You don't say...

Doesn't that look like exactly what he's thinking, there? I love that look.

So, I nearly had the police called on me this week. Forgot to tell ya about that. Yeah, I was pumping gas when I noticed this...

And although my UpCloseNatureShots pretty much aren't worth taking, I couldn't resist. This little guy was SO cute. While the pump sucked the last of the checking account from my wallet, I scootched all around this post, snapping shots and trying to hit a Donna-worthy moment. (No luck.) The last picture on the disk shows the nice lady manager approaching me to find out why I was taking pictures at her gas station. Of course, she didn't identify herself, just came up and started in on me. I, being guilty of nothing untoward, and having severe personal space issues, as well as a deep disdain for being approached and questioned in public, I asked her why she wanted to know. THEN she explained that she's the manager of the gas station, and it all clicked. Ohhhh, crazy middle-aged lady snapping photos of... of what? *shrug* Well, I'd made her uncomfortable, regardless. Private property. I'm good with that. Mea culpa.

So when she asked me what I was taking pictures of, I pointed to the moth (which was, thankfully, still there - wouldn't that have been awkward?) and said, "A bug." I think that actually made me more suspect in her eyes, as she didn't even glance at it. She just frowned. (Could have been the frown of 'great, another loon', but it looked like the frown of 'thank heaven for Homeland Security', okay?) But as I lost control of my verbal diarrhea (I'd caught sight of her husband/friend/bodyguard in the background, with his phone open and his thumb hovering over the keypad, his eyes blatantly glued to the two of us - and I realized he was probably waiting for the signal to hit 'send' and bring in the cops...) I waxed on about photography and photoshop and bokah (or is it bekah? buuka? bummah?) the poor woman actually backed. away. from me. as she said good-bye. I panicked. "Wait!" I yelled. I no longer feared the cops. But I realized she thought I was a fruitcake. "Do you want to see the pictures? They're not very good, but they're-" She cut me off and ran for her car. She got in, he closed his phone, and they sat there, tag-team mad-dogging me until I left.

So, I think I'm at least cleared of potential terrorist activity. But I may now be the new Local Nutcase. Yep, me and the guy who talks to his shoes, hangin' at the gas station. We are the local color. (She couldn't have identified herself, first? I mean, really? *sigh*) Oh well, I'm only a little nuts. It's a benign nuts.

Today, we did go to the park. We played in the water. We did the picnic thing. We laughed a lot. And when we loaded up to leave, we found we had company. They've named him Wobbles, and they are *quite* excited to watch him emerge from his shell. (If you look closely, you can see his back had just begun to split, although he was still walking around.) They've been waiting for this ever since Meredith's boys found one last year. He's now on the tea cart (still on the sling) in the dining room. Zorak is pretty sure he'll hatch out while we sleep and we'll have a cicada round-up on our hands come morning. The boys plan to be up early to catch The Emerging.

I'm just trying not to think about it.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Roundup Time?

It's only Wednesday, so, in lieu of an academic end-of-week report, I'll give you a quick peek at our week, in general.

Monday - We rushed through math and Latin, loaded up and had Em to her Very First Dentist appointment (in town) at 11:30. Too bad it's scheduled for September 11, not August 11. *sigh* We came home, finished lessons, and then I abandoned the children to fend for themselves while I sorted and sifted through all the outgrown clothing we own. Somebody needs to have a baby who needs clothes!

I got distracted after bedtime, organizing my closet by color (blaming that one on hormones!), bringing up all the nifty stuff I got to wear for maybe fifteen minutes about three years ago (you know, between pregnancies - you get into it, yell, "Woo-Hoo! Look what I can fit into!" and *poof*, you're pregnant again) - and am now fully stocked up and feeling human again.

Tuesday - We finished ALL our lessons, plus some work on the house and basement before heading into town for the follow-up meeting with the periodontist. Long meeting. (Lots to cover.) The kids were awesome. The staff wanted to divvy up the kids and take them home. Otter pops for all upon our return! Thank you, thank you, children-of-ours.

Wednesday - We ran out of milk! Ack! How can we not have milk? Oh, we need a cow. I schlepped down to the corner market and paid WAY too much for a half-gallon of it. Kids had oatmeal-in-a-glass. Morning crisis averted.

Lessons - Right now, the boys are all just gearing up. They've got the latitude to work as far ahead as they need to in order to get to a point where they're challenged. Thankfully, they're taking advantage of that. That's good. It'll give us more elbow room for fun stuff as the year progresses.

Fun Stuff -
* Aunt B, Aunt Linda, and Gram are winging their way to our place. We expect them sometime Friday or Saturday, and everyone is so excited to spend time with them again. The last time Aunt Linda and Gram were out, the guest room was still sheeted in plastic, the foyer and hallway had no walls, we had no floor, no patio, no balcony. So the change will be fun, and I think Zorak is really looking forward to sharing with Aunt B all the little engineering tidbits that he's put into the house.

* James was invited to read the Scripture at church this Sunday. He's very excited. This will be his first public speaking experience, so he's prepping for it and ready to go.

I think that's it... it's not too late, so I'm going to skedaddle. Tomorrow we've got groceries, piano lessons, and I'd promised the kids we'd have a "Wow, August Isn't So Bad" picnic if the temperature was going to be under 90. It looks like it will be, and so, we will picnic like maniacs in the August afternoon sun!

This one looked like fun.

The instructions:
Think back on the last 15 years of your life. What would you tell someone that you haven’t seen or talked to for 15 years? How would you sum up your life? You get 10 bullet points. A list of 10 things to summarize about you. At the end of your list, tag 5 more people and send on the love…

OK, 15 years ago, I was... 20. (Yeah, tricky math. I haven't finished Beta yet.) I was living in Pennsylvania, working as a nanny, waiting for my slot to open in nursing school, in the hope of saving enough money to someday pay for medical school...

Let's pretend this is a phone call.

10 Yeah, yeah, I did get married. We've been together almost 13 years, now. Yes, I know it's a much bigger commitment than signing a lease. Yeah, shocker for all involved. But it's good. We're getting pretty good at it, too. It's mostly him - he's awesome, and he takes my quirks in stride.

9 Kids? Oh, yeah. *awkward pause, because I know how this part's going to go* We have five. *choking noises ensue from the other end of the line* Hello? Are you okay? Yes, I'm serious. No, I'm not medicated. I really like being a mom. Yes, I'm serious.

8 We're in Alabama. Yeah, I know. Who knew? Actually, we really like it. It's a great place to raise a family. But we tell people we live in hillbilly heaven, because we don't want an influx of people who move here because it's "quaint", only to turn around and lobby two years later to have everything paved and taxed.

7 Would you believe we bought a foreclosure and have spent the last three years revamping it? Ourselves! Yes. It's amazing what one can accomplish when one can't afford to pay someone else to do it. But now, we just wouldn't trust too many others to do these things for us. We've learned a lot.

6 No, I didn't make it to Bastyr. I did transfer to NMSU for pre-med, but then Zorak and I knew we wanted to have children (obviously, heh) and I knew even then that I just don't multitask well. So, it was med school or a family. The family keeps me plenty busy, and we don't have nearly the debt.

5 I stay home with the kids.

4 Well, actually, no. They don't "go" to school. We're homeschooling them... Yeah, all of them. The older three, anyway, in 5th, 3rd, and Kindergarten. The two small ones mostly serve as sensory overload training for the older ones... Yeah, we've always done it. It's no different for us than the way you do things is for you, really.

3 Yes! I do still have that truck. We need to bring it out here and get it running again, but it got us through Zorak's years at Riddle. I love that thing. But I sold Harold (the Buick we'd fixed up in PA) shortly after I left PA. Made a grand on it, too.

2 Haven't been backpacking since I left PA. I really miss that, but between always being pregnant and/or nursing, and the fact that Zorak would rather sit, nekkid, through back-to-back church services than go backpacking, it gets put on the back burner. I figure at least one of the kids will be willing to go with me one day. Or be willing to push my wheelchair on the bike trail and pretend we're backpacking.

1 *pfft* No. I don't run anymore. I didn't run, then, either, to be honest. It just took me the same amount of time to walk one quarter the distance that you ran. Why do you think I always ran east when you ran west? Der. *laughing deeply and happily* No, I don't feel the least bit guilty about it. The cold IC Light at the pub afterword was just as cold and refreshing when I could breathe as it would've been if I'd collapsed a lung. Probably better. Life's too short to hurt myself on purpose, you know. And it's too good to rush through it.

Well, there ya go! 15 years in a nutshell. I don't normally tag people, but I really want to, so...

Staci, because she "gets" it
Melissa, because her stories inevitably make me laugh
Dawn, because I'll bet she knows things don't always turn out like we thought they would (it's usually better!)
Emily, because sometimes the post-partum brain needs something easy to blog about
Jenni, because I love her Wayback Machine anecdotes!

And if you want to join in, please do!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Still not farmers.

Or, more appropriately, "Damnit, Jim, I'm a mother, not a horticulturalist!"

Zorak and I took our random ramble around the property to check on the fruit, and we found this:

Sooty Blotch and Flyspeck. Ew. (Yes, Hillary, more mold! LOL! Actually, they're fungi, from what I've read.) OK, I keep telling myself that we eat mushrooms, and mushrooms are fungi... but reading that these are "cosmetic" flaws, and that the apples are still edible... kinda heebes me out, to be truthful. The sooty stuff washes off. The flyspeck (could they have come up with a less appetizing name, huh?) doesn't go all the way through the skin. So, I guess, technically, it could be cut off.

And you betcha, I've researched how to head it off for next year. It starts this fall, with burning the leaves. Thankfully, we're raising a houseful of pyros-in-training, so I don't think we'll have to engage in much arm twisting to get the project started. More pruning in late winter, to improve air flow and sunlight penetration. And, then we'll have to decide if we want to go with fungicides or not. So far, everything we've grown (*cough, sputter, aherm*) is "Organic". Actually, it's "Apathetically Organic" - which means there are no pesticides, chemicals, or unnatural feeds, etc, only because we never get around to it. However, this trial-by-fire-and-total-lack-of-preparedness approach may reap serious benefits in the end, no?

The pears on one tree are HUMONGOUS, but not ripe yet. They look like they could kill someone when they let fall, though. Makes me nervous to have them dangling there. The few pears that survived on the second pear tree are teeny-tiny, and the most beautiful reddish color. They're starting to ripen now, which is exciting.

AND, we found the persimmon tree! Several hundred yards from where we thought it was! (Maybe there are two?) How cool, huh? What, um, what does one do with persimmons? Besides trying to figure out when they're ripe, that is. (On this week's checklist!) It may not have more than two dozen fruits on it, and we may not have any idea what to do with them, but it's exciting nonetheless.

Zorak's managed to urge the late-plant "Desperation Garden" along quite nicely, and we've been enjoying zucchini from it this week. The okra is trying to produce. We're cheering it on! Go, okra, go! C'mon and grow, babies! *rah, rah, rah* (That's the extent of my gardening skills, thanks.) The melons, pumpkins, and peas are toodling along, doing their thing. I don't know if they'll produce in the end, but it's fun to watch.

And that's the big gardening update from the Forever Home.

It was bound to happen.

Five kids. Way too much creativity. All that pesky craft time, learning how to use scissors...

We hung out in the deliriously gorgeous weather earlier this week. It was nice, but the kids were a bit sweaty. I brushed Em's silky locks back from her face, and *sproing* a handful of little spikes appeared at her hairline. What the-- I tried to smooth them out. They would not smooth. Only sproing. Oh, no. NOOO.
I swallowed the shriek. If I've learned nothing else in nearly ten years of parenting, I have at least learned that if you shriek before you start asking questions, your odds of getting the Truth, The Whole Truth, or Anything Resembling The Truth go waaayyyy down.

So, um, did somebody cut Em's hair? (I ask, in what I hope to be my least suspicious voice.) The answer surprised me.

Smidge. "Yep, I did it." *grin* (It was a grin that says, "Don't mention it. Glad to be of service." You know, rather than the grin that pleads, "Look, I'm still cute and my eyes are REALLY BIG. Don't kill me yet.")

Why? (Another question that has a number of surprising, interesting answers when not prefaced with some kind of gutteral noise, I've found.)

"So her hair wouldn't get in her eyes." *grin* Again. He's really thinking this was a fantastic move.

And yes, her hair does er, did get in her eyes...

But-but-but... it had FINALLY grown out enough that it would stay back in a rubber band. And now, she has Buster Brown bangs. *sob*

But at least they're not in her eyes. We acknowledged Smidge for his thoughtfulness, and then filled him in on the whole "only grownups get to take sharp objects to other people's heads" rule. We let James know that yes, that's just another perk of being a grown up. Right up there with staying up late, paying the bills, and going to work whether you want to or not. We gave John the hairy eyeball to let him know that she's not traumatized now, so please don't laugh and give her a complex.

No blood, no foul. It's all good.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Too funny!

When we left the house yesterday, it was spotless. Lovely. Well, could'a used a mopping, but the rest was looking mighty fine, indeed.

Today, I can't find an angle (I don't mean a room, or a wall, either - I mean one clear space as the semi-background for a close-up shot - any clear space would do - an ang-le) without showing all the papery gore that coats this house right now.

So, I walked the boys through it, gently, clearly, and asked that they remedy the infestation, plague, malaise, or whatever it is that has affected our living quarters.

John took on the coffee table, and he hadn't been at it three minutes before he came up to me, holding up something that looked kind of gross (it was way too close to my face for identification - turned out to be a lollipop stick) and said, "It looks like the eagles had a liver pop."

It took me a second to grasp his meaning, but the twinkle in his eye gave it away. I'll be chuckling over that for a while.

You know, I'm glad he gets it, and I'm even more glad that he shares it.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Laughing Until I Cry

I need a thorougly entertaining hobby. I don't mean that our current hobbies aren't entertaining, but they don't generally make me laugh until I cry. Jen, at Cake Wrecks, has the best one out there, though.

You must start with this cake (just thinking about it makes me start choking on my coffee again), but then go back through all of her entries. I'd say it's rated PG-13, at least, so you may not want to invite the kids in straight away to show them the cake wrecks. This is more of a they're-all-in-bed-and-I-need-a-cold-Mike's-and-an-irreverent-laugh blog. Take your time. Read her commentary. Giggle until the apples of your cheeks hurt.

I wish I could remember where I found the link, because I owe somebody some serious thanks. So, whoever you are in my sidebar who linked this, I apologize for not remembering. It's 2:20AM now, and I found the link shortly before midnight... it seems my attention span is shorter than I remember. (The irony in that is painful.)

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

The one day I don't take the camera...

I've been absolutely irrational about taking the camera *everywhere* lately. We've been through such a dry spell with pictures, and I know my mother-in-law loves me, but I can only be a slacker about photos of the grandbabies for so long, ya know. In spite of my fantatical insistence on having the camera *ready*, though, there really hasn't been much in the way of composition available. I mean, the view from the dentist's chair isn't that spectacular.

Yesterday, we left for piano. It's not in a beautiful room. The kids are behind a wall, and while I could take pictures of the wall and describe the children... um, that's a little strange.

So I didn't take the camera.

But our plans got changed along the way. The library was closed (so we couldn't spend an hour and a half there). Figured I'd take the kids out for lunch, since we just don't do that very often. But Em fell asleep on our way to lunch. So we grabbed a drive-thru meal... still had an hour to blow...

Well, I know it's a hundred stinking degrees out, but let's check out that park by the music store.

Oh man. It's a photographic Mecca. Water fountains. A splash-n-play area. Rock-walled rose garden built in the 1930's! Hastas the size of small elephants. Gorgeous, lush grassy field where the kids ran about looking incredibly photogenic with their flushed cheeks and slightly sweaty heads.

THIS is why we should never think we know what's going on. This is why I've been taking the camera with me *everywhere*, except yesterday. *sigh* Always be prepared. I should've been a boy scout. Maybe then this wouldn't happen.

We're going back to the kids' dentist today so they can re-fit the spacer that fell prey to a Sugar Daddy last month. I'm taking the camera, just in case.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Not a question of whether, but of how...

Once I realized the creamy tan fabric simply would not work, in spite of the lovely flecks of color and the durability of the fabric itself, the obvious conclusion was that we just had to dye it. But there was a problem...

The directions said to use a washer (top load), or the stove top. We have a front loader, and we're talking about 13 yards of Very Heavy Canvas - it doesn't matter how big the stove is, we don't have a pot big enough to pull this off! I called RIT to see if I could do it easily over an open fire in a metal washtub. The lady hyperventilated, then told me they have directions for using a front loader. (Which she sent me - let me know if you'd like them.) Very cool. Unfortunately, there is the risk that the plastic fins would take a stain. It wouldn't harm clothes, but it would bug me. It bugs me enough to do laundry as much as I do. I didn't need something else to bug me at the same time. Sooo...

Well, you know we aren't the kind to be thwarted by something as simple as a hurdle, right? Right. OK, hot water...

Check. (See the hose? Also note that the dining room and living room have been switched around - we like the new layout significantly more than the previous one. Nice flow. And no, we still don't have nice fixtures for the kitchen. Or a range hood. Yeah, thanks for noticin'.) Moving along, according to the nice lady at RIT, the key to getting fabric to take their stuff is "agitation, agitation, agitation". I suspect she used to work in real estate and that triplet thing stuck with her. Anyway, you can't get more agitating than this:

Yup, that's a cement mixer. It's all metal, so we didn't have to worry about staining the inside. Nevermind - it's plastic, with steel fins, but it didn't stain. Yay! (Or the next batch of cement.) And it'll agitate, oh yes. It agitates beautifully! Check it out.

And all those lovely folds create the kind of dye job that makes you look for a label explaining that "This fabric was hand dyed by high altitude monks somewhere in Peru who chewed berries to just the right consistency, thus lending a softened, unique pattern to the color. These inconsistencies are a part of the unique dye process, and are not to be considered defects."

Plus, the kids thought it was pretty cool. (And a little weird. But "weird" is not going to hold much weight from a kid who walks around in winter slippers and a thick bathrobe in in 100 degree heat.)

See? Easy as construction work! (Which, for some of us, is far easier than pie!)

Kiss those babies!
~Dy