found this remnant countertop for $25, a fourth of the cost of the materials to do the concrete look.

Remember that most-hideous wallpaper and the wonderful holes in the floor?

Well that's all gone now.

Some friends came over and helped me de-wallpaper, which took hours upon hours with sponges and surprisingly, a spatula. Nothing like a good ol' spatula for taking off wallpaper.

Here are a few more pics for your viewing pleasure.

See, I have been very busy.

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What Would the World Look Like Without Us....

2009-06-14T20:33:00.005-05:00

My anal retentive self has struck this week, which is why I have again been AWOL from my wonderful blogging life. There have been weeks where I've thought, "Man, I only posted once that week, what in the world was I doing?"

And then I've realized, "Oh yeah, I was actually hanging out with my real-life friends that week. Imagine that." Blogging is a great substitute for human interaction when all your real friends are either busy or on vacation.

But I did not have the privilege of hanging out with friends this week, well, unless you count the day a couple of friends came over to help me in my wallpaper removal endeavors in the bathroom the other day. For the most part I have been working on completing my yard beautification mission, which has completely taken over the last month of my life.

When we moved into this house in September we moved into a property that looked like a flower garden had spontaneously combusted. There were flowers and bushes everywhere, and I mean everywhere. You could just be walking along and realize oh, you stepped on a tulip, or a day lily or a whatever. I am into flowers, really I am, but I need to be able to walk in my yard without feeling claustrophobic. And the massive flower garden that wraps around the house? Well, that was being taken over by grass. So, for the last month I have been cleaning out flower beds to ultimate perfection. And I cannot stop.

I have an innate need for flowers to be where flowers should be, for grass to be where grass should be and for dirt to be where dirt should be. It's the same reason that in our closets, all the hangers need to be exactly the same and all the clothes need to be hung according to purpose and color. For instance, in Kaydn Rye's closet, all the hangers are those little white hangers, and all his shirts are hung up with the blues, the reds, the yellows and oranges, the blacks, the browns and the plaids all hung together in their respective groups.

In my closet, I have skinny white hangers and my clothes are hung with the shirts grouped into blues, purples, greens, blacks, browns and reds. Then the pants, the skirts and the dresses all hung in their respective groups.

In hubby's closet, he has big black hangers and his clothes also must be hung according to color. This was a prerequisite for marriage. Believe me, it is that important.

If he couldn't keep his closet color coordinated with everything hanging on the right hangers going the right way, it wasn't going to happen, I wouldn't marry him. I informed him that he could perhaps sleep on it and let me know if he was ready to commit to proper closet etiquette, till death do us part.

He had seen my closet, so he knew what he was getting into, but for some reason he just had not previously thought about how he would be required to follow the same closet etiquette. Needless to say, he traded his freedom for a life of slavery to closet etiquette.

So anyway, same goes for the yard. There can be no weeds and no grass in the flower beds, and there can be no weeds and no flowers in the grass. There's just no working around it. I have actually taken a couple days off of work to de-grass the flower beds in the last few weeks. That's the beauty of telecommuting - I do not need to seek help for my illness and can still hold down a decent job.

Yes, I know I am suffering from some kind of schizo-obsessive disorder, but the truth is, I do not want help. If I was cured, then I would have weedy and grassy flower gardens, and that's not good for anyone. What would the neighbors think?

And really, if there were no obsessive people in the world, the people who have nightmares about weeds in their flower gardens and blue shirts mixed with brown shirts in the closet, what would the world look like?

Scary thought.

This week, after I clean out all the grass from in between my lilac bushes, then I believe I should be about done. I'll post pictures for the big reveal.

Additionally, I am also de-wallpapering the bathroom. After finishing the slate tile floor almost three months ago, I finally decided to get my butt in gear for another round of de-wallpapering. By the end of the week I'll have updated pictures of our de-hydrangea wallpapered bathroom, complete with new counter top. Wallpaper is like the wrath of G-d upon humanity. I'm sure, just like Eve eating the apple in the garden, wallpaper may seem like a good idea at the time, but believe me, it never is. If ever a little voice starts filling your head with fantasies of wallpaper, run. Run away as fast as you can. Run straight to the paint aisle and pick yourself up a nice gallon of paint.

With that thought, I will return to the world of blogging later in the week, once my mind has been eased by the riddance of wallpaper and weeds.

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