My parent’s just sold their house so we are helping them pack. “We” meaning me and three teenagers. It reminded me of packing when my kids were one and four-years-old. I would put stuff in the box and they would take it out. I would get the whole box packed and then couldn’t locate the tape because someone was “helping” and packed it.
Yesterday we were boxing up the kitchen, Christmas pillows, vases and DVDs. My niece packed a bunch of glasses and scribbled out the old moving words from the second-time-around boxes and wrote on the box “Kitchen” and “Glasses.” Then Grandma asked my daughter to write “Fragile” on all the kitchen boxes. So she went around and scribbled out “Kitchen” and “Glasses” and wrote “Fragile.”
My daughter packed a bunch of Christmas pillows from a spare room closet and wrote “Christmas Pillows” on the top. Then my son came and scribbled out “Christmas” because he thought they were just regular pillows and his sister was confused.
I was ready to take away the Sharpies from everyone. I will be amazed if the boxes end up in the right places in the new house.
But everyone was HELPING!
On a more thoughtful note, moving and seeing other people’s stuff makes me ponder “stuff.” Why do we think we need it? Why do we think we can’t get rid of it? If we don’t get rid of it, who will? Why do old things seem valuable when they are simply old things? Is it sentiment? Is it fond memories? Why would anyone need to save a collection of obsolete music recordings that you can’t even listen to anymore? How many table cloths does one woman need?
There are two pack rats in our home… my husband and our littlest girl. They collect stuff and would undoubtedly be on the T.V. show Hoarders if I did not live with them.
Our daughter has a mini coat rack in her room for her bath towel and her backpack. I entered her cluttered oasis last week and spied the big round blob where the coat rack used to be. I asked what was on there. Three towels, (Why?) three backpacks, (When did that happen?) five other bags, (What the heck for?) and six purses. (Has she even used some of those… they have sequins… I doubt it.)
Throwing out my husband’s quality paraphernalia has gotten me in trouble more than once. He is out of the country right now and actually texted me to ask me not to throw anything of his away. Sheesh…. like I hadn’t thought of that already.
We are almost done with the massive-master-closet-clean-out project. It hadn’t been emptied in 12 years. Don’t judge me.(I homeschool my kids, and write, and cook, and create… I am a busy woman.) Now the closet is beautiful… you can see the carpet. There are pretty boxes on shelves, the clothes have room to breathe and are in the color order of the rainbow, but I did a lot of getting rid of in the process.
How in the blazes did all this come out of my closet?
My fabric supply left my house. It went to a home with two little budding seamstresses. I had not looked at those scraps for over two years. My scrapbooking stickers and supplies are leaving my home too. There are two little crafty princesses waiting for their new stashes.
Someone else can love the stuff that is simply taking up space in your house! Share the wealth! (Not the Bernie way. Oh.my.stars. Don’t even get me started.)
Honestly, turning fifty…. FIFTY! wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated. I still feel the same as I did yesterday. It’s going to be okay. Five-Oh sounds really old to me, I mean, I was just turning 40 a few weeks ago. Seriously. That was the fastest ten years ever!
I declined having a party. I requested a dinner with my husband and in-state children, albeit, it has to be postponed for three days to get all the kids available on the same night. Glad I turned fifty so I could still plan my life around my kids.
My baby son, who is 17, brought me flowers this morning. Ahhhhh. My eldest son, who is 19, called from California and sang a bday song for me. My baby girl, who is 12, made a giant card for me. For reals. It’s four feet by two-and-a-half feet. My married daughter, who is 22 and in Oklahoma, sent me texts and called and wrote the sweetest words on facebook. My husband, who acts like he’s 14 sometimes, took me out to dinner and told me he was ordering a salad at a Mexican restaurant so I could be proud of him. Then his chimichanga showed up. He makes me laugh.
My family asked what gifts I might like this year… the monumental year when I turn fifty. I mentioned that a backyard swing would be nice. We used to have one, but years and years in the Arizona sunshine fried it to pieces, literally. Nora told her daddy that I wanted a swing set for my birthday. Just trying to be young again!
We picked out the swing tonight. The selling feature, even though it is brown with a red striped canopy (I don’t do red.), was that it lies flat into a bed. SOLD! So now I’m trying to find cute pillows on Amazon that bring cute colors into the red/brown non-cute theme. Currently the swing is in a big box in the middle of the dead winter grass in the backyard. I would be out there assembling it, but it’s dark and I need help getting the piece out of the box. No one will help me at 10:44 p.m., even though it’s my birthday and I am old enough to apply for AARP now. Sheesh!
Happy day of my birth to all of you! I hope you feel as loved as I did today!
Come one. Come all. Step right up and enter to win a GRAND PRIZE for you or a mother dear to your heart this Mother’s Day.
What would every mother want? A diamond ring? No. (Could get lost while playing in the sand at the park!) A new MiniVan! No. (Take it from my experience, after you hit someone in a minivan, they are not that great any more!) A dozen roses! No (They wilt in no time, especially if you bought them at Walmart!)
Maybe something to bring joy to her heart. Something to make her laugh…. and snort… and laugh some more! Yes, you guessed it! A Book! YES!
Yes, a FREE autographed copy of my book Laughing in the Midst of Mothering! Every mother you know needs a laugh! This book can be yours (for your mom if you aren’t a mom) by merely entering your name in the comments section of this blog.
You have until May 5th midnight to enter. On May 6th, after I sleep in, I will randomly draw one name from the list and announce the winner here on MSJ. I will blast the name for all to see. The winnerwill have 24 hours to contact me with an address for where to ship the book. If person #1 doesn’t contact me, I will draw another name on May 7th. :o)
Never have I been accused of being an animal lover. We had a few pets during my childhood in suburbia Northern California, but never a dog and only once for a short time, a cat. The kitty caused my brother’s eyes to swell shut, so she didn’t stay long at all. But I did have the joy of picking out Meow Mix back in the day when the Meow Mix song was popular, hence making me popular. I was nine, it didn’t take much.
Fast forward to my ten-year-old daughter praying every night that God would change her mother’s heart (ME!) so that she could get a dog. I about coughed up a lung the first time I witnessed her heartfelt petition to the God of the universe. Anyway, the two-year vigil ended with God changing my heart… and for the past 9.5 years we have had Trixie, the Rat Terrier burrowing into our hearts and lives.
Foolishly I read Dr. Doolittle to my children years ago. Unmistakably, that was a cockamamie move on my part. Yes, we did do a stint with younger boys who NEEDED tadpoles, then frogs of course, lizards, mice, a hamster named Teddy, chickens, fish, turtles, and a hermit crab named Elvis. Truly I felt that I did my time. Of course there were requests for a horse. Thankfully we live in an HOA that doesn’t allow for horses.
Then Christmas 2011 did me in. It was December 23rd at 10:15 p.m. and my husband and I were sitting on the blue couch when my cell phone notified me of the arrival of a message. Who would be texting me that late? Of course it was a friend who had a friend who had a baby wiener dog FREE for Christmas. Good grief. We were sitting ducks. The next day I called another friend who got a baby wiener dog for Christmas the previous year and DIDN’T keep it! I gave her all my reasons for not taking the free dog, and she solved each dilemma as it arose…. we would need a crate. She had one. We would need a doggy door. She had one. And her reason for returning the puppy was because she was never home to train it….. she pointed out that we are ALWAYS home. We homeschool. We don’t leave the premises unless it is for church or a library trip. So we got sucked into Ringo the wiener dog who has been snuggling with us for over a year now.
I still cannot believe I have two dogs. Linda Ann Crosby… NOT a dog person, has two dogs, and probably will have two dogs for another five to seven years. Unbelievable! I can hardly believe I am writing a blog about dogs. I am not a dog person. Didn’t I already say that?
So the moral of the story is DON’T READ DR. DOOLITTLE to your kids if you truly want to do little. BAM!
As we were sitting in church this last weekend, Nora was with us in big church because we were running late and didn’t want to take the time to run her all the way over to kid’s church and check her in. Our services are one hour… if you are ten minutes late, you miss the whole music section! She watched as her daddy wrote a check and stuck it in an envelope. She asked what he was doing. I explained checks…. the same as money, but you don’t have to carry the money. Then I explained tithing… giving your money to Jesus. She was aghast… “You have to give ALL your money to Jesus?” No, if you have ten dollars, he asks us to give one dollar back to him. Her eyes squinted slightly and she stared off into the distance while the wheels were turning in her little brain. Finally she asked me in a whisper, “How does Jesus get the money? He’s in heaven, right?” Yep. :o)
Luke, our nephew, came for a hike with us last weekend. I am SO entertained by the sayings that come out of his little 7-year-old mouth! This was a hike on a preserve where there are also mountain bike riders as well as people on horseback pounding the trails with us pedestrians. Nora and Luke were hiking a bit ahead of my husband and I, when we noticed that they stopped and were analyzing something on the trail that lay between them. As we approached, we saw the it was horse poop. I asked, “What in the world is that?” Luke answered right away, “It’s poop from a cow.” We have never seen cows on the hills behind our house! Ever! And we’ve seen the horses getting in and out of their trailers at the trail head. It made me laugh. Obviously a city-fied boy…. once you’ve seen a cow pie, you could hardly mistake them for horse droppings!
A half hour later, we had come to a T in the path and turned west, having never gone that way previously. My husband suggested that we take a picture of the trail map (from the trail head) when we get back so we could figure out where we had hiked. I remarked that the trails are probably on a state website and we could just look them up on the computer. Luke chimed in stating the obvious that I had obviously missed, “Auntie Linda, there aren’t any computers out here!” As if to say DUH!
Last year when Luke was in kindergarten, every time I saw him I would ask him if he went to school that day (even on holidays and weekends.) Did his teacher show up? Did she teach him anything he didn’t already know? And I tried with great effort to get him to raise his hand in class and ask, “When are you going to teach me something I don’t already know.” I coached him. I prodded. I modeled. But he never asked. Smart kid.
Nora says the funniest things sometimes! Here’s just a few of her latest crazy comments for you to enjoy.
We were going to a dinner put on by Austin’s youth leaders. We walked in the door and one of the leaders puts his hand up for Nora to give him a high-five. Before raising her hand she asked, “Are your hands clean?”
Today after church, Nora came out singing a song, “Where You go, I’ll go. Where You stay, I’ll stay. When You moon, I’ll moon. I will follow you.” Moon should have been MOVE. Made a whole new meaning for that song!
We were having tacos one night and Austin had made himself two tacos and set them on the table. Then my husband asked him to go do something quickly before he started eating. Before Austin left the kitchen he announced, “Make sure Keeve doesn’t eat my tacos!” We all chuckled and said “ok”. A few minutes later Keeve walked into the kitchen. Nora pointed to Austin’s tacos and said, “Keeve, you want those tacos?”
We were having a lazy school day and Larisa, Nora and I were sitting around the kitchen table at 2:00. Larisa looked at my haphazard appearance and asked if I brushed my hair. I replied, “No, but I brushed my teeth, put on deodorant, shaved my legs and put on clean underwear.” Looking all put together, brushed and shiny, Nora added, “I didn’t.” We laughed and questioned, “Didn’t what?” “Put on clean underwear.”
And a few of her Spanglish sayings to wrap up this ditty:
“Bike Rike” – it’s when you ride your bike and rake the yard simultaneously.
“Peeksa” – checking in the oven if the pizza is ready.
Waddoh – the wet stuff that comes out of the waddoh tap.
What dat means? – this is not about a mean dad.
Candaler – I think a person with dyslexia taught her to say calendar.
Not many kids’ movies make me laugh out loud. But Kung Fu Panda did. We have been awaiting the arrival of Kung Fu-ier for weeks. Today is the day. But we cannot go without Rick, as he makes the Kung Fu experience so much richer! Last time, he laughed until he cried. The big guy sat in the theater surrounded by children and wiped the tears from his eyes without shame. Then all the kids laugh at him as well as the movie. It’s priceless. YES! Tonight, the noodle dream is relived.
For some strange reason, this past week my children asked if I got in trouble much as a kid. What brought on this bit of inquisitiveness, I’m not sure. Visions of grandeur danced through my head as I recalled various adventures that I could lay on ’em. Then I realized, no, I didn’t get in trouble that much because my older brother got in A LOT of trouble…. so I walked around the house telling my mommy, “I be good!” Over and over and over. And I was good. :o)
So this happy tale emerged after much prayer and supplication: my parents had vacated the house leaving my 13-year-old brother in charge of me (11) and our little sister (6). We decided to be helpful and empty the garbages from upstairs…. (with ulterior motives, for sure!)… so we could burn the rubbish in the fireplace in the family room. Fires are so exhilarating, especially when you’re home alone! My brother lit the matches and started the newspaper tubes that we had diligently rolled up just like Dad always did. We waited until it was nice and hot before we started adding the garbage…. which included: toilet paper tubes, kleenex, q-tips, junk mail, odds and ends…. AND…. an empty aerosol can of hairspray. OOOooooohhhhh!
We didn’t bother closing the little chain-mail curtain because we were still loading in the trash when it happened……. quicker than bottle rockets on the 4th of July, the can exploded and shot out of the brick fireplace. We were terrified! We ducked for cover! We shielded our heads and faces! We screamed like girls! The can hit the popcorn ceiling and then came to a smoking landing on the tri-level, multi-colored shag carpet, where it sizzled and then fizzled on the far side of the hide-a-bed couch (that I am the proud owner of to this day!)
We waited for it to cool down before we tried to pick it up, but it was sort of stuck to the melted carpet. My brother did pull hard enough to dislodge it and then I carefully trimmed the burned carpet to a uni-level, non-torched height. I remember the can leaving a mark on the ceiling, but I can’t remember how we covered it up. That was 33 years ago, okay?! I remember thinking that we could have put someone’s eye out with the shooting hairspray can, and we never repeated that fiasco. Safety first! Or at least second!
Reminds me of Back to the Future when Marty tells his 1950’s parents to go easy on their future son when he burns the livingroom carpet!
Because the fish tank sits here on my desk next to the computer….. I often find myself staring into the oceanic scene and finding truths about my daily life. Let me take you back for a moment: we used to have guppies. LOTS of guppies. We had the perfect conditions for guppy multiplication to the Nth degree. Seriously, we would go from 7 or 8 to 150 every year. We bought a plecostomus to clean up after all the guppies! Then VBS (vacation Bible school) would roll around and I would give them away in little bowls to all the happy kids (with parental permission, of course) until we were down to 7 or 8 again.
Then we changed churches and no more VBS to solve the guppy overpopulation explosions. Plan B was purchasing another type of fish that eats baby guppies soon after birth. This kept the population under control… until we went on vacation and the “other” fish started eating the 7 or 8 grown up guppies… until there were none left. Just the “other” fish and our plecostomus, the ugly bottom feeder that keeps the tank clean.
(photo from: thecoolshark.com)
As the circle of life continued in our tank, the beloved plecostomus breathed its last watery, gill-filled breath and lay still for all eternity with its eyes open on the pretty blue and hot pink rocks. He didn’t move a whole lot to start with, so we’re not sure when he actually died. We’re not sure it was a male either, but frankly, it was too ugly to be a female.
Anyway, now that the bottom feeder is gone, algae and debris are forming inside the tank. It looks like mold growing on the glass walls. It’s yucky. THEN the truth of the analogy smacked me between the eyes: I’M the plecostomus of the family! I’m the one who cleans up after everyone else. I’m the one who keep the house clean while everyone else dirties it up. I’m the one that stealthily goes around when no one sees, picking up trash and cleaning the walls and windows. Without me the house would be disgusting! I’M THE BOTTOM FEEDER!
But I’m a valuable bottom feeder, I might add! And so my day rolls on…. things to clean and pick up.
Welcome to My Sister's Jar. The story behind the blog lies in the original post on Feb. 2, 2008. Type "giddy moments" into the search box to find it.
I'm a homeschool mom who loves to speak and write, encouraging moms to press-on in motherhood. Two of my books are available NOW! Laughing in the Midst of Mothering and Laughing in the Midst of Marriage. See them at www.LindaCrosby.com or www.cbd.com.
I have four children, one of whom is adopted from Colombia, so there are LOTS of adoption tidbits here.
~~~~~~ Linda Ann Crosby
My Sister's Jar 