awoo. 

isn’t it great how you can’t tell what i’m taking a picture of?  there’s a big old moon in there.  and it was really beautiful hanging out above the mountains.  by the time i figured out i should pull over to take the picture, the mountains were hidden by trees and the moon was hidden by clouds.  so there you go.  sometimes you just have to stop right where you are or you miss the opportunity to get mooned.

life lesson.

My walk.  It’s only a block or so. 

My one neighbor, the former policeman, had a double batch of boys.  I love this sign.

It was shady this morning. Can you see what I like about this house? (Also check out my sky!)

And another house with a sun on the wall.  (And the house sandwiched between a willow and a birch.)  They have a serious garden.  Part of some kind of program.  My telefoto was doing odd things this morning.

Same house, but flower bed.

My very next-door neighbors have a lovely flower bed too.  Daisies are my favorite.  I love this weird dogwood too.  And I captured a friend.  Can you see him?

That was my morning and afternoon little stroll.  I hope it wasn’t dull.

Anybody know how to put borders around my photos?

i could explain that there title. but isn’t it so much more interesting if i don’t?

#whim 46. Write a LETTER to yourself, detailing everything you really want out of life

Dear Self,

You are never going to know what you want.  And maybe that’s ok.  Life is a journey not a destination.  So maybe on Monday you want world peace and Tuesday you want to be endlessly entertained.  Wednesday will be the day you are serious.  Thursday has traditionally been play day.  Friday, you’re a Cure song. Saturday is the day you stay in your jammies until dinnertime.  Sunday has always been the day that you pay the consequences of your actions, said in a fatherly reprimanding voice. 

 What you want isn’t a thing perhaps.  A healthy bank account would be nice and so would a fancy car with good gas mileage and leather seats.  A cleaning service, sure.  But you know you’re not willing to do what needs to be done to have those things, so why pretend that they are what you want. 

 What you live for is laughter and hugs. Trying new things.  Seeing what wasn’t there yesterday.  Being someone new.  Smiling at strangers.  Crying over sad movies and books and Folgers’ commercials.  Causing scenes in restaurants and stores.  Breaking rules and standards.   Saying inappropriate things when they suit the situation.  Being just a little bit too immature for your own good. 

 It’s a long road to maturity.  Keep to the side roads.

 Love,

Me

#whim 34. PAINT an abstract painting

#whim 22. Write a PROSE POEM about your naked body  YES IT SAYS NAKED.  so maybe you don’t wanna read this part. 

The eve of middle school appears to be different for individuals.  Truthfully, I don’t remember heading to middle school.  I remember riding the school bus for the first time.  My favorite seat (always and still) is the one with the wheel hump.  I remember the kid from my 5th grade math class riding my bus and how much he hated me.  All because I usually beat him in the math races Mrs. Anderson had us do on the black board.  That was fun, I tell you.    I remember the utter hell of middle school.  The girls with tight designer jeans and nail polish for every outfit.  And the perfect Farrah Fawcett hair that I could never do.  Sixth grade was before braces.  So truly- hideousness. 

Spawn spent the eve of 6th grade (in actuality the entire month of August) being a completely miserable human being until we had a date at Starbucks and she talked my ear off about what she was worried about and then everything was fine.

LLO didn’t appear to be interested in the talking.  She was interested in hitting the bank account in another way.  First of all, she absolutely had to have a new backpack because the one she has been using (since kindergarten- really) is boring and pink and childish and just is not sufficient.  So Saturday night we went shopping for school supplies, checked out every single backpack in the store before purchasing the exact perfect purple plaid backpack filled with an incredible and ridiculous stash of school supplies from the list for 6th grade.  Life was good. 

Then she expressed an interest in shopping for back-to-school clothes.  I have never done this WITH her in my life.  I try to avoid shopping.  I certainly don’t want to do it with one of my children.  So I put what I thought was an unlikely pricetag on the experience.  I promised a BTS shopping excursion if she cleaned her room.  I’m pretty sure she has never cleaned her room.  I put a time limit on it and called my Sunday afternoon my own.  Well, we had an amusing morning of doing a puzzle (me) while she read an Italian cookbook picking out just the right recipe for dinner.  Again, I figured I had no worries about having time to grocery shop and cook. She put in the last piece of the puzzle- stinker.  I made a small noise of reminder about the agreement.  Next thing I know she’s cleaning her room.  I now have a lot of laundry to do, lucky me.  I made some additional suggestions which she pooh poohed.  Then did anyhow.  So there I am. In complete shock.  Because her room looks great, and I have to keep a promise.

So we went to the *gasp* mall. Imagine my surprise that she has things in mind.  She knew exactly what she wanted.  Jeans.  Which she never wears.  And purple shirts. And entire wardrobe of purple shirts. I feel like I’m hanging out with Donny Osmond.

Then we went to shoe heaven.  One of those shoe stores with rows and rows of shoes.  In another life I was Imelda Marcos.  I love shoes.  I’ve curbed my habit, because I’m a grown up now.  But, dang.  Shoes.  Love ‘em.  I dream about shoe shopping.  Not lying.  I don’t remember who I am sometimes, but I remember favorite shoes.  In fact today in the first store, they had my favorite shoes from middle school (or maybe high school.  actually probably high school because I had to run down the hill to catch the bus every day and I’m lucky I didn’t break my stupid neck.)  I wanted them.  I digress.  So, shoes.  I’m in the store and LLO has stuff in mind.  Sneakers without laces.  (Seriously child, just tie your dang shoes.)  Which we found.  And black flats.  Which eventually we found.  And then she spied these totally awesome suede practically knee high boots.  I was drooling.  Like a prize winning SUCKER I bought all 3 pairs.  What the heck was I thinking?  Well, I’ll tell you what I was thinking.  They’re my size.  (Spawn drooled over them too- also her size.)

By this time, I’m ready to leave the mall.  Very ready.  Like 2 hours ago ready.

And we still have to go to the grocery store for the Italian extravaganza.  As we arrived in the parking lot, the skies opened up.  So we dashed to the store and I looked in my hand, which was missing the stupid grocery list.  I said to the kid, “I’m not going back. Let’s see what we remember.”  That worked out about as well as you’d expect.  We get to the checkout and she wants gum.  I just looked at her.  Are you kidding me?  To which she started to call me the meanest mom on the planet until I started listing the booty.  There was no more mention of gum.

And we had something else for dinner.

Well, did that.  This weekend will be a breeze.  Only have a bonus pooch (who smells like a wet dog) for the weekend and someone needing to be somewhere pretty much every hour of the weekend.  No big deal.  The babies are gone.  We were babysitting this evening.  Fun stuff.

My week.  Pretty freaking eventful.  This was the crazy project I started the younguns with on Monday.  What is it about paper mache and kids under 8?  I think it’s fabulous stuff and they just complain about it.  They were not complaining today.  Check out the finished projects.  (Good luck identifying some of the animals )

I’d wanted to take more pictures from clay camp but my phone battery is a piece of stinky pooh.  Didn’t even make it through the morning.  I did snap this.  Ignore the paper.  I hope very much that it survives bisque firing.  I’m pleased with my own self.

I took LLO to camp with me today.  She made a nice pocket thingy and she chased the balls down the hill for the little guys this morning.  And she lived through the day.  I call that a win too.  Spawn is out with the some extended marching band extravaganza.  I won’t see her until sometime tomorrow afternoon.  So she will survive the rest of the day too. 

I should be back to my regularly scheduled not whiny, miserable posts tomorrow-ish.

This is a rant, plain and simple.  I’m not going to hide anything else in here. 

I arrived home today after a particularly irritating day.  The small loud squeaky people are loud and squeaky and are kicking my butt.  In the afternoon, I have a little girl I’ve known a couple years who never listens to directions, makes faces when she’s told something she doesn’t want to do, and has a new habit of criticizing her supposed best friend for hours on end.  In any case, I was pretty worked up before I pulled up to my street. 

Where I knew my in-laws were waiting.  Because I had LLO basically beg them to come visit today.  A phone call that involved me far more than I felt was necessary to begin with.  I thought my directions were clear.  I said:  call g-ma and see when they can visit this week so you and your sister don’t kill each other.   Crystal clear, in my opinion.  Why I had to speak with my mother-in-law yesterday, I do not know.  Anyhow.  I drove up and saw my father-in-law’s lovely car parked in my yard.  Yes, my yard.  And not on the icky side he used to park on before I told him off about it.  Because seriously, you don’t need to park on grass.  The end.  But there it was.  The car.  (I wanted to take a pic of it, but the battery in my phone was dead.) Not painted in rustoleum even a little bit and not up on cement, but parked on the only bit of good grass in the whole freaking yard.  And I was exercised about it, shall we say. 

And I will tell you why.  When we moved into this lovely domicile 12 years ago, when Spawn was 3 1/2 and her little second cousin (or first cousin once removed, whichever it is) was 2 1/2, I put up a baby pool in the front yard while these fine people helped us move our crap in.  So the sweet girlies could play and be well supervised.  I left the pool up for an entire week.  Because it’s a dang pool.  And my beloved father-in-law felt the need to give me one heck of a lecture on the fact that we now lived in a place where a pool didn’t belong in the front yard.  I probably let him give me this lecture- I was young and stupid.  I’m not young and stupid anymore, and it burns me up that a pool doesn’t belong in the front yard, but a freaking car does.  And it turns out (as LLO informs me) that he parked his chariot in my front yard so it would be IN THE SHADE.  Are you freaking kidding me?  It’s not hot this week, folks, and they have air conditioning.  And I couldn’t say anything because they were doing me a favor. 

However, since the living room is still that infernal trash heap from Spawn’s re-organizational adventure, I should have let the kids kill each other.

I begged everyone to give me 10 minutes when I got home.  Begged.  There was steam coming out of my ears. My mother-in-law instead had a conversation with me about how she had always needed quiet time when she got home from teaching and complaining about how her mother never let her have it.  And, yet, you commiserate with me in exactly the opposite way that I would most benefit from.  Priceless.  Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

#whim 7. Make something with CLAY

I’m helping with clay camp.  Which means I get to play in clay and do the bare minimum of actual help.  (This works for me.) This is one of favorite projects.  I made one last year too and maybe the previous year, but I don’t remember that.  Obviously this is not dry, fired, or glazed. It’ll be an eon before the rest of that happens.  I wish I’d fixed that circle in there.  Yikes.

27. Take a PHOTOGRAPH entitled ” Middle Daughter”

This is my favorite middle daughter not related to me.  She’s helping me with my morning camp.  Thank goodness.  Those little guys are purty near doing me in.  The pinata picture is her helping last year.  She asked me today if she was like these angel babies when she was this young.  Good grief no, I do not think so.  There’s a kid in class who rivals LLO in volume and he is super squeaky.  Incidentally, they are all missing teeth. 

Spawn is annoyed with me.  Shocking, I know.  I asked her this morning to clean up the living room.  I’m certain I pointed directly at the specific area of concern, and it should not be a mystery anyhow because I say the same thing EVERY DAY.  Because I find it aggravating to trip over shoes and pick up stinky socks and can’t figure out why she can’t hang up the clarinet with its handy hangy uppy things on the hooks so close to the front door as to practically be in it.  (The clarinet is not in the pic because she’s at band right now and must have taken it with her.)  So this is the before (minus said clarinet) and the after an entire day of working in the living room.  Sort of. 

She had another plan for cleaning the living room.  These are the after pictures of that.  And she claims that I don’t appreciate what she did for me today.  I’m so ungrateful, I know.

She drives all day.  It’s already started for the fall.  Here’s a whiny country song. 

i ran into this beautiful sight after my never-ending errand right before the last thing of my very long, but pretty groovy day. 

• small kids in morning doing fun messy stuff
• ridiculous drama with spawn settled by appropriate personnel in 10 minutes
• hands in clay in the afternoon- hooray!
• games night with chicks- i was obnoxious (laughed myself silly)
• celebrated 21st birthday of that sweetheart onestepcloser to something
• got interrupted 26.9 times while skyping with @bricker59 (happy now?)
• got whiplash from some kind of LLO drama- what the heck was that anyway
• collapsed in a puddle

not that you were wondering.  but i wanted to share photo and couldn’t say nothing at all.

#whim sh trifecta

13. COOK a meal including foods you have never tried before ( 5 pts)

Pretty sure it smelled and tasted better than it looks.  Because it was way yummy.  Naturally not a success with the family.  LLO claims I’m trying to kill her.  Spawn has been replaced by aliens.  She not only tried everything, she liked the main thing.  Chin hit floor.  I’m in a food coma. Also Spawn said, “did you make dinner for us just to win that contest?”  I get a lot of love here.

14. poem about my food coma

perhaps i’ll have to write a food poem some other day. 

39. Write a POEM entitled “Skin” ( 3 pts)

I have daughters and I’m a chick.  That’s by way of warning of the content of this blog.  Truly I’d understand if you didn’t want to read this one.

My LLO is having a little visit with my mom.  In fact, I’m supposed to be in the car at this very moment to get the heck over there to get her and so on.  Spawn didn’t want to get out of bed (Spawn never wants to get out of bed- she’s a teenager) and the only way I got her moving was the promise of a story. 

LLO is hilarious to talk with on the phone.  Usually.  She sounds like a 5 year old with good manners.  (She is actually 11 and the manners I wasn’t aware of.)  Last night she called me, which is also a new thing.  Anyhow she started the content of the conversation with “I am so happy.  I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.”  Of course I wanted to know why, because happy is not a usual emotion for this one.  I think she’s generally happy when she’s asleep.  Other than that, she’s some kind of loud and dramatic.  No information forthcoming in the happy, by the way.  I asked if she had a good talk with Grammy (who works miracles with all of the girls in my domicile) and she said no.  M kay. 

Next thing I know we’ve moved the conversation to cramps and doctors and middle school and the good mood is gone and my head has popped off and rolled across the room. So, cramps.  She tells me grammy says we should talk to the doctor because there’s a solution for them.  I’m all about this and wondering why I wasn’t privy to this sacred knowledge thank you very much.  Turns out she thinks the doctor might solve the problem for LLO as one did for my mom.  My mom had all her parts removed in her early 30′s because the parts were mighty horrible (my bro and I are adopted).  I’m like, honey love, let’s start with Tylenol. 

Then the doctor convo leads to the shot convo.  There’s definitely some shot required for middle school.  I forgot about this again, but it’s not my fault.  I know I had this appointment set up long ago, but I think the doc had to cancel it.  In any case, Spawn let me know that I need to get on it.  Thanks.  Well, shots in my land are epic drama.  Spawn had to be physically restrained for years to get any kind of shot- in fact I think the 6th grade shot was still requiring about 5 pairs of hands.  And I guess I’m not all that great with shots either.  I had throat surgery quite a long time ago and I was offered a pain shot or pills and chose pills.  I only chose them once, because those damn horse pills hurt like heck.  Anyhow.  LLO is NOT feeling the love about getting a shot.  And the shot convo leads to the middle school convo.

What the heck was I thinking?  Because knowing what team she has been assigned is not comforting information unless she knows what team her best friend is on.  This I do not know, because I’m afraid to call them after the debacle of last week.  And it’s the wrong team according to Spawn (she emphatically denies saying this. but that girl has a worse memory than her mother.)  And I said there’s a back-to-school night next week to meet her teacher and open her locker, thinking this would ease some of the worries.  (The opening of the locker being the biggest drama for Spawn.)  By about this time, she was close to hysterical and I’m wishing that the aliens had kept me. 

Much later, I noticed the little blinky light that tells me I had a phone message.  It was my mother, several hours prior, suggesting that I call her because LLO’s emotions are all over the place.