So the other night, I tried a new recipe. I don’t normally care for a lot of lemon things, but the rest of my family ADORE all things lemon. I thought this lemon bread would be a hit for supper (we wanted to keep it light that night), and I couldn’t have been more right. As a matter of fact, it was an even bigger hit the next day.
Today, I have a lovely coaster (part of a very pretty set of four) that I received from a work friend when Seymour and I got married:
The flower is courtesy of Cricket, my resident flower-picker. Â This morning, he gave me a sunny little dandelion.
Don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and take a look at her Photo Friday fun! 🙂
(c) 2014. Â All rights reserved.
Saturday was a tough day. Â Our kittens, Oscar and Patches, went to their new home Saturday afternoon with a lovely lady who’s a friend of a friend. Â Bubbles and Tadpole were understandably upset when they came home and found the kittens gone, but not nearly as upset as they were when we received the news that Oscar had died sometime Monday night from an unknown illness.
This week’s Photo Friday is all about being out and about, and since it’s Independence Day here in the good ol’ U.S. of A., I can’t think of a better place to be than out and about.
I started the day off out and about at our old house, prepping for the open house this weekend. Â That was followed up by a trip to the park, which is where the bulk of my hometown’s Fourth of July festivities take place:
The story of my most prized possession is a difficult one to tell because there are many things I prize quite highly. Â I’ve never been able to choose a single thing I love more than all others.
As a kid, whenever someone asked what one thing would I grab if my house were burning and I was forced to flee, I always answered, “Puppy and Blankie.” Â (They’re exactly what they sound like – I know, I was so creative as a kid.)
Puppy was a gift from my dad and I’ve had him for longer than I can remember. Â We share a telepathic connection, and he has always been there to comfort me when I needed it. Â Despite his advanced age – 210 in dog years – he doesn’t look half bad. Â Oh, sure, his hat is missing, and he’s had a few surgeries over the years (he’s had several nose jobs, plus open heart surgery and a spinal fusion)*, but his heart is as big as ever. Â And even though he no longer goes everywhere with me…
June 29
I went upstairs to put the boys to bed a little after 8:00 p.m. and the sky was dark.  Like middle-of-the-night dark.  Given that it’s been staying light till somewhere around 9:00 p.m. lately, this was odd.  But it had been raining, so I didn’t worry too much about it.  I had just started reading Fox in Socks when the emergency alert went off on my phone – a tornado warning had just been issued.  I hollered down to Seymour to find out what was going on and he said he’d check the radar, so I went back to reading.  A couple minutes later, Bubbles thundered up the stairs and said we were supposed to head down to the basement.
After yesterday’s monsoon, we woke up to find our basement submerged beneath three inches of water.  We managed to drain it eventually, thanks to our cousins – they came to Cricket’s birthday party this afternoon packing a pump.  The basement is once more flooded in places, but that’s fodder for another post.
I may even write it one day.
Remember a while back when I reviewed Moms’ Night Out? Â I went to see it again, this time with my mother-in-law, who’d had a very stressful day and needed a good laugh. Â I’m so glad she went with me, because we don’t see each other as often as I’d like and we had a ton of fun. Â We definitely need to do things like this more often.
Anyway, as we watched the movie, I got to thinking (a dangerous pastime, I know) about why I related so much to Allyson. Â I mean, I’ve been there – I stayed home with Bubbles till he was two and now that I only work part-time, I’m home alone with Cricket and Thumper two or three days a week.
It’s hard! Â It’s so hard. Â Like Allyson, I wanted to be a mom. Â Of course, I also wanted to be a world-famous author, but let’s just take this one dream at a time. Â Her reasons for wanting to be a mom are never mentioned – it’s simply her dream, and she’s lucky enough to be living it.
Once again, a Writing 101 challenge. Â Today’s topic: My worst fear.
I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but my worst fear is that I’ll die before my kids are grown up. Â My memories of my mom are fragmented; sometimes I remember things that don’t seem possible, and other times I recall things with crystal clarity.
But mostly, I don’t remember. Â I don’t remember very much about my childhood before my mom died. Â I would really, really hate for my kids to say the same. Â I’ve always worried about it, which is why I stayed at home with Bubbles the first two years of his life.
We’ve been doing a lot of work on houses lately. Â Last weekend (not this past weekend, but the one before it, the weekend of Father’s Day) we painted our old house because our deal fell through and people who’d looked at it before thought it was too much work to fix (although what’s so hard about hiring someone to side it once you’ve bought it is beyond me).
Anyway, it’s a three-story house. Â We painted it in a single day.
Now you know why I’ve been so tired lately and so behind on so many things. Â I have a whole post (complete with pictures!) that I want to write on the topic, and maybe I’ll get it done in the next couple of days. Â But this isn’t about that.
This is actually about all the work we’ve been doing on our new house.
We haven’t done as much to the new place as we’d hoped to have done by now, primarily because we haven’t sold our old house yet. Â So far, we’ve connected to rural water (No more smelly well water! Â Yay!), we’ve replaced the water heater that crapped out on us at the end of April, we’ve installed a new washer and dryer, and Seymour has built a new bathroom down in our basement. Â It’s not quite functional yet, but we’ve been so busy that he hasn’t had time to finish working on it.
We also filled in an old well and two cisterns last fall, something we thought was a great idea. Â Now the kids can play in the yard without us worrying that they’ll fall through rotting boards and drown (seriously, that well was so deep that it took three full dump trucks full of sand to fill it up, and even then there was a dip in the yard that we had to fill with dirt).
Did you know that? Â They are. Â And the sensitivity extends to kids in general.
I’m not one of those people who gets offended every time someone says, “You must have your hands full!” when I mention how many children I have. Â Why should I? Â They’re absolutely right.
What prompted this sudden outpouring of…um…incredulity?  Well, a friend of mine shared a link to a Scary Mommy post on Facebook this morning.  I read it, I laughed, and then I clicked on a related article on the same site called “10 Things Never to Say to a Mom Expecting Another Boy.” Also, the Day 12 prompt for Writing 101.
Anyway, back to the article at hand and my incredulity.  Most of the things the author suggested you should never ask a mom expecting another boy are fairly harmless, in my opinion.  Things like, “Were you trying for a girl?”  Or, “Your husband must be SO excited!”  I guess the reason those questions don’t bother me is because I was so desperate to have a girl (really, there’s no other word for it) and my husband was excited to be having a boy, and I will be the first person to say so, whether you asked or not.
I already had one boy and I wanted one of each, so my answer to the question, “Were you disappointed when you found out it wasn’t a girl?” is always…
Suddenly they all died. The end. 