Chesed

I love Mondays.  Funny.  I used to dread them. 

Maybe it’s because I love doing laundry.  Maybe because it’s a new week.  Maybe it’s because I’ve just had two days of 24/7 co-parenting.  Aha.  I bet that’s it.

Today was especially fun for Adam.  Rochelle and Cameron spent most of the day here while their mommy went to town.  Adam and Rochelle had a blast as usual …. target practicing in the basement, shovelling in the garden, racing trucks through the house, and going to Adam’s work job.  I am always amazed at the way she just jumps into his boy world and has fun.  Today I heard them packing their lunches before work.  He said, “sweetie, I’m going to go now.” 

“Ok,” Rochelle said and blew him a kiss.  Hmm.  At least they have good role models.

Later I wanted them to be quiet while Cameron slept so I helped them with “school work.” (HUGE kudos to all home-schooling moms by the way.  We had fun today; but I have no doubt I’d be a wreck after a week.)  They were happily engrossed when Adam piped up, “Don’t talk to me.  I’m trying to think.”

Oh.

Adam and Kiersten both starred in weddings this past Spring and their mommies kept thinking it would be fun to do pictures of the two of them together (hey, at least I didn’t dress him up in girl clothes) before they completely outgrow their clothes. 

And, no we don’t believe in arranged marriages.  But Adam is completely taken up with weddings ever since Darius and Ro got married in April. 

He was so excited about the photo shoot in spite of being generally uncooperative when I want to take pictures of him.  At supper time he said seriously, “I hope Kiersten will be responsible.”  And enroute he said, “Oh, bummer.  We should have brought the tape player so we could play some wedding music.  Should we just sing some wedding songs?”

I’m not sure who had the most fun.  Adam and Kiersten or Janelle and I bent over double with laughter at their obvious delight with each other.

Ten years from now they’ll probably disown us.  But in twenty, they’ll simply roll their eyes and groan, “moms”.

After canning 27 pints of pizza sauce yesterday and 19 quarts tomato juice today, I really don’t care if I don’t see another tomato for a very. long. time.  At least not until Saturday night when I am certain I will want a slice on a grilled hamburger.  Huge kudos to my mom who scalded and peeled and froze tomatoes for yesterday’s job after hearing that I was about ready to go buy a bushel.  Most of the ones I cooked today came out of my freezer where they’ve slowly collected before and after trips when there was simply no time to be processing food.  Now that my kitchen cabinets are wiped off, the counters cleaned, and the floor mopped, I like canning tomatoes.  I think.  I feel virtuously weary.  I also look like a tomato.  And feel like a tomato.  And smell like a tomato.  I suspect I taste like a tomato.

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The other day I was at my mom’s house for a girl’s family day with Beth.  We sorted through the old toys, threw away the broken bits, cleaned up the good ones, and laughed and reminisced.  My mom says I’m not sentimental.  She rescued my college graduation cards out of the trash years ago.  She’s (mostly) right.  I saved our wedding cards because she thought I should (I called to ask her).  My thought is that if I don’t see it or use it and it’s just going to sit in the attic or the basement, I can spare myself some grief when it’s time to move and toss it.  I just don’t see myself some day saying, “you know, I need something to do.  I think I’ll go up to the attic and read old cards.”  But sometimes I am sentimental.  “Flop,” as she was oh so lovingly called (because our dolls had new names whenever we played with them) had to be tossed.  Beth and I both asked Mom to do it when we weren’t looking.  It still hurts me a little and I wonder if I should have rescued her and put her in my closet somewhere.  “Flop” is in the back with the now blind eye and the other one that won’t stay open.

the coin purse I used as a little girl to take 2 quarters for the offering in Sunday School  

Are you a sentimental saver or a pitchin’ purger?

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squishy.  cuddly.  giggly. sweetness.

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I am loving this hot week again.  I love that summer is not finished with us yet.  But last week when it was cool and rainy and my sisters-in-law were doing applesauce, I started thinking about autumn.  And apple pie.

You are a Ferrari 360 Modena!

You’ve got it all.  Power, passion, precision, and style.  You’re sensuous, exotic, and temperamental.  Sure, you’re expensive and high-maintenance, but you’re worth it.

Take the quiz here.

The yuckiest job on my “to do” list is done.  I am now officially a nervous wanna-be.  The CD with my children’s manuscript is burned, I’ve corresponded with a publisher, and as soon as I get a padded envelope, it’s ready to be sent. 

I am also realizing that I am truly a pessimist.  I’m making bets with myself as to how many days it will be before I get my first rejection letter.  And thinking up suggestions for a consolation prize to my damaged ego when it happens.

My feet hurt all day long today.  When I sat down to feed Liam, I sighed and dreamed aloud of a foot rub.  Adam jumped up and said, “I’ll give you one.”  Not exactly the masseuse I had in mind.  Still who could resist?

He tramped up the steps for some lotion and returned beaming.  The tops of my feet were soon slathered.  Well, the right one much heavier then the left “because that’s the driver’s side.”  The bottoms of my feet didn’t need anything, he thought. 

And so he rubbed and rubbed until the lotion mostly disappeared.  “See mommy, this bone is your skeleton bone.”

“Ok,” he said, “you’ll have to see Dr. Hawkes in in one week because this lotion is poison.”

“What???” I said.

“Yeah, see the lotion just went inside into the blood and now the bone went down here.  See the patella just came down here and then the lotion and blood mixed up and then the femur went in here and the blood separated and then the blood vessels are in here and then when you get an ouchy the lotion will come out,” he rambled still patting the top of my foot.

And he says he wants to be a semi-driver when he grows up???

                  just duckie

Happy Anniversary to us!  We celebrated six years of fun, laughter, tears, work, play, friendship, and love yesterday.  I can’t believe it’s been that long one minute and the next I think it feels as though we’ve been together forever.  I love, love, love being married to David Lee.  The other day my cousin asked me if I miss my old life and working the job I thrived on.  And you know, two days postpartum and weak as jelly in my knees, I didn’t have the foggiest itch to trade roles. 

The best part of being married, I think, is that it keeps getting better.  Unlike about everything else in life that gets old and worn out and we get tired of it, love and relationships keep changing and being new and exciting even while they deepen and establish themselves.  David Lee and I are what I call one of the “lucky” couples.  While every relationship takes work, some couples need to work a lot harder then others.  We have our moments (and hours and days, ahem); but for the most part, we just “fit.”  Although, maybe that’s because he’s so easy to get along with.   And truth be told, I think we did more “working through things” in the first six months then some couples get to in the first two years.  I love a million things about him.  Don’t worry.  I won’t post them and make you groan, “Yuck, go get a Hallmark card.” Just one thing.  I love the way he meets my moods……serious, talkative, playful, bored, bouncy, tired, workaholic, lazy, excited, joking, pregnant , silly, formal, ridiculous, exuberant, ….wherever I am, he meets me there.  And while he doesn’t bounce as high as I do and he doesn’t get lazy like I do, he never tells me, “Oh, get over it.”  That, I think, takes some serious kind of loving.

So here’s cheers to six years.  I hope we get another six many times over. 

We started celebrating Friday night actually since David Lee has to teach Sunday School and gets tied up with studying Saturday night.  Adam went to Pa Beachy’s house and came home swaggering big because they had a youth work night there and he got to chop wood with the guys.  On the way home he said, “mommy, let me tell you about it.  I was cutting wood with a chain saw…”

“A chain saw????” I interrupted.

“Yeah.  Well, mine was a screwdriver actually; but I called it my chain saw.”

Liam stayed with Ruth.  I think the umbilical cord wasn’t quite so severed as I thought it was.  He did fine.  At least Ruth said he did.  But I felt very far away and kept wondering if I sent along enough milk and if he had tummy ache and gave him a dozen extra kisses before I tucked him into bed that night. 

Dining out…just the two of us, was delightful.  We ate at Olivate, a new Italian restaurant in town with superb food, and lovely decor.  Everything was perfect.  Awesome bruschetta.  Great salad.  Even better garlic bread.  And then ooey gooey cheese stuffed shells.  Perfect that is, until we were 3/4 of the way through main course and another couple was ushered to the booth just behind us.  The man was wearing an absolute cloud of cologne in a very similar scent to the one I gave David Lee just before I got pregnant.  He wore it a lot the week we were at Folly Beach which was also the week I got sick.  Suddenly wave after wave of nausea engulfed me.  That was the end of the pasta and for awhile I was afraid I would revisit the part I’d already enjoyed.  I thought it would surely pass.  But it didn’t.  We skipped dessert and got out as quickly as possible.  “I think,” I said as we hit the road, “we want to wait a very long time before doing the pregnancy thing again.”  It takes a few weeks of feeling good for me to realize just how sick I was.  That night was a rather startling revelation.  By the way, if anyone is interested in an almost full bottle of cologne, this one is heading out the door. 

My thumb is brown.  At least my geranium thumb.  Or maybe it’s color-blind.  I don’t know.  I only know that I have killed every geranium I bought since we’re married except the very first ones.  This is an annual event.  I buy geraniums.  I bring them home.  Six weeks later they are dead or so nearly there I pitch them and let them finish taking their last breath in the woods where I don’t have to be tormented any longer.

Four weeks ago my porch had that “just planted hoping for a great summer” look.

Today the geraniums look like this. 

Last year the greenhouse people confirmed my diagnosis.  I kept them too wet and they died of a fungus.  By the time I saw the tell-tale black spots it was too late to treat them.  This year I made SURE I didn’t overwater them.  I don’t see fungus.  Just brown leaves.  And a gazillion teeny brown bugs that scatter everywhere if I move the pots.  The other flowers grow.  David Lee says plant something else.  BUT.I.WANT.GERANIUMS.ON.MY.FRONT.PORCH.  They just fit.  Please, please someone tell me what I’m doing wrong.  Yes they get sun.  And no, “hey you just had a baby cut yourself some slack” comments either, please (I told you this happens every year).  Geraniums aren’t that hard to grow.  Or so I thought.  So what’s wrong with me?