April 30th

It's ironic that I chose this day to have an emotional crash.
But,
I have to wonder if maybe subconsciously it was this day that lead me to it.

Less of a "Chicken and the Egg" debate and more like, "Was I grumpy because I was getting sick, or did I get sick because I was so grumpy?"

33 years ago my dad died of a sudden heart attack.

Today I honoured him by shouting at my kids and telling my husband that "I quit". I'm sure it was a proud moment for him.



There's just some days that being everything for everybody gets a little old.


Today was the third of three days per week that I am supposed to have a couple of hours to myself (you know, to catch up on laundry. Or finally remove the rest of the wallpaper that the children have destroyed so that I can paint). The first two days were entirely consumed by my family and this day was supposed to be spent grocery shopping (when you add an hour drive each direction, yes it does take the day).


Of course it was this day that the commissary chose to have the fewest cashiers, the traffic was the absolute worst and of the two people listed as emergency contacts for my kids, one is terribly ill (nearing hospitalization) and the other is away for the three-day weekend.

There was 45 minutes of extremely stressful clock-watching while stuck waiting for trains, slow moving tractors, lorries and Friday traffic.

I ran up to the school 10 minutes late for the boys, which made me 25 minutes late for Miss Ky (same area). At least it gave me great parking, since all of the other kids had been picked up.

One boy child was snarky and downright disrespectful and Miss Ky was obstinate about staying behind for her after-school party. The one I forgot about. The one I insisted she could NOT stay for since I had a car full of frozen items that had already traveled for an hour as it was.

I cried quietly into my sunglasses all the way home.

Yes, this is a frequent whinge on this blog, but I'm really looking for confirmation that I'm not the only one who questions if this is all there is. See, I even feel guilty saying that because I am so abundantly blessed...


I just wonder if there is a way to be a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a church member, etc... and not have a day that is spent trying to get somewhere for someone by some time.

I want to know that someone has figured out the technique for doing something you love (or hate, like exercise not hidden in a fun package like dancing or swimming) and still be successful in the above titles.

My dad was only 49 when he passed away.

I often wonder if he felt his life was lived fully...

Father, husband, son-in-law, brother, friend.


He was bowling with his good friends in a tournament when
the heart attack struck,
so I have a sneaking suspicion he did.

I still miss you Dad.

That's Not Success I'm Smelling

I'm busy and distracted. So what's new right?

I find myself on auto-pilot most of the time.

Like last night when I was meticulously lining the toilet seat with squares of toilet tissue...
and then remembered I was in my own home...


and then remembered there's a lot of cavemen sharing this home,
so I continued to line the seat. Just in case.

****

Today Miss Ky was on the sofa. I told her, "I'm finally finished, so now I can sit down and love on my baby girl!"

"Smell my feet."

"Uh... no thanks."
She's obsessed with the olfactory senses lately. She asked us earlier this week to smell her breath, "It smells like water!"

Thursdays are always fun since Hubby does Young Men's on the
Thursday nights he's not at work and one kid plays football.

I'm the one who will stand in the cold, stomping my feet and wiggling my fingers to keep frostbite at bay with three other children who won't bathe or eat until after 8.00pm.

A day (ab)normally packed and long, last Thursday started with a morning meeting that lasted three hours.

It might not have gone so long if Miss Ky hadn't locked the bathroom door with a latch that was too stiff for her to unlatch so that we had to extricate her from the window.
Thank goodness she was able to reach up and undo the window latch.

The very nice couple told me not to worry, they had another bathroom upstairs and would have someone sort the downstairs one later.
Unfortunately later wouldn't work when my secretary, who is in a wheelchair, needed to use the bathroom.
So, we took the skinniest of us (so not me) and hoisted her into the tiny window where she was forced to bend her legs in some very unnatural ways to get in.


What I learned this week besides that losing weight and being more flexible could be a bonus:

In my friend's bathroom there were things on the floor.
Rolled nappies, clothes, towels, shampoo bottles and such. Her shower had hard water stains and various colours of mold and mildew growing on the tile. Her laundry room cup runneth over, her kitchen counters are under siege by the Tupperware army.
In general, everywhere but the dining table and living room are well lived in. Her cleaning time is instead spent serving people and relishing time with her two kids.

My envy is eating me alive.

I dream of leaving the house with a sink of dishes and NOT stressing about it.

I want to sit on the floor with my kids and not be focused on the legos I can see under the sofa or the pair of underpants still tangled in pajama bottoms dangling from the book shelf where they landed this morning..

I want to take a shower breathing in the crisp scent of tea tree oil (I know, yuck) and let my eyes sachet in an ultra-relaxed manner observing the light of the morning sun dancing on the glass--instead of the military-style tile inspection I usually do.

Does anyone else clean the grout while they're showering?

You'd think with my attitude my house sparkles. But it doesn't. I did just tell you that I felt the need to line my own toilet seat.

So my need to know question for today is: Which person are you?

The uptight woman with the unoccupied show house that lifts her guests feet to vacuum?
Or are you the lady that Kim and Aggie throw in the towel and say there is no help for you?



Can you smell that?

It's the smell of a woman defeated by perfectionism...

or it could be some left over water, I haven't quite mastered Miss Ky's abilities.



IMPORTANT NOTE: While uploading this post, I heard the refrigerator door open.
By the child who was supposed to be napping (thanks for nothing Dora).
I found her mesmerized by the string of goo dripping from her fingers. The other hand was still holding open the egg carton. Apparently she didn't eat enough hard boiled eggs a couple of weeks ago... I guess now is as good of time as any to clean the refrigerator...

Going Up, Up, Up!

This weekend Simon Lappin's shirt sold for £201.01 (small change).
The three top scorer's (Simon is a midfielder) shirts went for £300 to £350.

For £350.00 I want more than sweat and dirt...


there had better be a little footballer blood on that shirt as well.

Pull your minds out of the gutter, you thought I was going to say something about "the body better still be in the shirt", didn't you!



Oh, did I forget to mention something?



WE WON THE LEAGUE!!

Wow, what a thrill. It made up for the HUGE disappointment last year when our team got relegated.

Because I know you mostly just humour me when I post about Norwich city, I won't go on and on about how we screamed our heads off and danced the happy dance for the last 20 minutes of the game, or how the other team could have stripped nekked and run around the pitch and no one would have noticed.
I won't tell you how we hung out long after the game to bask in the celebratory atmosphere.
We won't even mention that horrible day at the beginning of the season when we were crushed by a visiting team and it made the fans so mad that some of them invaded the pitch and threw their season tickets at the manager...huge difference to have 25,000 singing and chanting fans instead.

I'll save you all of that and show you our happy day.



Refusing to go home until at least 30 photos are taken...



This is J2's recording of the winning goal. Nice and jiggly and he stopped recording to shout and jump up and down. I wouldn't have.




I'm so proud of our guys, I couldn't possibly be sad that I didn't win the shirt.
This would be a good time to promise that since we have now won the league and are being promoted I will stop posting photos and posts about Simon Lappin... but I won't.

What was the highlight of your weekend?

Spellbound

Thank you all for some very interesting an insightful glimpses into my psyche. I am really sorry I haven't responded to the comments yet, because I am meeting myself in the doorway again. Amazing how it never slows down around here.

While I'm playing catch up, here's what Britain is talking about this week:
Gather your kids who are sitting on the sofa playing video games and then please, please, please watch this!

Calling All Dream Interpreters...

Any Joseph's in the house?

I've had this dream since I was little, but I've had it every night this week and it's more pronounced. It nags me while I'm awake. I'm exhausted tired with whatever my mind is trying to tell me.
I'll spare you the boring details (wanna come over for a slide show of our latest holiday while I tell you about my crazy dreams?).

The gist of it is:

I am looking at a house (very much like real life-- call me The Moving Queen).
It's either too late for me to have the house because we've chosen another, or I can't afford the house. A few times I am actually renting a room in the house.

The house is always a little run down, but I can see beyond the work to the magic of what is. Uneven floors, hazardous stairs, poor design never deter me.
As I wander through it, I find secret rooms or passageways I didn't know existed. It just makes me want it more.
Sometimes there's treasures left behind. I don't mean gold or jewelry, I mean sentimental things from someone's life, like letters that give me a glimpse into the person who once owned the house.

I always wake up a little melancholy from having left.

If it matters... when I was small, growing up in a tiny town on the Arizona border, I would often shout out to my parents as we passed a desert area on the way into Utah. I would tell them the house I dreamed about was out there. I swore that we had been to it, I could describe the yellow gingham curtains hanging on the kitchen door window.

As I got older, I found a house in the little Utah town that had been abandoned and I fell in love with it. I took photos of it every time we were over there. It was just a given that after our dentist appointments, shopping, lunch day, we would swing by to look at the house before we went.
When I was in high school, someone bought the house and fixed it up. I was devastated.

The houses I dream of and the the houses of my childhood aren't the same. It's a symbol and apparently I'm pretty thick and just not getting it.


Any thoughts?