I’ve had blogs running through my head for weeks. I’ve been blogging. They were really great posts, too. But those posts got eaten up. By yard work. And carpooling. I’m not that busy. I just am not terribly disciplined.

But who cares, right?

So here are a few tidbits from my world this past week.

There was a tropical storm that sort of hit us. It really only grazed us, but I gotta tell you, I wasn’t complaining. That little grazing got us 2 days off school at the end of the week right before Labor Day. So a 3 day weekend became a 5 day weekend. We did actually get rain from it, unlike the Great Storm Georges, which caused me to run in fear and sandbag the house. Not enough rain from that to wash a baby’s hair.

During one of the two storm days off, my oldest son had an appointment at the DMV to get his learner’s permit. The DMV closed. We went yesterday. So the kid who taught me that I knew nothing about parenting is now learning to drive. He is licensed. He hasn’t driven or even asked to, sooooooo….yeah. We’ll see. Ironically, I almost rear-ended a person on the way to the DMV and got lost on the way home. We’ve decided Todd will be teaching him to drive.

We tell stories at night using strange voices about a snail named Marquis. His best friends are Percy and George. I’m pretty sure I ripped those right out of Thomas the Train, but I refuse to google it to confirm. Last night, Jenna begged to tell the Marquis story. I was reluctant to agree, because I gotta be honest…she rambles. A lot. And by that time of day, I’m so done with it all. But I had promised, so off she went. Well, two nights in a row now, she has spun a pretty good yarn. But last night had a shocking twist to the story that had Marquis saying, “No, we don’t want your Baby Poop Sand. Give us some new sand, and we’ll get you a new baby.” I had been trailing off a bit when I heard that.  That line shocked me back to attention.

The power never went out during the tropical storm, but it was out three different times through much of last night. There wasn’t even a hint of wind or rain.

Today I weeded the pool deck until my fingers were raw. At that point, I turned my attention to the roof where some moss and sticks needed to be chased away. I was barefoot. No one climbs a ladder barefoot, but my shoes were so.far.away. They were upstairs. So I wore my son’s cushy size 11 church loafers. They looked fantastic with what I was wearing and were perfect on the ladder. At the end of all of that, I wiped my face on a towel and wore those same shoes to Dollar Tree to buy myself a bubbly bottle of Aspartame. I looked like a freak. Nobody noticed. Dollar Tree is the great equalizer. You can’t get by with it at CVS. I tried that a couple of weeks ago wearing my son’s football cleats.

But that’s another story for another time.