Hiding Candy From Babies

Today I was on a mission to get some long overdue de-cluttering done in the front part of the house.  I began in the laundry room and discovered the exhaust pipe or whatever you want to call it that runs from the dryer to the outside vent has come loose yet AGAIN and there is lint everywhere.  If something ever generates a spark in there the laundry room is gonna light up like a Christmas tree.  You will see a black cloud of smoke for miles generated from the 10,000 pieces of plastic "silver" (as my grandmother used to call it) stored in there along with my many left over paper plates from various events.

It was during the throwing out of the 15 different plastic cake takers that have nary a lid that fits, that I discovered the wrapper of a Now and Later package with one lonely candy, hanging in the wrapper like a loose tooth, lying over in the corner of the laundry room.  This sweet find was partially concealed by a dust hippo, created from the endless supply of lint blowing wildly about every time a load of laundry spun dry.

Oh Goody!  Something sweet!  I blew the dust off my treat while doing the Snoopy Dance around the broom I was using to drag socks out from behind the  washer.  How do miscellaneous articles of clothing get back there anyway?  I know I'm not the one that is tossing unmentionables willy nilly into the washer at such a pace that they are getting flung behind the appliance.  What exactly is going on when I'm not there to monitor the goings on in the laundry room.  Inquiring minds want to know.

While weeding through the endless supply of crap that for some reason has taken up residence in the laundry room I decide that this is the perfect place to hide stuff, namely sweet stuff, from the kids!  I could shove a fistful of Smarties in a tube sock and hang them from a nail behind the washer.  One things for sure, the kids are not going to look for them there.

Don't judge, I know you all hide stuff from your kids, what grownup doesn't?  My kids have slowly but surely found all my other hiding places so I think this new place will fit the bill nicely.  Although, I'm thinking chocolate will not hold up very well to the heat generated by the dryer so I need to get Ray crack-a-lacking on that clothesline he's supposed to put up for me.....

What? Schools Out!

Uhhgggg.  Summer break is upon us and boy am I not prepared.  I am not ready for my seven hours of solitude during which I work out whatever I have planned for the day to end, just like that, in a puff of smoke.  Usually I am better prepared, and the entire last week of school is treated as my last hurrah during which I do my housework, lunch with friends, roam the local bookstore, and sip my coffee uninterrupted, well mostly uninterrupted on the front porch.  I really am pitiful, I never would have made it as a homeschooling mother.

This year, during the last week of school my time was spent doing all the things that take place for the graduating seniors.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not begrudging my senior her last week of high school and all the functions that we, as parents get to share with them, I'm whining about the fact that I didn't do my annual shoveling out of Abby's room before she was out of school for the summer.  This task is best done while she is not on the premises.

I'm bellyaching about the fact that now I will have to acclimate myself to people being in the house with me again during the day.   I'm sad about the disappearing of the wonderful silence where there are no TV's playing.   Gone will be the joy of having all phone extensions remaining on the hook to charge and being ready and available when you need them, or the satisfaction of  once  a room is cleaned,  it remaining that way until the other residents of this nut house arrive home at the end of the day.  Pitiful isn't it?

My days will now shift to include the kids out on the porch in the mornings with me, I wouldn't give anything for the conversations that have been had out there or all the ones to come.  I have found the best conversations with the girls happen either out on that porch or on drives in the car.  I look forward to the topics this summer will bring.

Alex has a job lined up so that should get her out of the house.  Instead of her wanting us to fund her activities, I look forward to her enjoying the feeling of  a job well done and the reward of financial independence as a result of it.

All I need to do now is figure out how to keep Abby occupied.  I wonder if I can employ the same tactics my own mother used on us?  You know, send her out to play and dare her to even think about coming in and dirtying the house.   I think I even remember my mom locking the screen door to keep us from slamming it, or was it to keep us out of her hair?

That could backfire on me since Abby is my adventuresome one.  A little while back, when she had a friend over to spend the night, I looked out the window in time to see her and her guest putting on helmet's as they climbed a tree to test out the zip line they had rigged up.  I better just suck it up instead and crack the whip in the picking up after oneself department.
Well, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of summer vacation, so wish

Pickle Juice and Mailboxes

It seems lately that I have been having a very hard time getting up in the mornings.  I have to believe it's because I have been going to bed so late, sometimes as late as 1 or 2 in the morning.  What's keeping me up?  Oh, any number of things.  Lately, excitement over a writing contest I am entering, but also everyday junk wants to do a tap dance on my mind when I am trying to settle down as well.

Last night I went  to bed after 1 am and with it being  the same weekend that I  "sprung forward" for daylights savings time, I should have known the chances of a mishap occurring would be better than average.    Ray got up and took off for Alabama to finish up working on a job there, I got up, sipped my coffee and shuffled around the house givin' myself the old pep talk;  "It's gonna be a great day!  Boy O' Boy, it won't get dark early tonight (yawn), Yay, three more days till the weekend." 

That is when I do the totally idiotic.  I sit down to the computer to "check my email", that totally translates to lookin' on fb.  Next thing I know it is 7:00 and I haven't even showered yet!  Thankfully I did have the wherewithal to get Abby up at her regular time so she is clippin' right along.   Me? Not so much.  I go from laid back to full speed ahead in 60 seconds flat.  I  jump in the shower, get dressed and make sure that we water and feed all the animals, then head toward the  door with no time to spare.

As I grab up my bag I notice that Abby has some sort of project she is holding in her hands.  I ask her, "Whatcha got there?"  She tells me that it is a pickle.  A pickle?  "Well, put it in a baggie, why do you have it on a paperplate?"  That's when she tells me that she has sliced this pickle up so that she can easily share it with her friend as they wait in the bus room, a/k/a the lunchroom, at school.  (We go through a lot of pickles around here and buy them in gallon jars. They are the large pickles that you see for sell at concession stands.)  I told her that she was going to drip juice on herself, she needed to put that in a plastic bag.  She says  "No, it will be fine, I will be careful with it."  I give her the you've been warned look and we head out the door.
We pile in the truck, I double check the time, 7:55, yep it's close, but we will be just fine and we head off for the school.  We get no further than the top of the street and I hear a sharp intake of breath from Abby.  I didn't even have to look to know what that was about.  I glance over at her, sure enough, pickle juice everywhere in her lap.  Either that or she peed her pants.  I don't say a word and she says "it's fine just keep going."  With that said, she proceeds to stretch her T-Shirt down to show me how effectively she can disguise her wardrobe malfunction.

I was too mad for words, but in my mind I'm saying "Satan will be strappin' on ice skates before I let you go to school with pickle juice all over you!"  With that I slammed my truck into reverse and boiled the tires all the way back down to my house.  At least I had my head on straight enough to make sure that I was on the opposite side of the street so that I would not collide with anyone heading out of the subdivision.   Let me say this, your head is never on straight if your mad enough to chew nails and spit rivets.  I slowed down enough so that I could haul buggy backwards up my driveway, or so I thought....

I stop short of my driveway by about a foot and a half and instead of continuing straight up the driveway as planned, I slam right into the mailbox.  This does little to improve my mood.  I pull forward halfway expecting to find that the mailbox is somehow embedded into my tailgate (wouldn't that just be the icing on the cake) or hung on my bumper and I will have to add insult to injury by having to get out and manhandle the stupid thing out of the clutches of the truck body.  Thankfully that did not happen.  I pull forward and it just leans way over and looks an awful lot  like the town drunk three sheets to the wind.

That didn't stop me for long, up the driveway I go at a pretty good clip, I lost steam right before I could do any damage to Alex's car parked under the carport.   I look at Abby and tell her she had better make it fast because I was not going to be late for work.  She jumped out of the truck like a scared rabbit.
I still don't know how she did it but she had changed pants and was  out of the house and back in the truck all buckled up before I could even find a song on the radio that I wanted to listen to.  I guarantee you she got her pants out of the dirty clothes hamper cause there is no way she could have found anything to wear that fast.  I am almost positive, but well past the point of caring.

Do I regret my little display?  Yeah.....well no, not really, ok yes I regret it.  I hate that I nailed the mailbox with my truck.  I'm not too happy that I will now have to buff the white paint out off of the tailgate.  I am eternally grateful that the mailbox was there and that the good Lord stopped me from being stupid one foot over as I would have ended up backing my truck into a culvert a good three foot below street level.
Who knows, maybe she will do what I suggest next time, then again maybe not.  I think I should have just let her go to school with pickle juice pee stain on her clothes......