The Sting of Laundry

I don't know what those construction guys were thinking when they built our laundry room, but they were not definitely not deep thinkers. We have a three car garage, operating on the theory that if you want one car to park in the garage, you get a double bay and two cars, you get a third bay. That is how real life works. Well, our builder must not add the third bay very often, because the finished product is a testimony of that ignorance. A typical ducting is run through the wall and outside with a minimum of turns to help prevent the lint from clogging. Logical, right? Our ducting runs into the wall, up the wall and outside through a vent on the ROOF of the third car garage! Hello, idiots! So our dryer is very inefficient due to the lame-brained confusing configuration of dumb ducting. True story.

We have purchased all of the necessary parts, hoses, clamps, etc., to reroute the ducting out of the house on the ground level. We have left all of those components in the trunk of the car in the hopes that the repair will complete itself. Not a very good plan, but that is how it works with five kids, a husband in full-time college and my oldest son gone 15+ hours a week for football. Did I mention that I work three nights a week? I was bored and needed a job to keep me busy (yeah, right).

Benjamin has also been wetting the bed every morning for over two weeks to make sure that the laundry room has a constant workload. I have been using the inefficient dryer along with my solar clothes dryer. That is fancy wording for "clothesline." I started using a clothesline when we lived in California during the "Gray outs" when electricity costs were sky high, so I have some experience.

I had a load on the line for two days. It got wet with the sprinklers in the morning, so I left it on. Then it got wet with the evening sprinklers, and left on again. This morning, I took off what was dry and put washed bedding out. I remembered to bring everything in in the afternoon, but didn't get around to folding until after 10:30 p.m. As I was turning an orange shirt right-side-out, my knuckle got an instant stinging feeling and I yanked back my hand. I couldn't think of why my hand would start hurting like that, then I figured it out. My hand got stung three times last year and my back had two stings the year before that. I threw the shirt on the ground and a hornet fell out. Then it saw a blur of tread and was nearly dead. Payback is a #@!$^*! as they say. I put its mostly squashed body outside and walked away from the laundry for a while.

Washing clothes is a love/hate relationship. I love being a good provider for my family, but the constant workload is intense. Having a hornet sting my knuckle while folding clothes at the sacrifice of my sacred sleep is just adding insult to injury, not a good equation. Stupid bug. Tomorrow when I go out to work in the backyard, I think that I will step on it again.

Birthday Boy

My son Ben is ten years old now. It seems like only yesterday that he was a little "alien" in an ultrasound photo. Now he has been a prisoner in his own mind for a whole decade.

He is getting too big for us to handle on our own. We are facing some very big decisions for his future and ours. If I had one wish, one dream to be fulfilled as I blew out candles on a cake...it would be this: That a key could be found to unlock that mental barrier. Better yet, that I could use a battering ram to vanquish useless synapses. I wish that I knew how to do...anything, anything at all to help him. It seems like a losing battle, but one that can't be lost for his sake, for our sakes.

I have hope and hopelessness. I have anger and sadness, regret and resolve. I have mixed emotions, to say the least.

Tomorrow is a new day, not a birthday, but a regular day. One more 24 hour time period to survive. That is what we are doing now, surviving, with style.




http://www.flickr.com/photos/sleepishly/2656467632/

Cyber Distaste

I saw a T.V. segment about a woman's blog that brings in $40k a week. She has huge sponsors like McDonald's, WalMart and Target. Curiosity piqued, I checked out her blog. The first few I read were ordinary and docile with a photo of her baby girl and a couple of lines. I read one about breastfeeding vs. formula that made me laugh out loud and sent it to my sister.

After that email, I read a few more and found vulgar comments and foul language that made me regretful that I had sent my innocent little sister to pollute her mind in cyber distaste. So here is my point...why the language lady? Don't people know how much the "f" word cheapens them? Yeah, so you are just speaking your mind, not caring what other people think, blah, blah, blah. I think that it takes a keen intellect to be able to express yourself in descriptions, analogies, humor, and colorful storytelling. On the other hand, I think that anyone with two brain cells to rub together can spew out cuss words and vulgarities. They teach potty mouth early on in every public school education, but that doesn't make it a good thing to learn.

I remember when Bill Cosby was in the news criticizing his African-American counterparts who spoke "Ebonics." He said that it took them back hundreds of years to when his people weren't well educated. In essence, it devalued all of the progress that they have made toward equality. That is a tragedy. How we speak, carry ourselves and present our ideas to others, adds or detracts from our perceived intelligence. If the President started a speech with "Yo, homey! How's it hangin'?" his authority would definitely be questioned. (Not that we shouldn't question him A LOT anyway!).

So McDonald's, what are you doing putting your endorsement on a blog that encourages the degradation of intelligence and promotion of foul lanquage and vulgar comments? Wally World, are you discounting your standards as well as your products? Why don't you be a no-vice leader as well as a low price leader? And Target, I think that you really missed the mark on this one! Think again people, in Nice vs. Vice, vote for good, the way that you always should. Now play nice!

I think that Wendy's and Kmart will be getting my business for a while.

"Veggies" Rot Your Brain

I know that every pyramid put out by the government tells us to eat plenty of vegetables to help us be healthy, but when can a good thing become too much of a good thing? When veggies get their own video series that your autistic son watches over and over adnauseam (that means it makes me sick!). My four year old yells "Not Veggie Tales! I want Thomas!!!" Or, heaven forbid, how about just leaving the T.V. on PBS? While I am wishing out loud, dreaming the impossible dream and planning how to spend my lottery winnings, how about some grown up television? Once upon a time, I remember watching shows with plots and dialogue, complex relationships and characters with arms and legs. Now I watch singing and dancing limbless legumes and articulate asparagus' (Asparagui or asparagusses?, see what I mean? My brain is gone). Is there any escape?

We try letting the other children watch their shows on a different T.V. or on the computer, but Ben is master of all. If it is in his realm, he dictates what is being viewed. How, you ask? Simply by stalking close by, waiting for a moment of weakness or a breach in security, then making his move. It is the same technique that he uses for stealing other people's food. I can't stand guard all of the time. I guard the T.V. for Wheel of Fortune occasionally, but it is exhausting to keep up that level of security for all viewing.

This persistance is why we are on our seventh DVD/VCR player, because he won't leave them alone. We also just spent a nice chunk of money repairing our portable DVD player and the small, yet sturdy, T.V./DVD combo that has been dragged down the stairs twice by its cord. It has such a strong will to live, that we just had to fix it. Plus, it was half the cost of replacing it. We just monitor how many movies that he has access to because apparently three at a time is just too many. We keep one player downstairs locked in a cabinet and the portable in the locked kitchen cupboard that I call the "forbidden cupboard." The combo one is upstairs in our always locked bedroom, so occasionally he can be upstairs with Dad and the rest of us can access the electronics.

I know that he will grow out of this stage like he did the Teletubbies, Blue's Clues and Disney CARS obsessions, but I'm ready to move on now! Those Veggies are rotting my brain!



http://www.flickr.com/photos/stickerart/3623387716/ Picture source

Hole in Fun

It's that time of year again, when getting dirty is all part of the fun.

We are gardening again after our long winter vacation. I have been digging a hole for an apricot tree for days now. Our dirt becomes rock hard about one foot down. Everytime I dig a hole, I grow two-legged creatures that are very unusual. One of them tries to garden wearing Hello Kitty platform flip flops. One creature thinks that dirt and small pebbles are excellent snack foods, especially mixed with a drippy nose from incoming chompers. The third one can't wait to have the tree in the ground so that he can christen it, boy style. Or is that dog-style? Oh, potty training what an amusing journey you are.




I am learning patience, oh yes. Patience is required while planting seeds around toddlers with shovels and babies with happy feet. I am patient as my daughter hunts for worms, rolly pollies and lady bugs when she is supposed to be putting seeds in the ground or fetching a tool for me.

My aunt once mispelled a word in her blog calling her plantings a field of impatience, not a field of impatiens. How true that is! If we choose to dwell on the weeds that grow amidst the beneficial seeds that we nurture, we will only harvest resentment and discord.

The moral of this story? "Let them be little," as a country singer named Billy Dean sings. "They're only that way for a while." So I take a lot of pictures with my kids sitting in my still empty holes, then tomorrow, I will buy a little fence for my newly planted seeds. I will just be happy with growing a family that likes to be together, a little dirty, but together.

Thank goodness for my garden gate that comes with a nice latch on it too.

The Spoken Word

One Sunday we were late for the beginning of Sacrament meeting and we were in the foyer. It was me, my three youngest and their uncle Kurt. My baby indicated forcefully that he wanted to nurse, so as soon as we had received the bread and water, we snuck into the mother's lounge. I got situated and was feeding his Majesty the Starving One and J.B. and Mimi were standing over by the light switch, so J.B. could participate in his favorite light show. I used the phrase "Do not body slam your sister" a few times, to help keep the peace.

A voice came over the loud speaker (our 82 year old Bishop) in the room that keeps the lactating ladies in touch with the outside world. "Do you hear that J.B.? That is church that you can hear. Do you know who's voice that is?" You could see his thoughts forming. His face lit up with realization and he said..."Jesus?"

Christ is a real-life, living, breathing, entity to these little primary children. Is He for the rest of us? Deep thought.

Leprechaun Offspring

We celebrate St. Patrick's Day each year in our own special ways, but this year was unique even for us. Our traditional meal is not that nasty corned beef trash, but GREEN meat loaf, GREEN mashed potatoes and gravy, GREEN jello, salad with avocado and a GREEN vegetable. Great additions would be Green Goddess salad dressing, kiwi and limeade, etc. Anything green is welcome. We used to make green breakfast, but it was very disturbing to eat bright green pancakes, eggs and milk. The meatloaf is a more natural looking shade of green somehow, but the potatoes still have a strange look to them.

The recipe for my SubLIME Jello is at the end of this blog. It is yummy! This year I pureed apricots from my own tree for the recipe, which is epic.

My first grade daughter Mimi's class had a Leprechaun visit this year and mess up their room. He put chairs on the teachers desks, stacked the students' chairs, put things askew and left gold foil covered coins for the kids. That was a few days before the 17th. Then Leprechauns came again on St. Patrick's day. Each one left a note for the first graders. My daughter got a letter from Lily the Leprechaun. They had read a book that said the little people are the size of a human thumb, very strong and full of mischief.

At home, Mimi built a trap in the garden to trap a Leprechaun and a playground in the dirt for their nighttime outings. We never saw or caught one of the wee folk, but we did find some Andy's mints that they left Mimi in the trap she rigged. Andy is probably an Irish mint maker and that's why they chose that particular kind of candy, I guess.

So here is how this whole Leprechaun experience applies to life at our house...

While preparing our green grub, I was immersed in stress as I usually am at mealtimes with strong-willed children under foot. Benj and J.B. were "starving to death" and trying to eat any snack food they could get their hands on, the baby was fussing, Mimi was missing in action and my oldest was at sports practice. Amidst all the joy of zoo keeping in the kitchen, J.B. takes a FULL hard plastic 2 gallon water jug and drops it on the ground. It exploded like a bomb full of nails hitting hard rock and covered the floor in about two seconds. To say that I was a little distressed would be a gargantuan understatement. I kicked everyone out of the kitchen, and put J.B. in the backyard with the slider locked until I could clean the flooded floor without him splashing in the puddles. My oldest came home and brought me towels and we saved the day, but what "joy" I had in the meantime. Dinner was late, to say the least, but still yummy, (if you don't count the meatloaf briquettes that I made, which I don't because they were dry, but not inedible).

I have come to a strange conclusion about my three-year-old given his tendency toward mischief making. Maybe he is the offspring of a Leprechaun! I did have an Irish great-grandmother in my family tree. Maybe there is a recessive gene from one of the little people that chose to emerge in my generation. If I can just hang on until his adulthood, perhaps we will find that elusive pot of gold and he can help finance my retirement years.



St. Patty's Sublime Jello

1 Box lime jello
1 can Kern's Apricot Nectar (11.5 oz in aluminum soda can)
Assorted non-acidic fruit (Optional)

Prepare jello according to package directions, except using apricot nectar instead of cold water. (If you are using a family size box of gelatin, use nectar and any additional water needed to make the 2 cups of liquid). I prepare the jello in a large glass measuring cup so I can pour it into individual containers and also because any unmixed powder stays in my original container and not the finished product. Add fruit immediately and refrigerate until set.


Source for Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pcka/3375900731/