…the mice take freaky shots.
Actually, there’s only one mouse.
And we all know who he is.
No one can contain him. No agency will take him. No books describe him. But he has a really nice uvula. Is that how you spell that? Given my recent struggles with “coop,” I do have to wonder…
So today I had to drive to the Grand Hyatt Hotel, just past the airport. It was to purchase a gift for my daughter’s upcoming birthday. And since you may already know that I am the Queen of Craigslist, this was a craigslist exchange. The lady meeting me was a professional. She said, “You’ll know me by my blue shirt and grey pants. And I have my hair pulled back.” I replied, “OK, great. You’ll know me because I’ll have 4 feral children with me that do not belong in a Hyatt lobby.”
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
They were wild all right.
None of this is at all important to the story, except to say that I was kinda grumpy with the kids after that. It is in these moments that you wonder where you’ve gone wrong. Actually, I know where I’ve gone wrong. I just don’t know how to make it right. But we’ll get there.
So part of the purchase from today included a case for my son’s ds. This was just a bonus. But there was a piece torn on it. So after nearly wrecking Wendy’s (more grumpiness from me), we walked over to CVS to buy some superglue. This is where the story takes a macabre turn. I opted to buy Krazy Glue, instead of the standard super glue. I don’t know why. it seems like I would have intentionally avoided it over the “k” thing alone. I am very against cutsie misspellings in brand names. Even Krispy Kreme drives me nuts. But the product stands on its own in that particular case.
I was so confident in my gluing skills that I did not read the instructions, prepare a surface, or have any type of back-up plan in place. I just jumped willy nilly into gluing. Before I even realized I had successfully opened the tube, it was oozing everywhere. My thumb was now glued to my index finger on my left hand. On my right hand, my index finger and my thumb became bonded to the tube of glue, which was still oozing.
I realized immediately that I was in trouble. I think I began making weird wheezing sounds and even the heads of the children playing Wii turned to see what was up.
“Ohhh, nooooo,” I said, with Mama’s Boy watching intently. I immediately pulled on my left thumb and managed to free up that hand. Then I focused on the right hand and managed to free my thumb. The index finger was done, though. There was no going back on that one. I was now attached rather permanently to the tube. I at least managed to stop the eruption of fresh glue.
Krazy, I tell you.
At this point, I went to the instructions. The instructions I needed were listed under a bold section called: WARNING:
“Avoid contact with skin and eyes. If eye or mouth contact occurs, hold eyelid or mouth open and rince thoroughly but gently with water for only 15 minutes and GET MEDICAL ATTENTION. (Heavens to BETSY! I cannot IMAGINE getting the stuff near my eyes.) If skin bonding occurs (ok, I’m listening now), soak in acetone-based nail polish remover or warm soapy water and carefully peel or roll skin apart (do not pull).”
So, I fixed myself a nice large bowl of warm, soapy water and poured a bottle of nail polish remover into it, for good measure. Then I sat down to wait. And soak. This was at 2:56 p.m. Actually, I really didn’t have time for these shenanigans today. At 3:06, I pulled out the finger to work on it.
Still stuck. Back in the bowl.
Snuggle Monkey needed some assistance in the bathroom. She just had to go it alone today.
And at 3:15, I finally rolled and peeled my skin free. It was red and irritated and still covered with a gluey film. But at least I was free of the tube.
So what does that K stand for? Killer glue substance. Kranky lady kould have read the instructions and didn’t. Kall the doctor immediately, something horrible is klinging to me. Krud.
Speaking of Kranky, in the middle of all my grumbling about how I wish the kids could just put on their best Grand Hyatt faces and sit like angels, Mama’s Boy piped up from the back of the van.
“Mama, I wrote today’s entry in my journal. Can I read it to you?”
Sure, boy. Shoot.
“So far this day is pretty bad. We just can’t act perfect. But luckily, I am going to a sleepover to turn things around. Hopefully it will go well.”
Wow. Now if that doesn’t bring things into krazy klear perspective, nothing will.
We did turn things around. In more ways than one.
I hate being wrong.
I especially hate being outspelled.
And I really, REALLY hate being outspelled by certain people.
I have been called on the carpet for my spelling of coup in the term chicken coup. The funny thing about it is, I always spelled it “coop” until a person I deemed at least my intellectual equal, but quite possibly smarter, spelled it “coup.” I didn’t even research it. I just automatically changed my spelling of the word. Oh, dumb farm girl. Why? Why would you do that without so much as a single Google search? You, dumb farm girl, are an ENGLISH MAJOR. Spelling “coop” is what you do.
And I was corrected by a friend who will always misspell “definitely” under pressure. It’s ITE, not ATE.
It just goes to show one thing: don’t trust Facebook comments for your spelling guidance. And if you can’t spell coop, you shouldn’t have one. This is perhaps what I am taking away from this. I have roosters that have learned to carry weapons. I can’t turn on the hose without almost dislocating my eyeballs with a fierce stream of sprinkler water. And I can’t spell “coop.”
Sigh.
The good news is, the roosters are going to auction. One week from Saturday.
Trust me, that will be worth a report.
Remember, it’s coop. And definitely. Definitely coop.
…you can’t take the city out of the kids.
Or can you?
I don’t know the answer to that. I’m working on it.
For us, summer has just begun in earnest. The kids finished school on Friday after what was the fastest, most jam-packed two weeks ever. I practically lived there. We went straight from that into a party on Saturday for the kids’ classes. That was a surreal experience. Never have I thrown a party with such a melting pot of people who didn’t know each other. It was interesting.With a few unsung heros that day, it worked and was a pretty big success. Without Truce (names have been changed to protect the innocent. ha.) in the backfield organizing the 2-hr kickball game, I’m not sure the kids would have had such a good time. At any rate, that party lasted until after 9 and wore me out like I imagine a 10K would Betty White. ( I originally chose “5K” for that analogy, but Betty White is pretty spry, so I upped my distance.)
From that tiring Saturday, we had some family spend the night and by Monday, the kids were all ready for a week in a psych ward. We were shot. But in the last two days, we’ve slept in and slowed down and now–this is summer.
We’ve had some recovery now. We’ve napped and eaten ice cream and watched some movies we had been wanting to rent. So today it was time to clean up a little. Do some chores. Work around the farm.
OK, kids. Come on. Let’s get to work.
It was like I had grown a 3rd eye. They were shocked by the word chores. So I backed off my vocabulary. For today, I would trick them into working. After that, it would somehow become automatic. How, I have no idea.
I was loading up Saturday’s party trash for trash day. Loading the trash is not the small affair it was when I lived in the city. There, my driveway was 25 feet long. Here, the trek to the end of the driveway is more like a 1/4 mile. We have a Rover for that. It helps to be able to drive the trash. Dragging it was a beast.
Mama’s Boy was “helping” me with the trash chore, mostly because he didn’t want me out of his sight. This morning, his variety of help was rather unhelpful. This is when i began to ask myself internally how to put some country into these kids. They were used to the 20 foot driveway and the pavement and scooters and sidewalks. And neighbors.
They are not used to bugs. And biting flies. And dirt.
By the end of the trash thing, I considered calling a walk in clinic for some child-sized valium. The flies pushed him to the edge where he’s still teetering. I’m hoping to bring it back around today.
After the trash, it was chicken coup time. This is not my favorite job. Truthfully, they scare me. Two of them have become roosters and are very angry beasts. I realize they were probably always roosters. I understand the birds and the bees and the chickens. But we inherited 4 baby chickens from a 3rd grade class. They hatched them and kept them safe. They did not identify their gender. So now I have 2 angry roosters, 2 pooping hens, and 4 babies that always look shell shocked as they watch the larger chickens patrol the coup. The babies are safe in a bunny hutch, inside the coup. I am hoping that soon they’ll be all together in the open coup, but I’m still watching that situation.
They were hungry when I got to them this morning. I guess I don’t have the schedule down properly yet, because they were clamoring. A clamoring chicken isn’t a good thing, in case you’ve never seen one. And the trick to a clamoring chicken…or rooster…is to go into the coup armed with food, throw it, get them away from you and do what you need to do.
Unfortunately for me, the food was stored high inside the coup, which meant I had to fight my way through the crowd of clamoring birds to get to the food.
Carnage, I tell you. It was pure carnage.
I made it out alive, as you already know if you have endured this far. But still there was one task left: cleaning and refilling the water thingies. I figured that using the hose in the garden would be more efficient than dragging dirty water bottle thingies through the kitchen. So I went to the garden. The garden has a splitter set up between the sprinkler and a hose. First you have to turn off the sprinkler and then you have to turn on the hose.
Or so I thought.
While intently leaning down over the sprinkler, 12 inches from the ground, I flipped the switch.
It turned the sprinkler on. The sprinkler hit me in the face and head with staggering force. Well, I guess that wasn’t the right order to do things in. I managed to get the sprinkler turned off, but not before a full body soaking. Then I turned on the hose and washed out the water buckets. After a few minutes, I had to wash out another bucket. So I turned on the sprinkler AGAIN.
Good grief.
You can take the awkward lady out of the city…
And yet, here I am posting.
I need the rain to stop. I bought plants that I can’t even get into the ground because we are washing away in the downpours.
I need it to be Sunday. I just don’t think I am young or fit or smart enough to do the next 48 hours. I don’t want to die, mind you. Just fast forward. Slowly.
Summer.
So. Thankful. it. is. almost. Summer.
I just did battle with a large insect and totally cleaned his clock. You ain’t messing with a city gal anymore people.
I have decided to go to bed.
I like clear-cut solutions. Answers that are right or wrong. Things that can be fixed. Formulas. It’s funny that I like these things, because I am a wordy, philosophical English major. This is probably why I drive myself crazy. I see the problems. I want the solutions. And I can’t seem to get from there to here or here to there.
One little microcosm of this issue came to me just the other day when I was talking to my boys about using what we have in God’s service. The context of the conversation was that I have noticed a trend of isolation or privacy in Christian homes as the years pass. People don’t just stay in each other’s homes so much anymore. They stay in hotels. People don’t stay in the home of a stranger if the traveler and the homeowner share a mutual friend. I’m not saying this no longer happens at all. I’m saying it’s happening much less. We are more private. More isolated. More connected VIRTUALLY than we are ACTUALLY. I was asking the boys what we would do if Christians we didn’t know needed a place to stay. Where would we put them? Where would they sleep? What would we say?
They answered sweetly. They offered to give up their room (wonder if the reality would look as spiffy as the fantasy…). They were all over it.
And then Mama’s Boy threw the question at me that I wanted the formula for. He is like me. He wants the code that cracks everything. He asked me this:
If we are supposed to be generous and share our house and our stuff, then how come you don’t always say yes when someone on the street asks you for money?
Yes. Hmm. How come? What IS my answer to that? What is THE answer to that?
That’s a tough one. I told him so, too. Kudos for stumping me, boy. I could say what I’ve heard before: that I don’t believe some people will use the money I give them wisely and I need to be a wise steward of my money. Or I could say that my choices are sometimes random. Or I could try to come up with THE one right answer. Sometimes I say yes. Sometimes I avoid the situation.
Then it hit me. Call me dense, because I’m sure you already figured this out.
There is no one right answer to most of life’s questions.
I do believe in absolute truth and I believe the bible gives the definitive answer on a whole lot of things, including salvation and morality and 1000 other things. But in the day to day interactions with people and the day to day navigation of obstacles, I am just going to have to take it one blip at a time.
But how do I do a good job with that? How do I know what God wants me to do at 3 o’clock in the Publix parking lot?
Suddenly I thought about Isaiah. I can do it by standing within earshot of God’s conversations.
Isaiah 6
6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy , holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. ”
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? ”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
Isaiah was standing there looking at God…focused on God. He was humble and intent. Then, he HEARD the conversation God was having. He heard God ask who should be sent. And then he jumped in. He was sent because he was was eavesdropping when the mission was mentioned. He was perched. Ready.
Maybe there will never be a formula. But if I am looking at God and listening for God, I’ll know what to do when someone walks up and asks me if I can spare a whatever.
And that’s pretty much the only formula I need.
I’m going to go wake Mama’s Boy up and tell him.
Yesterday morning, I awakened in a cold sweat. I had been dreaming. What time is it even? It was 5:15 a.m. Ah. that means I have another lifetime to sleep before I have to get up. I should have felt good about this, but the nature of the dream and the resulting cold sweat robbed me of this 11th-hour hunker.
In the dream, I had already dropped the 3 school-aged children at school and had moved on to MOSI. I was frantically looking for a lunchbox I had left there when on a recent field trip with my fourth grader. Each MOSI staffer that I met would send me on to the next person.
“Oh, yes”, they would say…”we’ve seen that spiderman lunchbox. Why are you using a spiderman lunchbox at your age, ma’am?”
Condescenders.
And I would move on. But I could never find it. They had all seen it and no one would lead me to it.
Suddenly, I looked at my watch. 9:04 a.m. OH would ya look at that? I was supposed to be at the school BEFORE 8:45 for my 2nd grader’s field trip! I panicked.
Paralyzed by my own panic and knowing that my 2nd grader was now loaded on a bus twice as panicked as I was, I tried to think about the fastest way to get to school. MOSI is maybe 1.5 miles from school. Well, obviously running is the fastest way to remedy this situation.
So I took off running. Sprinting like a stiff breeze. Running so fast. Then I began to heave a lot and stop for breath. Why can I not even be agile and athletic in my dreams? They are MY dreams!
When I began to wear out and was almost unable to continue, I stopped again to consider my options. This is when my college degree kicked in. Cheetahs are much faster than humans. So I dropped onto all fours and began running like a cheetah.
In the dream, I did not move like a real cheetah. I moved like an exhausted human imitating a cheetah and failing miserably.
Then I realized it was just a dream and forced myself awake. The day was still fresh before me. My 2nd grader was not upset. And I was left with only one scar: the knowledge that I am woefully out of shape, even in my dreams.
People don’t go running in the country. Ever.
I mean it.
But I live in the country. And I go running. So now there is one person that goes running in the country– if you can call what I did tonight running.
There is a recent rash of people I know joining Couch to 5K programs. There are websites and podcasts and probably many other instructional forums that teach a person how to go from slug to sleek. I don’t seem to know where any of these instructions are. I thought about asking my neighbors for advice, but again–they don’t go running. So I was forced this week to come up with my own program for couch to 5K.
Day One: Get off the couch and go to bed. I did that one on Monday.
Day Two: Get off the couch and think very hard about exercising. Then eat Cheetos. I did that one on Tuesday.
Day Three: Stay on the couch and plan the exercises you will do on Day 4. That was yesterday for me. It went well.
Day Four: Get off the couch and do the exercise you planned yesterday. This was today. I ran–hobbled, really–to the Shell station down the road. It is exactly one mile from my house. So if I hobble there and back, I have hobbled 2 miles.
It was 6 o’clock tonight when this plan came together and there was no more avoiding the 5K portion of the Couch to 5K program. It was time. I put on actual running clothes and actual running shoes and I headed out the door with money in my pocket. If I was going to end up at the Shell station, I didn’t want to be limited by being broke. I was thinking I would reward myself with a cold bottle of water.
In my mind, I could envision myself completing this mission. I would be agile. Nimble. Impressive. Not at all winded. And as I started down my driveway, this was the picture in my head that i carried with me. Out on the main road, I shook my head to catch the wind in my hair. I actually had the “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick” thing rolling through my mind. There were a couple of problems with making that whole nimble thing happen: (1) I was running on a busy, busy road without much shoulder. This meant that most of my run was cross-country, in a sloping ditch. In the country, there are a lot of ant beds. Jumping over these ant beds on the side of the road was nimble one time. 500 times, not so much. Don’t even ask me about the incline. (2) I haven’t gone running in 6 months. Maybe STARTING nimble was too lofty a goal. Let’s back it up to: Don’t throw up within sight of a passing monster truck.
I discovered a heavily guarded section of road as I lumbered along. It surprised me, too. I didn’t see that one coming. Perhaps the volume of my huffing and puffing kept me from hearing the bounding and barking of the largest german shepherd I’ve ever seen. When I did spot him, it was a “Whoa, nellie” moment and I immediately crossed the road to the other side. But as I did so, I got hit with a two-dog combo unit. A chihuahua and a rotweiler team. GET OUT, was the message. Go home, sweaty girl. People don’t run here. Clearly. These dogs were fenced, so don’t be alarmed. But I wasn’t totally convinced the fences would hold them. They did not like me being there.
I finally made it to the Shell station. I only stopped to double over and pant like 13 times. I retrieved a bottle of water as my reward and then began to think about lunches for tomorrow. We needed Ritz crackers. You know how convenience stores sell those, right? You get one sleeve of Ritz, boxed neatly inside a very expensive Ritz package. It’s like $11 for one sleeve of crackers. Still, I was there. And I needed them. And it was cheaper than the kids buying school lunches. So I took my bottle of water and my skinny little Ritz box up to the counter and smiled at the scruffy fella behind the counter. I decided not to shrink back from people, in spite of my smell and appearance. There are a lot of sweaty people in country stores. Many of them do not even have shirts, so I was way ahead of that game.
He rung me up and I handed him my five dollar bill. He handed me my change and slid my water and my crackers back across the counter to me. What? No bag? I guess this looks like a very simple and portable purchase. I, however, still had that final mile to run. I decided to take what he had given me and not ask for a bag. After all, a bag couldn’t help me now anyway. So, because the first leg of this journey had gone so well, I decided to add an awkward and delicate item to each hand for the journey home.
And off I went, with a half-empty sloshing bottle of water in one had and a sleeve of Ritz crackers in the other.
This was not in my Couch to 5K plan and this is not done in the country. People walk home carrying 12-packs of Miller Lite. They do not run home with Ritz crackers.
There is a reason people coined the phrase, “country mile.” It’s because one mile feels really, REALLY far. There is not a phrase, “country mile with crackers.” Well, maybe there is. But it means something entirely different.
May 23 and 24 might not seem special to you, but they are anniversaries too. They are 11 year anniversaries of my asking the question, “Now what?” about raising a child. What now? What do I do with it? What if it cries and I can’t help it? What if the neighbors call the police? What if the department of children and families decides to investigate our diaper changing techniques or how often we bathe? What then?
Eleven years later, I am still asking those questions. Now there are four children, instead of just one. We moved to the country so we wouldn’t have to worry about the neighbors calling the police. In fact, we are considering calling the police on some of them. There is a small boy that enjoys biking in his underoos. Is that okay? I kinda don’t think so, but I guess we’re in the boondocks now.
I digress.
I remember 11 p.m. on the night of May22. Mr. and Mrs. Informinator were the last people to leave our “homecoming party” for our new baby boy. We were petrified to see them go. Once they pulled out of the driveway, we were alone in our cluelessness.
Yesterday, I celebrated that anniversary of the realization that I know nothing by knowing nothing yet again. Beloved had been saying all day she didn’t feel well. She doesn’t feel well a lot, truthfully. I think she is afflicted with Middle Child Illness at least some of the time. Yesterday I logged her complaints as just that. I tried everything. Tried to hydrate her. Tried to feed her. Laid her on my bed. Hugged her. Sympathized with her. Unsympathized with her (suck it up, teeny one, you’re fine!). Etc.
I was bustling around with her not eating dinner when Todd called to me from the dining room. The unthinkable had occurred. I won’t describe it. I’ll just give you a few words from basic German Shepherd.
Carnage. Lysol. Pine floors (so thankful). Bucket. Emergency phone call to get a sub for my bible class.
Middle Child Sickness.
Not so much
Happy Anniversary to me. Maybe next year the knowledge will come.
Surely next year…
I can’t help it. I just can’t not observe this day. Sometimes I am inspired to write. Today I am not. But last year, on May 22, I was. So tonight, in remembrance of one of the greatest days of my entire life, I will link to last year’s post. I will also post a picture of the little weed, as he looked on Sunday. Still not an ounce of fat on the kid. Not one ounce. Oh, for that situation.
Snappshots.com 