Surprise Me

Today wasn't going well. Closet junk emptied all over the floor of the kids' rooms, waiting to be sorted and put away; crap all over the main floor because I was too busy messing up the top floor yesterday to keep our living spaces tidy; the basement family room cluttered up by the boxes I had pulled out of Theo's new bedroom; and all of Larry's and Anna's workcamp "extras" (coolers, air mattress, sleeping bags) strewn over the mess as a sort of garnish. In short, the mess was so big, so deep, and so tall, we could not clean it up; there was no way at all. [Extra credit to anyone who knows where that line comes from.]

Instead, we all slept late; Larry napped for 2 hours after church, exhausted from attempting to sleep on a schoolroom floor all week; the kids whined because it was too hot to play outside....I was just heading upstairs to take a nap myself when the phone rang. Friends we hadn't seen in two years were heading our way - could they stop by?

It's amazing what the threat of public shaming will do. One hour, folks - that's all we had. And, by golly, we got it done. Our visitors even stayed to dinner. It was great to see them. And after they left, Larry and I spent the rest of the evening alternately high-fiving each other over our excellent teamwork and quietly enjoying our comfy, clean living room.

Of course, I've still got the kids' rooms to finish. And the basement. Anyone out there want to threaten a surprise visit? Please?

Closets of Darkness

[I'm also posting at MidCenturyModernMoms today. About...middle age...]

Wow. I didn't realize what a project I had taken on. The closets in the kids' rooms were a nightmare. The toys, and the clothes, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam of stray pencils, toys from the dentist, birthday party loot bags, and trash - the horror, oh the horror! During our move last year, I didn't organize the kids' possessions properly; and things have been getting worse ever since. Apparently, the trauma of relocating kept me from even attempting to stay on top of the kid chaos for the past 12 months or so - even with my bag of Flylady tricks, I felt unequal to the task. So, while I kept my kitchen sink shiny and my bathrooms wiped down, everything else in the house has devolved into utter rack and ruin.

I feel like Rip Van Winkle, waking up one year later, looking around and saying, "Where the heck did this mess come from?" I did manage to get everyone switched to their new rooms today, and the younger 4 are all excited, because it's fun to sleep in a different place. Listening to them, you'd think we had relocated to halfway around the planet. Then we went to Target - which, incidentally, has a wonderful air conditioning system - and bought Rachel an early b'day present from Grandma and Grandpa - matching twin patchwork quilts with pretty sheets for her and Susie's beds. So their room is looking pleasingly girly, which makes me feel a lot better. Just don't look in the closet...for the love of God, save yourselves.

Theo will be crashing on the sofa until we manage to haul the humongous filing cabinet out of his new room. (I don't really understand what is in it, as it certainly isn't holding our regular household files - those are overflowing a milk crate in our den, right next to the computer desk.) And then I will still have the pleasure of getting rid of/stashing all the boxes of crap we dumped in the family room. It's enough to make a girl contemplate arson.

Somehow, in between shoveling out closets and desk drawers, I found time today to tidy up and reorganize around here, too. I've been coveting what I call the "live" blog roll I've spotted on other people's blogs. So now (ta-da!) I have one! Check it out. Between that and my "Shared Items" widget, I am feeling positively tech-savvy these days.

Who knows? I may even get up the nerve to mess with my template. Ever since Memarie Lane mentioned that every time she reads my blog, she gets a craving for a Creamsicle, it's been making me sick. I hate Creamsicles.

A Willy Wonka Nightmare

[Oh, how embarrassing. I forgot, completely forgot, that people would be coming over today from Derfwad Manor for a house tour. I didn't even get any snacks. Stop by tomorrow, and I can show you some fun photos of our upstairs in complete disarray as I try to relocate 6 children into different bedrooms. It will be fun, I promise. In the meantime, feel free to make yourselves at home and look around a bit. There's a little something for everyone here. And who knows? You might even find my chocolate stash.]

Regular readers know that I am a head-in-the-sand sort of person, preferring to focus on inconsequential, non-earth-shaking occurrences from my tiny, sheltered life in this blog of mine. But today, I spotted a news article that shook me out of my know-nothing complacency. Is it any wonder? Wouldn't the words "potential candy bar shortage" rock your world, too? I thought so.

Lucky for us, the CEO's at Mars candy company aren't equally complacent. They are working hard to keep our chocolate supply steady and secure, despite the ravages of weather and disease. While I waste my time nattering on and on about kids, and vomit, and (yes) mice, these forward-thinking execs at Mars are leaving no stone unturned in their search for the elusive cacao genome.

My favorite line in the article was this:

Cocoa futures fell nearly 1 percent yesterday.

Who knew? Who knew that anyone traded in cocoa futures? Not me. If I saw a cocoa future, I would probably eat it by mistake. Let us thank our lucky stars that the future of the world's chocolate has not been left in my entirely incapable hands.

************

And that's it, folks...have a great weekend! I'm busy re-arranging all the bedrooms, because - as it turns out - when we moved last year, I managed to put all the kids in the wrong places. It's a talent of mine.

So, Theo is moving downstairs to the guest bedroom that we finally managed to paint and repair; Susie is leaving my room (I hope) to move with Rachel into the bedroom where I had originally (erroneously) deposited David and Brian. I'm moving David and Brian to Theo's old room, because it has a bigger closet where David can hide all his duct-tape-craft-stick creations from his mean mommy. Anna will remain in the room she had heretofore been sharing with Rachel.

Will I experience an outpouring of gratitude from Anna when she comes home to discover that she has her very own room? Don't be silly. She will consider her new solitary splendor as merely her due, her royal birthright. I am hoping she secludes herself in it until she decides to like me again. Which will be, say, 4 years from now. If I'm lucky.

Economic Realities

What 700 Dollars Can Buy

1. 70 lunch dates for Larry and me
   
2. A fun week at the beach for our family in the off-season
3. Over a year of YMCA membership for Larry (forget about me, I gave up exercise for the year)
   
4. Many, many fun books
5. One year of the accredited homeschool curriculum we use for the high schoolers
   
6. Almost a month's worth of food for a family of 8
7. 175 gallons of gas
8. Let's not think about the yarn, okay? Let's just not go there. Ow.
   
9. 8 community college credits, for a hard-working teenage boy
   
10. 2 weeks of High Adventure Boy Scout camp for same

What 700 Dollars Will Be Spent On Instead

1. Repairing the bumper I accidentally scraped (not even dented) on some stranger's hybrid Camry the other day in a parking lot.

We're just made of money...

Square-Futile Gardening

I haven't talked about our garden much lately. Mostly because I'm embarrassed. I just managed to kill a zucchini plant. You know how hard it is to do that?

Meanwhile, I've been hacking away at the weeds in the fourth garden box in order to plant some cucumber plant seedlings that David has nurtured on our back deck. Nurtured, just to hand them over to me so that I can kill them, too.

I know, it's a special talent of mine.

I read Square-Foot Gardening years ago; and I persist in the delusion that this method will work for me. All around me are plots which are now sporting rows of lush vegetation of the non-weed variety. Thick bushy tomato plants staked to poles, crowded beds of lettuce, stands of basil - it looks like the Garden of Eden before the Fall. In the midst of it all is my anal-looking Square-Foot demo garden, with 6 4-foot by 4-foot regulation garden boxes, 2 of which are filled with weeds that are growing with a frightening velocity toward the sky (think Jack and the Beanstalk). The 4 cultivated (barely) boxes look pathetic, with their dying basil, the already dead zucchini plant, and a bunch of tomato seedlings which, while not dying, are not exactly thriving either. It all looks like a botanical practical joke. In fact, I feel like the class clown of the community gardens.

And, yet, I can't give up. I have young children who do not realize that the visions of copious amounts of produce that dance through their heads will never be realized. Who do not understand that, merely by suggesting we grow things in the garden this year, their mother has essentially lied to them. Because she knew that success would be a chimera, a tantalizing pot of gold at the end of a blood, sweat, and tears rainbow. These trusting innocents still believe, gosh darn it, despite all evidence to the contrary, that we will end up with market baskets full of edibles; and who am I to destroy their dream? No, as long as they believe, I must continue this charade of horticultural competence. I'm just praying for an act of God (earthquake, twister, whatever) to come along and destroy our work before the kids realize it was all for nought anyway.

But, I swear, if I read one more blog with people showing off photos of their gardening successes (Barb), I may have to quit the blogosphere until the first frost. Talk about salt in my wounds...