The Last Minute...

*said in my best voice over*

Welcome to The Last Minute! This is it, folks. This is when the magic happens. Right here, at The Last Minute.

This is when you realize you can staple together the front of a costume rather than add velcro. This is when a specific cowboy becomes Any Old Cowboy, and you can use the threat of candy for acceptance of the changes. This is when sweats become bats, and if you say it IS a monkey head often enough, it will magically become a monkey head.

This is when the rubber hits the couch and things go all awry out there on the road. This is... My Finest Hour.

It is 5:24PM (according to the clock on the computer. I have no idea what time it is out there in the real world, but let's just assume that a minute is sixty seconds anywhere and follow along on the whole lapsed time thing and we'll all be good to go.)

I have, sitting in bags before me: a sparkly blue and gold shirt for a well-endowed woman, a fuzzy scarf, a pair of jeans that must have been part of some grown man's Hulk costume a few years back, a belt, half a yard of black vinyl, an old lady's neckerchief, a couple of "decorator rings" (whatever those are), and a spool of thread.

Can this become a pirate?

Can this become a pirate before tomorrow?

Will he live this down?

Or will this imbue me with inspiration for blackmail in twelve short years?

Only time will tell, but anything can happen at The Last Minute... it's the most wonderful tiiiiiiiime, of the yeeeeeeear!

Dy

Potential

Some days have the potential to be inspiring days, filled with exploration and joy; days bursting with goodness and gentleness, much like a 1970's fabric softener commercial. Today may have had that potential, but we didn't pull it off. It started off on a weird note when Zorak woke me by handing me a crying, stinky baby at 7:30, with the admonition, "Here ya go. I've gotta run." What? Where's the alarm clock? Or, barring the alarm, where's the coffee?

I should have cancelled the dentist appointment, stayed home, cooked, and read. Next time my day starts like that, I think I will.

It was a rough one, just weird from start to finish. There were even a few things that were simply too odd to sort out. My personal favorite came tonight, from James. I cannot share the context, (because I was hiding and refused to go see what was going on - Zorak had the helm, and I left him to it). All I know is that the child was in tears when he uttered this phrase. I may never know the rest of the story.:

Well, would you want to lick my tongue?

Come to think of it, we may not want to know...

Miss Emily is firmly entrenched in her 9 month growth spurt. Hiking across the desert in August with nothing but a bag of pork rinds wouldn't leave a person so parched.

Costumes: mostly figured out. I think. The only one that's going to require actual effort on my part tomorrow is John's pirate costume. Gotta dig up the sewing machine (and then find a place to use it... and then figure out what I'm doing.) James plans to re-tread his Superman costume, and our Wonderful Friends have come to the rescue with an outgrown Bob the Builder costume Smidge can wear. I bought a hardhat and yellow spraypaint today to round out the look. Miss Emily is set to be a ladybug.

All's well that ends well, though. We began Farmer Boy tonight, and had lights off around eight-thirty. Everyone was out by nine. James got back up around ten and said he was hungry. I gave him a banana and some warm milk, and we read a bit of Tucket's Travels together while he snacked and we snuggled. Then he brushed his teeth and headed to bed. I don't think he was hungry, really. I think he just didn't like ending the day on a sour note and needed a little more comfort. That's good, I think. I'm glad that comfort is the norm for him.

I'm glad that's the norm for all of us. It ensures that we'll work harder together, as a team, to make tomorrow a better day.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

A meme?

I always think about doing these, but never get around to doing them. But then Becca tagged me, officially, so I thought I'd give it a try. This is a "Ten Random Facts About Me" meme. Are these supposed to be little known things? Or do we shoot for weird things? Or is it just truly random? Ok, ok, I've got the first one:

1. I draw a total blank when asked a relatively vague question.

So here goes. 10 9 Random thoughts about me...

2. Zorak kicks my butt at "Name that Band" - every time. I have some kind of musical turret's that causes me to shout "Bob Seger" at the most inappropriate moments.

3. I didn't learn to dance until I was 22.

4. I studied Italian for two years, in the hope I would one day be called to serve as a missionary in Italy. (Yeah, I know, that's an odd way to go about it. I was twelve. That's about all I can say on that one.)

5. Up until about six months after I'd met Zorak, neither marriage nor motherhood was on my radar. At all. Ever.

6. I can wrestle a stud wall into place, rebuild an engine, and sew a straight line, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what to fix for lunch!

7. Although I'm not a fan of some of the technology available, I must admit that I got a little thrill in my knees when I saw the new commercial for a vehicle that will parallel park for you.

8. I used to train to be a powerlifter. (Laney, shush!)

9. I've never smoked pot or taken any illegal narcotic substance.

10. Coffee. Good thing it's legal, right?

Ok, that fruffnsnuffn dagburned dryer buzzer just woke the baby. I tag anyone who hasn't done this yet, but thinks it look like fun! I'll catch y'all later.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Dentists and Cabinets and Bugs, Oh my!

Blogging and heading for bed tonight! The low is supposed to be around 28. We haven't hooked up the propane to the HVAC yet, and the behemoth stove is still in exile in the basement, so it's gonna be a cold one tonight! (We're loving the beautiful days, but this cold snap at night caught us off guard. Thank heaven for space heaters!)

The checkups for the boys went fairly well. No plaque, no tartar, happy gums, clean tongues. Everything that is supposed to be receiving excellent attention and maintenance, is receiving excellent attention and maintenance (yay!) But they STILL all have new cavities! Every. Single. Child. (argh!) WHY is this happening? The dentist is very nice about it, but somehow he comes across as if he's saying, "You really suck at this, ya know." I *know* that's not what he means, but... *sigh* He's convinced it's a diet thing, now.

So we did the routine Q&A:
Do they drink a lot of juice?
Mmm, no. In the past six months, they've had juice maybe, MAYBE twice a week. If that.
Kool-Aid?
No, we don't even buy that. Or sodas. They have soda perhaps twice a month. When we eat out, we all drink water. When they're "thirsty", I give them water. We really drink a lot of water.
Sugar before bed, or drinks at bedtime?
Nope. Nothing passes those lips but water after their teeth are brushed.
Candy?
Unh-uh. I tried the chocolate chips with lessons thing, but that was more work than it was worth and lasted a whopping two days out of the past three years. So, um, no. We never eat taffy, and they don't eat caramels or nougats... (of course, I'll have to fess up on Wednesday that *I* eat all the caramels at night, while the children are sleeping. My diet is deplorable, but theirs is great!)
Processed foods like snack cakes and cookies?
Uh, wheat allergy means any cakes and cookies we do eat are homemade and generally free of a lot of the gunk. No high-fructose corn syrup. WAY less sugar than store-bought things.

Really, we're a LOT better than my mother was with me! *grin*

They're already little flossing maniacs. The teeth are clean, just... weak? We're going to add a third brushing to our daily routine: a light brushing with baking soda after lunch. And the boys readily agreed to a total moratorium on any and all junk food from now until their next checkups (although Zorak kindly mentioned certain upcoming holidays, so that will need to be renegotiated a bit). Perhaps that will work.

In the meantime, poor Smidge has a referral to a pediatric specialist. His front teeth overlap slightly on the edges, and the dentist said there is decay at each spot where the teeth rest against each other. He'd like to put crowns on all four front teeth. (I don't know that we're going to follow that recommendation. Figure we'll talk with the specialist first and go from there.) It breaks my heart, and we feel like absolute loser parents for this, but when we stand back and look objectively... we can't really find anything obvious that's causing it. Maybe we need to take them in for a blood workup? Would a blood serum calcium deficiency cause this kind of problem? Anybody else with good diet and hygiene still run into dental problems in their little ones?

After the lengthy visit, we hit the library, where we returned our books for the THIRD TIME IN A ROW without late fines! WOOHOO, we're on a roll! Maybe someday soon John will stop referring to our visits as "renting" books from the library. ;-) All stocked up for the week with some wonderful reads!

Then, as a treat for a day well-executed, we headed to Cook's Natural Science Museum. It's a little place, but just the right size when you're eight and six and three. Very friendly staff. Incredibly diverse collection. They have an historic mousetrap collection, insects from around the world, aquatic and regional critters... the ladies there were very knowledgable and shared tons of interesting information with the boys. The boys had a delightful time exploring the many hands-on exhibits and discussing the interesting, detailed displays. I think this will be one of our regular hot spots for a while. Good way to enjoy the afternoon.

We did meet with Patient Mr. Cabinet Guy. He's so... patient. He couldn't really answer our concern about putting the Swiss Army Cabinet against a wall. Said he's done it before, and hasn't heard any complaints, but acknowledged that people don't always complain to the salesman or managers when they're unhappy. He'd put in a few calls, but didn't get any satisfactory information. So, we'll have to swing by Lowe's (because Home Depot does not have any of the tall cabinets on display other than one lone, empty pantry) to see what's up with the angles and whether it's worth trying to make it fit. In case it's a no-go, though, Patient Mr. Cabinet Guy did help us design two other very feasible options, both of which would move the microwave from atop the fridge. Zorak's eyes twinkled, and he obviously preferred both of those options to the Swiss Army Cabinet. (Something about balancing scalding leftovers above your head with small children darting between your feet as if on a dare... makes him nervous.) So, we'll see. Like I told the boys, now Mommy and Daddy have to go sit and stare at one another until one of us comes up with an answer.

And Miss Emily? She was a TROOPER today. Granted, she passed out every time we got back in the car, so she was a little dazed for the first half hour at each stop. But she was just her normal, happy, clapping, giggling little self. She's like carrying around a ball of sunshine wherever we go. Gotta love that!

Well, I can't feel my fingers now, so I'm going to go before the typos get too bad to correct.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

General Stuff

OH yeah, after the grandfather comment from earlier in the week, Zorak got carded for beer at the market yesterday! I'd forgotten about that. (Although I did laugh. Quite heartily.) So, go figure. Is he eighteen... or eighty? Dun-da-daaa! He's Chameleon Man!

Today, we worked. We primed and cleaned and moved. We chopped and sorted and stacked. We changed our minds a hundredtybillion times (maybe more) about the Swiss Army Cabinet. We hunted down Patient Mr. Cabinet Man, who has moved to another store and still can't get away from us. (OK, it was a promotion and he gets to work M-F now, rather than "retail hours". I'm pretty sure it wasn't us. Not entirely.) We'll meet with him tomorrow and order us a cabinet of some kind! Wahoo!

Today I burned, er, baked not one loaf of bread, but three, and three batches of cinnamon rolls. Sunday, it turns out, is not a good baking day for me. Most of it was edible. The upside to today's baking fiasco is that we will have bread pudding for breakfast tomorrow, because that's what we do with the failed wheat-free loaves.

The wheat-free loaf would have turned out perfectly, had any one of the six of us in this house had heard the timer beep. Of course, that would have saved the bread that was already in the oven, as well. But, ah, no. And so, two loaves burnt and one loaf overproofed to the point of reaching critical mass and imploding. Zorak has already eaten most of one of the whole wheat loaves I made. Maybe it's a sympathy play. Or one of KathyJo's euphemisms. The cinnamon rolls, actually, weren't "burnt", but they didn't get removed from the muffin tins in time and what was supposed to be the caramel glaze cooled into... a praline-style Gorilla Glue. Ick.

Tomorrow we have three, possibly four, dental appointments. At nine in the morning. I tried to schedule for a Friday so Zorak could go with us, but the office is no longer open on Fridays. Don't know what's up with that, but considering the amount of business they get from our family, I'm thinkin' they could open on Friday, see us all, close up shop as we leave, and make out like bandits. Maybe I'll talk to them about that tomorrow. ;-)

And so, to bed. Tomorrow's going to come way too early!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Kind of different...

This has been the week for unexpected comments from strangers! None of them have been bad, per se, just... odd.

Comment #1:
While we were eating out last week, Zorak noticed that a couple of older, grandmotherly types were eyeballing the baby. Miss Emily was in good form, and so he took her over to say hello (much to the delight of said eyeballers). It seemed like such a routine exchange of pleasantries and reminiscences, until one of the ladies asked Zorak, "Are these all your grandchildren?"

*blink* *blink*

"What?"

"Your grandchildren, are they all yours?"

BWAAHAAHAAAA!!! (I can laugh. It wasn't me. This time.)

Maybe it's the beard.

Comment #2:
Then today, we were at the mall, trying to track down comforters for the boys. We paused at a stall which displayed blinking things. No, we didn't expect to find blankets there, but those lights -- they drew James like a staticky television will draw an unsuspecting little blonde girl. So, as he's staring into the light, the gentleman manning the booth and I struck up a conversation. All seems normal, when out of nowhere, he says, "Where are you from?"

(Side note: I hate this question. Around here, people mean, "Did you travel all the way from Priceville, or are you from here in town?" But this guy wasn't from here, his accent was faintly Mediterranean, with a bit of an Indian lilt to it. So I wasn't sure if he meant here-here, or around-here, here...)

In going with our Forever Home theme (This Is Home), I said we were from our little town. He cocked his head and asked, very slowly, the way some people will do when they think you're not quite proficient with the language, "But where are you from?"

Oh, well, we're from New Mexico. *smile* (OK, answered that one without looking like too much of an idiot. Meanwhile, James is still staring intently at the lights.)

But no, again with the question. This time, a bit more slowly. I just stared at him, because, frankly, I was no longer certain I understood his question properly. Finally, he says, "You're not European?"

When my laughter died down a bit, he explained that he thought for sure we were from the Netherlands, or perhaps Germany. Nothing he could pin down. We just "had that feel" about us.

Of course, he could have been from Texas, I guess. In the end, it doesn't really matter where we're from, as long as we can talk and visit and enjoy the interactions we have from day to day. And both conversations turned into delightful ones, in spite of their odd beginnings. I hope you have some delightful surprises in store for you this week!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Industrious Days

(A grouchy post)

This weekend is The Weekend of Preparation. We're not actually preparing for anything, but it makes us more productive if we have a goal. We've gone over all the little things that need doing - some obvious, like finishing the trim painting, others not so obvious until, say, it rains... that's like a big, soggy highlighter from God, there. Or the dental work I thought I could put off a while, until tonight. Anyway, I doubt we'll end up with a floor before Christmas; there are simply too many other pressing obligations. But that's okay. I'm glad we can take care of these things, and that's forward motion. I just asked that we take this weekend to get (and, by affiliation of said request, keep) the house "floor ready". You know, like normal people live.

I'm tired of the state of disarray, to be honest. Yes, this is a construction zone, but it's also our home. I'm tired of tripping over a shop-vac in my kitchen (I do move it, but it makes it way "home" while I'm not looking). I'm tired of the baby teething on the reversible screwdriver bits (just how many of those do we have, anyway?) I'm tired of not being able to scrub what floor we do have because it takes a full day to clear the junk up off of it before we can even get to the sweeping and vacuuming. And I won't even go into the shoes... those shoes that turn up everywhere... they're like the voices in the head of an Alfred Hitchcock antagonist.

I do what I can, but it's not enough. And I refuse to be a nag about this stuff - nagging won't help anymore than setting it on fire does. (Trust me.) But, as Zorak is fond of pointing out (sometimes at the most inopportune moments), I do have "control issues". So, going against my own grain in this endeavor is making me subtly and unpredictably grouchy. Well, perhaps not so subtly.

So today we buckled down and got to work. It was productive:

* School Room - sanded, textured, caulked and vacuumed check
* Boys Room - scoured and prepped for curtains and hanging IKEA thingies check
* Nursery - ... um, didn't get around to the nursery
* Basement - I don't even ask anymore, but I heard noises that sounded too big to be mice, and there are more boxes in the foyer, so I'm guessing something was done on that front check
* Clutter -
- library books rounded up check
- paper from the Alter of Incoming Bills cleared out check
- baby clothes sorted for washing (this time it's the baby boy clothes) check
* Pantry - actually rethinking the pantry option, but we will order something this week. Oh, yes, we will. check (In the meantime, I resorted and organized the kitchen bookshelf/pantry again, so small check on that one.)
* Clean off that hillbilly front porch! check

Now that the boys' windows are clean on the inside, it's obvious that tomorrow, I need to tackle the storm windows. They need to be removed, cleaned, repaired and put back up. New screens. Clean and lubricate the tracks. General happy homeowner stuff. Should be good. Should feel productive. There's just nothing like a frenzied cleaning binge to cure what ails ya.


Which brings me to the things that make me smile:
We need to buy James new winter jammies, as he insists on growing out of last year's clothes every. single. year. :-)
The boys are very excited about the school room.
Zorak is very excited about building bookshelves for the school room.
Emily is very excited about everything. She does "yay", and "wolf puppy" and many other things that take me back to the other children's infant years.

And that makes me very thankful - for the helpful, generous-hearted 8 year old; for the loving, doting 6 year old; for the delightful, happy 3 year old; for the sweet and exuberant 9 month old. And perhaps most especially, even when I don't feel like it, thankful for the dedicated, somewhat surly but always loving... erm, older one.

Autumn Recipe Tag

Mere, who regularly makes me smile, makes me think, keeps me alternately laughing so hard I cry, and standing in awe of her creativity (and motivation - definitely the motivation part), and is generally just thoroughly enjoyable to read, posted one of her favorite fall recipes when she heard rumors of autumnal weather reaching her neck of the woods. They are now well-fed, and shedding sweaters by ten AM. (Never listen to rumors spread by weathermen!)

Hmmm, let's tag everybody and put together the most delicious Autumn Recipe Collection!

Andie has inadvertently started the ball rolling with her Royal Thanksgiving Recipe: Pumpkin Pie Fit For a Queen.

It doesn't take much - just one recipe. One thin index card. Go on, try it. Post your favorite autumn recipe here, or post it on your blog and let us know here so we can all feast in the fall!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

(I'll figure out what to add later today. Right now I've got to go look productive.)

GAH!! I'm a heel.

Little did I know how prophetic my words were when I said the bug day would probably be better than the farm field trip. Today was the deadline to pay to reserve our spot (yes, I know, nothing like the last minute for getting things done). I'd made arrangements to just swing payment by while we were in town, since this is our "goin' to town day". Everything was going along smoothly.

Well, we got out the door with everyone and everything - loaves of bread for Mr. Ward and Miss Terry, Pioneer Club handbooks, library books, grocery list... everything except the directions, and phone number of the lady I was supposed to deliver the payment to. And I didn't know her last name. If we hadn't been TO town by the time I realized my mistake, I'd have gone back. But that's, what, $50 in gas? *sigh* I feel like a real heel, and am not sure how I'm going to explain it to the boys. Well, I'll just be honest, yes, but I'm going to feel even worse before it's all over. And the boys are going to be so disappointed.

OK, it's after eleven. We got home twenty minutes ago, and the kids are now down, except for Miss Emily. It's been a very long day, and tomorrow probably won't be terribly perky. So I'm going to get her down and see about making plans to do something solo on the farm field trip end. I know I can't make it right, but maybe I'll be able to make it at least a little better.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy