Autumn = FOOTBALL

I love football and futbol, both. My kids have played one or the other and one of them played both. I've been on the front row cheering (read this "screaming like a drug crazed buffoon) for many, many years, okay only 21 years but it seems like many, many.

Now the real confession, I like to watch it better on TV. You get to actually SEE what is going on when it is televised. You can't hear what the coach is yelling at your child and you can yell to your heart's content and no one looks over with a "death glance". You can armchair quarterback to your heart's content. You can be the goalie shouting perfect directions at your teammates because, what the heck, who is going to tell you to shut up?

When you have to watch it live sometimes the action is a bit vague. Because of the this I find it much better to just yell upbeat things at the top of my lungs to all the participants. I love to watch the kids run around and slam into each other while the grown-up kids masquerading as coaches yell nasty things at them. I've shown a LOT of restraint over the years as a sideline parent and coaches still continue to amaze me.

With the final player in the action I've taken a new approach...I take my chair to a lone area, put on my glasses, open my book and read. I glance up occasionally to see if he has taken the field. When he does play I make sure he sees me smiling and giving him the "thumbs up" even if I have to grit my teeth to do it. When the game is over I DO NOT make a tunnel. I just grab the kid and leave.

Of course, number 3 is playing high school football which is a whole different story. LOUD and PROUD is my motto. I want to make sure he hears me down in the huddle with all the swearing I'm sure he's participating in. I want to be sure I have no voice left for the weekend. I leave it all at the game!

With that said, I gotta get this done. BYU and Oklahoma, the Y is down but the game is still young.

Hooray for football and futbol!

Living a better life one drawer at a time...

Well, I'm fed up with my life as it is. I live in quiet desparation that someone might nonchalantly show up on my door step and I will have to let them in on my secret...my house is trashed. I didn't plan for us to end up this way and I have several reasons/excuses for it. I will just get those out of the way right now:

-very old house with only 2 real closets
-borderline hoarding personality, nearly the whole family, once we own something it becomes an instant heirloom never to be parted with
-working full-time an living with some seriously work impaired youth
-ADHD

With all that being said yesterday I took a baby step forward - cleaned out and threw away stuff in 3 kitchen drawers. I know not impressive but a start and remember the old adage "a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step". Well, my journey through a thousand pieces of clutter began with a very concentrated effort on 3 drawers. With this herculean effort I just might make my goal of having the house clean so when I die the kids can let people in with the casseroles and not have to meet them in the driveway for a drop-off.

While this post is somewhat light-hearted it does in fact address a nagging problem I've struggled with since I began working full-time. I have to work, I'm blessed to have a job to go to, I'm blessed to work where most of my children are all day but I still feel guilty. I feel like every minute I don't work I just want to spend time with my favorite peeps. Work together you say, usually ends up badly, and I'll leave it at that.

I love the Savior so much because He is all about do-overs and second chances. The atonement is all about being able to change at any age. I have to remind myself of that every single day. I can't express what hope that gives me even when I'm having a hopeless day.

Is is summer yet?

I don't feel like I've had any summer. Oh, I've had vacation, I've lounged about in the sun, I've put on the air conditioner for a brief time, I've grilled out and weed-whacked but it still doesn't seem like it is truly summer.

I've been working from 6 a.m. until 3 or 3:30 or 4 p.m. and there is a monstrous amount of work going on and loads of shredding and filing so I know I'm in the 'summer mode' but it just isn't the same. I've haven't been hot and sticky for weeks on end, I haven't yelled through the bathroom door at the kids, "hey, get out of the shower, shut it off, NOW, the well is going to dry up, it's summer and we haven't had enough rain.", I haven't had a ghastly case of poison ivy ranging all over me and that is why I don't think it has been summer this year. All the usual components are missing.

I'm sure the heat will ramp up for the beginning of school though, yep, 96 for the first week. A moist, languid, thick heat, guaranteed to drive the most mild mannered individual mad with discomfort. Yep, get ready, real summer is right around the corner....but in the meantime ENJOY this great gift of a really stellar summer. Beautiful blue, clear skies, like I remember in the west, crisp cool mornings and the grass still growing at the end of July. Now if the tomatoes could ripen it would truly be perfect.

Family Vacation

We have been inordinately blessed to enjoy some extraordinary family vacations for the past two years. Two years ago we spent time in D.C. when Will was selling pest control in Maryland. Last year my older three kids "forced" me to take the whole family to Disneyworld so John could have the experience with them. They had been 5 times I think when their dad was alive so the experience was something they wanted to share with their brother, albeit missing their dad in the process. It was a wonderful time and we all agreed he was there with us enjoying the whole trip from a different perspective. It was great, which brings us to this year's adventure.

Charleston, well, Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. I have some of the most generous, thoughtful family (in-laws but I claim them as flesh and blood kin). This year my brother-in-law's daughter has arranged for quite a few of the Butler clan to meet at her place and share some fun. Unfortunately, I don't think Will can join us which is sad because he's so much fun and such a great part of any vacation (plus he acts as interpreter when I'm stressed out). Anywho, we will have lots of boy cousins and Reilly and this is great for John who loves "family". He is so excited to see cousins he's never met and to look for shells, dig for clams, fish, go shrimping, discovering new museums of course and generally hanging out with the guys. There are some boys close in age and this is what he really looks forward too since he hangs out with "an older crowd."

I'm not really what you call a beach loving person. I'm more of the nerdy "let's go visit an historical site" kind of vacationer. I don't enjoy frolicking around in a bathing suit nor do I like swimming in water I can't see through but I do LOVE sitting aground and reading a great book.

We've never been to this area of the country and I'm so grateful for family generosity to make it happen. Now, this is the really fun part. After I get to vacation for a week I get to come home and leave the kids there! That's right, I will stay a week and they will stay and additional 5 days. This will give me time to really do some significant work around here (I hope) and not worry about spending time with them, or cooking for them or other things that get in the way of big project work. Hopefully I can pull this off but I'm excited to try.

So let the countdown begin. Fourth of July at the Charleston Harbor will be awesome!

Curses, swallows again

I'm a tragic failure as a blogger. I just would really rather read what everyone else writes. It takes so much less effort. I thought I would love to blog but really I don't have that much to say and my observations are usually a bit warped and hard to follow.

Here's what I'm dealing with right now...a bird with an axe to grind. Last year like some dumb bunny, I let a "darling little swallow couple" make a really nasty, muddy nest on my front porch and raise their brood of obnoxious children there. I really should have done a little research and knocked that bird condo right off the porch but I didn't. I thought it would be fun to observe nature and the "circle of life" up close and personal. WHAT WAS I THINKING.

First, the reason swallows look so cute is to hide their vile temperment. They are mean and territorial and have a penchant for swooping really, really close to your head. Secondly, they poop like no tomorrow and no matter how much you scrape and sweep, there is still more POOP. Finally, and this was the kicker, they are prone to parasites, read this as bird lice and mites. We are probably all going to die an early death because of all the pesticides I had to use on my FRONT porch to take care of these parasites. They were marching all over everything. EEEWWW, I get the heeby-geebies just thinking about it. What is didn't know until this year was they COME BACK to the same place to nest. Over my dead body.

I've been knocking down their nest with mind single to this task. They have taken it personally and attack me when I do so. For two weeks I've had brooms hung up on my porch like a bad impersonation of a scarecrow. Then I got the idea to make "swallow shields". One of the reasons they like my porch is my set up for Christmas lights. I have hooks set to string them on and they are the perfect size perch for the little demons. I cut the bottoms off of milk cartons and cut them to look like flowers, more or less, and then I impaled them on the hooks. I took off all my "scarecrows", patted myself on the back and walked back into my house. Hmmm, bird problem solved. WRONG.

One of them has sworn a vendetta against me and is stalking me. I walked out the next morning and there, perched precariously on a "swallow shield" was the swallow. Not just perched but hunkered over, giving me the "dirty stink eye" when I walked out for work. Every morning there it sits forming it's horrible plan. I walk to the car looking over my shoulder because they dive bomb me when I'm in my front yard.

I refuse to yield and match him glare for glare. I just hope he/she eventually gets fed up with me and moves to friendlier climes.

Leaves and Slugs - An Ode to Spring

I don't know who said it but it is a point well taken, "never put off for tomorrow what you can do today."

In the cold, wet, damp and icky days of October when the leaves are in thick, matted piles around my yard I thought, "what the heck, I'll just rake them next to the fence and pick them up when it is a bit warmer.
Fast forward six months.

Warmer weather didn't arrive until April! I want to do yard work but, alas, my lawnmower is not working, and the battery charger isn't doing the job this time. I want to plant and prune and weed while the soil is wonderfully damp and friendly. But, I can't because I have a day's worth of dried up, nasty leaves to wrangle to the garden or burn pile or wherever I need to take them. NO ONE wants to help with the leaves (this doesn't matter if it is October or April it is pretty much the way of the family) today. So I do them, all day long.

John helped transport to the garden and raked out a few bushes for me. This is how he found his new pet, Sluggo. Sluggo actually found John. When John pulled his arm out from a pile of leaves, voila', there's the slug on his arm. He ran into the house to get his "bug habitat" and give Sluggo the life of luxury. Sluggo has different ideas. He proceeded to crawl around every surface of the luxury home. This greatly upset John who came slamming out the door to announce to me in his very disturbed voice, "Mom, Sluggo is getting on my very last nerve. He has slimed up every side of his new home. I've had it with him. He's not going to be my pet any more. He's now going to be a specimen (translation: dead for my bug collection.)

I explained to him that soft body invertebrates do not make good specimens and maybe he should return him to the wild. He agreed and said, "Yeah, that's a good idea. I'm sticking with normal pets like beetles." I wish it would always be this easy to help him out with difficult decisions but only 5 more years until teenhood and the easy stuff will be HISTORY!

Weird post for Easter but I spent yesterday trying to clean my home and conquer the laundry. It left me somewhat annoyed and defeated.

One word for laundry woes...SOCKS. Socks for 5 (even though Will lives in his own home his socks are still a part of our laundry war) is a lot of socks. They tend to separate into different factions only to attack from a different angle. For example, Sam is in Florida for the Band trip. Sam is a very poor laundry commander. He's been doing his own laundry for more than half his life and most of it is still in baskets in his room. Socks are his nemesis so I thought I would do some service for him. BAD IDEA.

When he left for his trip he left two large baskets of clean clothes in the living room because he watched TV while he packed. So last night Reilly and I settled in to watch Bedtime Stories and I decided to match socks. What was I thinking?! Not too many matches but probably close to 60 actual socks. So I gathered up what didn't match and put them in a grocery sack and put them in my closet where they reside with 2 more sacks of mismatched socks. I will throw them all away this Wednesday and finally have peace of mind, for a season.

I have bagged and thrown out socks about every other year. I've tried buy all the same type of socks but our feet range from a man's size 15 to a small man with size 4 feet and two women. Even white socks are not all created equally. Depending on the brand (which I forget every time I try to buy more, "hmmm, Fruit of the Loom, Target brand, or Hanes; drat, I can't remember) they all look and feel different.

So my new strategy. Every Easter the whole family will get new socks and whatever we are using that isn't matched at that moment will get tossed. It seems somewhat wasteful but they are biodegradable and won't damage the environment, much. This will cut our laundry issues in half I'm convinced.

I'm not even going to get started on the phenomenon of socks in the washer and the inability of the washer to conquer it's hunger for socks. It seems to be a type of sacrifice to throw your socks in and cross your fingers to see if the same number are there when the "dirty deed" is done.

Well, off to throw some socks away.