Getting Out The Door

A friend observed once that in order to get out the door at seven, she has to start the process at three. She wasn't joking, but the only ones in the group who knew that were the ones with more than two children. (This friend has six, and she's *good*. I want to be her when I grow up.) If you have children, you'll laugh because this wasn't you. If you don't, hopefully it will inspire you to have tenderness, and a flexible time frame, for your parent-friends. The friends in today's story are just such friends, and I love them for it.

Zorak calls at lunch and says, "Hey, they're gonna have the boat at the dock right after work. Can you have the boys ready?" (Me-Wa and Me-Tae bought a little fishing boat and wanted to surprise the boys. Totally awesome idea.)

Um... sure?

Now, I was planning to do all this on Friday. Or Saturday. This is Wednesday. What, in our ten-plus years together, made him think I am capable of this task on such short notice, I do not know.

But I gave it a good shot, and thought, for a while, that we would make it. I let the boys off the rest of their studies under the condition that they would please go find socks and some kind of shoes and meet me at the door. (Yes, this was around one. No, we didn't have to leave the house until after four. It takes that long.) Walk with me through the afternoon.

The three big ones shout, "OK, Mom!" and we're off!

Five minutes later...

I've scrounged up some empty bottles, filled them all carefully 2/3 full with water and set them (mostly) upright in the freezer.

I found a cooler. (Huh? This isn't ours. Where did this come from? *sniff* Well, it smells clean. It'll work.) Wiped it down. Threw in some cheese sticks. And some ice. Eight cubes of ice, to be exact, because somebody has - once again - turned off the ice maker.

John is standing in the front yard, wearing church pants. And pirate boots. And no shirt. "John, sweetie. You're going fishing. Don't you think you might not want to wear your navy Dockers?" With a cheerful, "OK, Mom," he heads inside to change. I'll deal with the boots later.

Smidge, honey, let's get your socks... why are you naked?
"Me wants to have JAMMY DAY!"
OK, that would be a place to start. Where are your jammies, then?
"No me no."
Alrighty, get some socks, sweetie. I'm going to go find Baby Girl.
"OK, Mom."

(I haul screaming BabyGirl in from the precipice of death that is our front porch, while yelling down the hallway, "JOHN, Honey, you can't leave the front door open. BabyFlash is an escape artist!" He yells back, "OK, Mom!")

As I set ScreamingBabyGirl down in the nursery, a pair of underwear lands on her head. *Huh?* Smidge has his head *in* the drawer, flinging skivvies, hand-over-hand. James enters, fully clothed in a sweater, jeans, thick socks, and boots. He immediately starts trying to intervene. (He's trying to help. He's trying to help. He's trying to help.)

Smidge is screaming, BabyGirl is screaming (and apparently stuck in the leg hole of a pair of whities). James is getting irate, shouting, "Stop it! You are NOT a cartoon character!" (I can't help but think he wouldn't say that if he could view this scene objectively...) I see movement from the corner of my eye, through the foyer and out the front door. Leaving it open.

That was John, now wearing his tan Dockers. And cowboy boots (because pirate boots just don't go with tan?)

"Smidge, why are you crying?"
"No me have socks."
"*sigh* James, can you catch BabyGirl (she's back on the porch now, and heading for the steps) and take her to your room while you change out of that sweater? You're going to roast."
"OK, Mom."

"And Smidge, let's get you some socks."
"OK, Mom."

(Yelling out the door,) "John, Honey, I was thinking something more along the lines of your cargo pants or jeans. Remember, not church pants, okay?"
"OK, Mom."
"And shut the door!"
"OK, Mom."

We get Smidge some socks. I direct him to find the clothes he was wearing prior to the JAMMY DAY announcement, and put them back on. James has BabyGirl safe and sound... I bolt to the basement to find the life jackets. Find them, just in time to hear a thump and some kind of wailing noise. (I have a game I play sometimes, where I try to guess the incident before I get to the scene of the crime. Was it Smidge, in the nursery, with the corner of a drawer? Or was it Emily, in the boys' room, with the ladder to the bunks? Kinda breaks up the tension.)

It was Smidge, in the nursery, on the doorknob. I was close. More crying. James announces he's ready. And he really is. Oh, bless that child!

(You do know, though, that we're not even CLOSE to being able to head out the door, right? But at least they're cheerful, and their hearts are in the right places. I can't get angry about that.)

John informs me that his shoes have no laces. Why? Who has taken them, and where are they now? (We launched a full-scale man hunt for the laces, but I ended up calling Zorak. "Are you still at the store? Oh, good. Can you please get John some shoe laces? Thanks!")

Smidge is dressed. But his feet have grown. Since last weekend. (Call Zorak back. "And Smidge shoes? I don't know. Hang on. Um, they're six and a half inches long... *screaming erupts in the background as BabyGirl claws at the front door and perfoms an opera about the orphan child locked in a dungeon - while Smidge starts yelling at James, who is digging through the craft things, searching for shoe laces* Can you convert from that? I've really got to go. Love you!")

James? Still good to go. Thank God.

Baby girl? She's okay, although exuding some kind of weird slime that's going to make her look dirt-breaded after five minutes on the bank of the river. But otherwise? She's fine.

Smidge? Still mostly dressed. I didn't even ask about underwear. He had pants. A shirt. Socks. Life is good.

Quick head count - 1, 2, 3, 4. *whew*

Check the water in the freezer. Only two spilled. Still no ice cubes. Stupid gremlins. Pack. Load. Wrangle. Wipe. Clean. Tidy. Pray. Pretty simple routine once you get the hang of it.

Zorak pulls up and it's a flurry of lacing and fitting and wiping and loading. Me-Wa calls. They've been at the dock for a while. They're waiting for us. What's taking so long? Zorak rushes. I do one last once over. Nobody is wearing anything too weird. Nobody's naked. Ah... I no longer care. "Load up!"

Zorak tells me we're taking the Suburban. Oh.

Yell out the door, "Wrong car!" Smidge cries again. Three hours ago, I would have bothered to ask. Right now, I can tell he's not bleeding, not stuck in the pickup, doesn't have a pitbull stuck to his head. He's fine.

And that's when Zorak looks at me and says, "You ready?"

Me? Oh, Honey. (Don't cry. Please don't cry, Dy. Deep breath.) I'm wearing one of your shop rag t-shirts, soccer-shorts-as-boxers, no bra, and I haven't showered in three days. I have zits. My finger isn't healed yet, and it hurts. Until you'd called, I'd been cleaning and teaching all morning long. And did I mention that I have PMS? Listen, I know where to find you. But there is No. Way. NOWAY I'm passing up the opportunity to wait until you leave so I can take a shower. Alone. With no "help". No stray drafts. No on-off-on-off of the vent fan. Nobody crying. Nobody screaming. No worries that someone has set BabyGirl adrift.

I. Am. Tired.

He shakes his head, but smiles. "OK, Mom."
I smile and wave. "OK, Dad. Love you!"

Ten years ago, a story like this would have scared the living daylights out of me. Now? Not it's not so bad. I wouldn't trade it for all the quiet, calm, or free time in the world.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Oh, look! Another big... uh, move along, kids.

So after working hard last Saturday, we realized we had (once again) not prepared something for supper ahead of time, and so... into town for supper. While waiting to be seated, we noticed another good-sized family beside us.

"Oh, look, they have as many children as we do!" I whispered to Zorak.

He counted. "More. They have five."

"Oh. No, one more. Six. How cool."

"They're cute, aren't they?" By now, our children are waving and smiling at their children.

"Yeah, they are. Oh, seven. Wow, that is so awesome!"

About this time, the father, whose ears are probably programmed to hear any mention of the number "seven", turned to find us staring at his family. He looked prepared to tell us it's none of our business. We smiled.

"We were just admiring your beautiful children."

He smiled.

We began talking. They're in town for a soccer tournament. Oh, what fun. Kids and hotels, and negotiating travel with so many people. General family chit-chat. The wife overheard adult conversation and turned around. She's pregnant! Oh, she's beautiful. Made me want to have quadruplets right then and there, just because.

Then she gave me the once-over and her whole demeanor changed. She shot him "the look", he gave us (me) the once-over. Conversation ended.

Huh. That was a little strange, I thought. Well, we have been working in the barn all day. We're a little grunged out. Maybe... I don't know. Maybe she thought we're in the business of nabbing other people's adorable children. *shrug* OK, whatever.

So we sat down, and I took off my coat and went up to get some food. And I got several other really odd looks. Mostly from families. What the --??

THEN it dawned on me.

We have a selection of t-shirts we use for wearing around the house, working on the land, etc. And I was wearing one of those. Emblazoned across my chest, in bold letters and detailed artwork:

Polygamy Porter
Why have just one?
Bring some home to the wives!

Well. That would explain a lot...

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

*edited to fix the slogan

No Goats?

I got this in my email today...

You have been thinking up a cool brand, right?

or are you still all about the goats?

I wanna be a goatboy, baby!
Goatboy Up!
Goatboys stay in the saddle...

Even sheepherding is cooler.

So, it looks like we'll be going with cows because of... semantics.

*giggle*

Kiss those calves er, babies!
~Dy

Getting It All Done

Nobody gets it all done. Ever. Everybody must decide on the best return on investment for his resources: time, emotional attachments, money. Whatever resources you have available, you have to decide how and where to invest them. If you get up early, you don't get to sleep late. If you choose to eat out, you don't get to control what goes into your meal. Or you don't get to pretend you're an Old World Italian matriarch, feeding your famished chicks and fussing over them. (But then, that may freak your family out, and they wouldn't mind skipping it entirely.) But the point is, no matter how good anybody makes it look, there will always be something that doesn't get done.

And in that vein, I really feel I must 'fess up. Emily, who is currently running the "new mother of two" gauntlet, is feeling a little frustrated. (Y'all remember that beating, right? Shortly after baby #2 arrives, and suddenly it feels like the workload has grown exponentially and the workday has shortened by 16 hours?) She wrote:

How, how, how do you get so much done in a weekend? Tell me your secret, please!!! Somehow we never seem to get done even the basics that we hope to accomplish - the weekend is taken up with catch-up chores and grocery shopping and errands and then maybe, MAYBE we'll get one of our house/garden projects STARTED...sigh.

I was going to sit back and feel smug and organized. You know, bask in the warmth of Adoration and Awe ('cuz I don't get it from anybody who knows me in person, believe me). But, well, I really like Emily, and so, I have to be honest. If you look very closely, you can see my trick. Details. It's all in the details. I write down every. single. move. we. make. Normal people might have written something like this for the "Progress!" post:

We prepped the garden and set the bed. Then we cleaned up the mess we'd made, and took ourselves inside. There, we shuffled boxes and culled a bit. There are slimy things growing on the bathroom counter, and the guest room looks like we have an insane mathematician living in there.

But you see, THAT kind of wording really makes it obvious that we stayed in bed 'til ten, didn't get outside until after lunch, came in when it got dark, and... well, that brings me to my second little trick.

"The Basics" - things like laundry, mopping, airing out the beds and dusting the ceiling fans. *snort* OK, I don't dust the ceiling fans. If you leave them alone long enough, you can just switch the direction of the fan blades and the furry bits fly right off. Kids think it's great fun, and scamper to gather all the "caterpillars", Voila! Put the blades back the right way, and as long as you don't turn the fan off while you have company (or blog it to the whole world), nobody will ever know.

But back to the general point. I don't do those things during the weekends. Weekend time is family time with the family member we miss out on most during the week. We do grocery shopping during the week. I have a husband who is thoughtful enough to keep us supplied with miscellany, should we forget something while we were there, but I don't set foot inside a market on the weekend, if I can help it.

Errands? P'ffft. I'll run errands on Wed, while we have to be in town, anyway. Unless you need me to drop something off to prevent, say, full-scale economic implosion, or a foreclosure on your home, I'm not dropping it off on the weekends. (Well, and chocolate. I will bring you chocolate on the weekend, but that's an act of mercy and love and totally doesn't count as an errand.)

By Friday (or Thursday, on alternate weeks), the laundry's caught up enough that Zorak can get through the weekend and have clothes to wear to work on Monday. The floors are relatively clean, the bathroom has been tidied. There's not much they can do to the house... well, strike that. No sense is tempting fate. I tried for years to have everybody pitch in and let's clean-clean-clean on Saturday morning! WOOHOO Isn't this FUN? (um... no.)

It feels like tradition to do it that way, but in our home, it just makes for a cranky dragonslayer, and an irritable mommy. So, I do those things during the week, and come the weekend, we can hang out, eat late, mosey about, work on whatever needs it, roll around like puppies, wallow in Daddy's presence. No, my home isn't showroom clean. But my family wouldn't be any happier if I spent the weekend getting it that way, and come Monday morning, Zorak would go off to work and the kids and I would be left wondering where our fun time with Daddy went. So I do it that way, and we get more done in a very enjoyable manner.

And then I record every. single. move. ;-)

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Random Plants & Musings

Two big things:


1) I figured out how to control *change* the exposure on my camera. And how to do something else.


2) And... I don't know what that "something else" is.

Technically, this could be #3, as well, but it's not. It's just me, thinking we really ought to see if we can find the owner's manual for the camera. Not only do I not know what the other thing is, but I do not know how to determine which one I'm controlling (and I use the term loosely).

There's one button on the camera that does more than one thing! Shutter speed, perhaps? Or isn't that exposure? What controls action? The other one allows me to capture action as if it's posed. For example, when I told the boys to wave their hands and heads as fast as they could, they did, and I started snapping and poking buttons. This is what I got:

Looks like your typical self-posed boy portrait, doesn't it? This is them, in motion. Sort of.

Do you know what this means? NO MORE SHMU PICTURES! If I can harness this technology, we could have crystal clear photos of all our children, and not have a photo collection of one-eyed, three-nostriled furry things. This is BIG!

And a few more things... dunno what these are. As always, input (knowledge, guesses, whatever) is appreciated. Thanks.

I found these on the ground while I was trying to get a good shot of a mushroom.


And Ernie, this is for you.


Those things grow fast out here. That log fell in a storm during the fall, and already it's covered in fungi (ok, "mushrooms" - but I don't know what kind, or if they're technically mushrooms, or whatever, but there they are, and the boys have been instructed not to eat them). This is the biggest one, and I love the way it cups up and out, and how that vine has grown right through it without either one seeming to take notice of one another.



This is so much fun!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Progress!!

I was quiet this weekend because I was either busy or asleep. Good stuff for the Forever Home.

Exterior:
We got the first raised garden bed built, painted, and out into the upper meadow. It's beautiful. Zorak ran herd on the boys while they painted it. I tried to go watch, but had to just snap some photos and then run back inside. Drip edges make me twitchy and overbearing, and I didn't want to ruin the adventure for the boys by micromanaging. So I'd slip out, shout *rah* *rah* *rah* *Look at you guys go!* (click, click, click), then run back in before I said anything else. That seemed to work well.

We got quite a bit of land tilled. By hand. God bless the horse-drawn plough. *whew*

We pulled two barrels full of weeds from Old Mrs. Cook's garden plot by the barn. That'll be our melon patch this year. We cut down quite a few stray trees, dug up quite a few stumps, removed about half of the rotted railroad ties, and turned the first few feet of soil. Then we collapsed in a heap.

Interior:
We refurbed the old bookshelf from the boys' room and set it up in the guest room, then loaded it down with the rest of the boxes in there. Turned out to be box after box of Zorak's school books. So now, it looks like we expect our guests to indulge in a little light differential equations and statistics reading before bed. (J, I promise I will find a better selection to add to it before you come! Honest!)

Are you familiar with those boxes that get packed at the very end of a move: pictures, drawings, single pencils, paperwork, tea bags, the occasional stray shoe? We went through a few of those. Probably three moves' worth.

Zorak trimmed out the master bedroom closet! WOOHOO! It's still a gaping hole, but now it's a decorative gaping hole.

Last week, Me-Tae gave the boys some foam critters that grow when you put them in water. So far, John's crawdad has grown to the size of a lobster. Smidge's pink seahorse is getting pretty big, too. James' whale-shark-thing just exuded some kind of slime and rolled over, but didn't grow. Actually, they all oozed slime, but his seems to have absolutely spewed it. We have a pretty nasty little menagerie on the bathroom counter at the moment. (How long do y'all normally keep things like that laying out before you make the kids pack 'em up?)

And now, we're back to work of another kind: areas of polygons and addition by 8; Caesar Agustus and Dick and Jane; the end of Aeneis' journey and the return voyage for young Harve and the crew of the We're Here. For me, this work is more restful than that which we did over the weekend, although both are equally valuable for forming young minds, and old bodies. It's good, good stuff.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

The End of the Day

Zorak is in the groove. He's brainstorming. He's sketching. He's on fire! The man's brilliance is showing, and he's throwing ideas out there the way some people throw, oh, I don't know, spit balls. It's impressive. But, you know, I'm really tired. I mean, really tired. As in, I would die an early, and probably whiny death as a depression era farm wife, tired.

I'm trying to hang, but have this internal running monologue:

I wonder if he will give me a foot rub? Ugh, my stomach hurts... I wonder if a foot rub would help? It couldn't hurt to ask. What's he talking about? Beams? Beams. Huh. That makes my feet hurt.

Then he asks me what I think.

I... uh... what was that, again?

He probably thinks I've become daft. I may have. But man, oh, man, am I tired. It's a good tired.

Maybe he'll give me a foot rub if I can come up with just one really good idea...

Dy

Tips from the shop

I slipped down to the basement last night to see how the garden beds were coming along. (They're coming along splendidly, by the way.) But what caught my attention was this:



The work we've done would have been a lot easier with all the proper equipment (in this case, say, a table saw), but we've mastered the fine art of jig making. Er, in all honesty, Zorak has mastered the art - I couldn't make a jig if you handed me shoes and played me an Irish tune. He laughs and shoves off my compliments, usually convinced I'm mocking him. But I'm not. To him, it's just a matter of looking around and spotting, with his CreativeEngineerVision, something that would do the trick.



I don't know about you, but I never would have looked at quick clamps, stud hangers, scrap wood and saw horses and thought, "Oh, a table saw!"

It's not pretty, at all, but it's allowed us to do a lot over the years that we just didn't have the equipment for. And that's a beautiful thing. I hope the boys get Zorak's creativity, among other qualities.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

A Box!

Today was slightly chilly and rainy. Ball practice was cancelled. We did groceries, paid the electric bill, and got gas. Then we just came home and piddled about the house.

But then, the Big Brown Truck pulled up, and we got a box - a goody box from New Mexico. Aunt B, Gram, and Aunt Sally sent the kids all sorts of neat goodies: a beautiful afghan, delightful books, snacks, and a box for baby girl. Well, what better things to have on hand for just such a day as today?


We didn't move from this very spot until it was suppertime. :-)

Oh, and there was a box of beautiful chocolates that included a map, so there are no surprises when you bite into something! I would have posted a picture of that, too, but, well, I've hidden it. :-D

Thank you, guys!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy