Spring is here

What a beautiful week we have had.  We even had snow one day, but it warmed up and melted by noon.  Mud season is pretty much over and I have been able to go back to weekly floor mopping instead of daily mopping. 

My daughter has been playing outside constantly.  She throws her backpack in the back door and takes off.  I remember those days.  I remember being a kid as the days got longer, when it was almost impossible to go inside and go to bed.  It seemed almost sacrilegious to waste a great spring evening sleeping.

Daylight savings starts tomorrow, it is going to be hard to get up, but I am going to love the long evenings.  My mood has magically lifted and everything seems better, just because of the sun.  So bring it on, I am ready, I have been ready since September. 

Here comes the sun!

Getting Old

I had big plans for myself when I grew up.  I remember thinking that if I had to get old, I would at least go full out.  The interesting thing is, as I have gotten older, I have noticed that the things I was interested in, no longer interest me.  I think this is because, I don’t have time, energy or money to do the things I thought I would die if I couldn’t.  I thought I would love to travel the world, write books, plant huge gardens, maybe have a green house, have a perfect house, run marathons etc, etc.  Reality hits and I have found that life isn’t so bad without all of the big dreams.  I have found pleasure in much simpler things. 

Lets just say, it doesn’t take much to make me happy.  A clean dining room floor makes me smile.  A little girl with bobbed hair skipping off of the bus, a drive with the window down, a good song on the radio, a sunny day, a good book with time to read, a 30 min. ride on my elliptical, a phone call from a daughter or sister, a free class period at school.  I know this sounds boring.  It sounded boring to me when I was younger also.  I was determined to be different, special and bigger than life.

Life hasn’t turned out that way, life is just full of simple things, and great kids.  The horrible boring life I was anxious to avoid when I was younger, has been my bliss in middle age.  Thank goodness that the small decisions that I made growing up, lead to this simple, ordinary, wonderful life.

Mud Season

When I learned the seasons in school, I was only taught four, spring, summer, fall, and winter.  I believe this is because the majority of my schooling was done in Utah, where they actually have four seasons.  Had I gone to more than just kindergarten in Wyoming, I would have learned the truth.  There are five seasons.  Spring, summer, fall, winter, and mud.  Mud season is most prevalent in the country, where there is a lot of snow and dirt roads.  I happen to have both.  I live at the a mile of dirt roads.  Mud season starts whenever the temperatures reach high enough to melt the snow.  When this happens, everything turns to mud.

This year is especially bad, because we have the pleasure of welcoming new neighbors who are  building a new house next door and they dug up the road. The gravel is gone and the road has turned into mud slide. The cars are caked in mud, the animals are caked in mud, all of the shoes are caked in mud.  When my nine year old came in yesterday, she left two little piles of mud on the front step, they were her shoes.  When kids get caked in that much mud, the only solution, is to pull out the hose and hose them down.  This solves the immediate problem, but it creates a much larger one.  Once the hoses are back on the spickest after their long winters nap, and the water starts flowing guess what this means…more mud. 

A lot of people say that spring is their favorite season.  The whole renewal of the earth thing.  For me, this is a to close to the mud season and it is ruined for me.  Maybe there is something to be said for living in the concrete jungle especially when new neighbors only bring MUD.

Rules of being a kid

I know we think back on our childhood as carefree, but thinking back on my own childhood, I realize that the opposite was true.  I remember looking at the adults around me and wishing I had their freedom to boss people around.  It was the truth, this is what makes kids lives so difficult, adults are bossy, this is were the rules of being a kid come into play.

As a kid dealing with bossy adults you learn that the more rules you figure out the better off you are. 

A good rule  was, if you are outside playing, don’t go in.  Outside is a safe zone, if you go in for any reason, you could get stuck there.  This rule was especially true in the winter time.  Don’t go in, if you were freezing, just wait, you would get a good numb going soon and couldn’t feel anything.  If you went in for any reason you could get caught in the chores trap, (out of parental sight, out of mind), or   you would thaw, get wet and begin to feel how cold you actually were.  Once you were wet you were in, the clothes came off and everything had to dry again before you were let out again, this could take hours.  

Usually, the only reason you would go inside, was for a potty break.  This usually came after too much waiting and the potty dance while stripping off six layers of sopping wet clothes ensued.  The memory is still vivid in my mind. 

My younger siblings actually beat the potty problem and the poo crew was born, but that is a story for another time.  Lets just say, when they sold the vacant house next door, it needed more than just paint.

Another good rule was be careful when, and on whom you tattled.  Usually tattling occurred when you were all doing something you weren’t supposed to.  I found that I screamed for a parent after I had slugged a sibling and they were about to slug me back.  I learned quickly that this didn’t work, because when you tell on someone, if they are crying and you are not, guess who got into trouble.    

There are just a couple of examples of how tough is was to be a kid.  Every once in a while, when I find myself bossing my kids around, which is by the way, as fun as I thought it would be as a child, I have flashbacks to my childhood, and I actually have pity on the poor things. 

Childhood memories are awesome, especially when you forget about how tough it can be being a kid.

The Olympics are here!

The Olympics are here and for the first time since we shut off the T.V. I am sorry.  I am an Olympics junkie.  If I could, I would settle myself down and do nothing but watch them from the opening ceremony, to the closing.  I don’t know if I like winter or summer better.  I don’t even know when it started, I just know I am hooked.  I have very vivid memories of watching the torch being run through Tacoma Washington while we lived there on it’s way to L.A..  I watched when it ran through Sheridan on it’s way to Salt Lake.  I remember Nadia’s perfect ten, and Mary Lou’s  ten with her injured ankle.  I have seen the Jamaican bob sled team, before the movie, and that English ski jumper that was so bad that they set new standards entry in to the games.  

I know it won’t be the same catching bits and pieces on the internet, so all of you who have television, sit down with a bowl of popcorn and a warm blanket and watch an event for me. 

I love having a nine year old.

I am getting old. I am seriously middle aged. The women who are my age are putting their kids through college. Some of them are empty nesters. I am one of the lucky ones though, I have a nine year old.

Most of the people I work with, spend their time traveling, going on cruises and spending money. My life is a bit more colorful. I still have a child who tried to crawl in bed with me when the wind blows. She came in just last week and woke me from a dead sleep by yelling, “ I can’t sleep, I am totally serious!” I still get to read the Tales of Despereaux and Ramona the Pest as bedtime stories. I still buy tacky Valentine cards each February.

I get to answer questions like,” Why ain’t ain’t a word if people use it.” I get to laugh at knock knock jokes. I make pinkie promises and do knuckles when required. I still get to buy corn dogs and pop sickles. There is a constant noise in the background when she is home that I miss terribly during the day. I get to hear humming and singing and the voices of toys talking to each other.

I am still doing long division and multiplication tables after school. I get to go on field trips and go to orchestra and Christmas concerts. I have to help write talks for primary and am thrilled to get homemade bookmarks and Christmas tree ornaments. I have never regretted the choice I made to forgo a career to have six kids and stay home with them. I am so glad that one of them didn’t come until nine years ago, because I would be totally lost without a wonderful nine year old.

It looks like chocolate but…

I got a phone call from my sister the other day.  She was laughing so hard she could hardly talk. 

“What’s so funny?” I asked. 

My mind went back to the time that another sister called, laughing hysterically also.  On this occasion, it was about the first sister I had mentioned, and a certain incidence with a gas hose and her car.  Something about it parked out in front of the house with the pump and hose still in it.

Back to my story…   Apparently, my dear mother had found a bag of potting soil that had gotten wet.  One thing you have to know about my mother is that she will waste nothing if she can help it.  The potting soil was no exception.  She spread the soil out on some old cookie sheets and put it in the oven on low until it dried.

My parents work in the Temple.  On this particular day, my mom was filling in for someone and so she went to the temple and my dad was left at home.  She completely forgot about her little drying project.  Part way through the day, she realized what she had done.  When she got a break, she called my dad to get him to pull the dirt from the oven before it… I don’t know, does dirt burn?  According to my sister, the conversation went something like this.

“ Honey, I need you to turn off the oven and pull the cookie sheets out.  Don’t eat it, it looks like chocolate, but it is not, it is dirt.”  My dad assured her that he would take care of it.  She hung up the phone and turned around.  She had not been alone.  Another  sweet temple worker dressed in white stood there looking at her with a puzzled expression on her face.  It was too long to explain, so my mother just smiled and walked away leaving the other worker wondering if she had heard right.

The lesson here is, if you go to grandma and grandpa’s, check before you eat.  It may look like chocolate but….