Pause

It's been a crazy week. There are days when I swear I attract crazy like a right wing television host. I'm closing my eyes and imagining a pause button for life, where I could just get off the treadmill and everything stays frozen while I breathe.

In and out.

The laundry pile isn't growing, homework doesn't need to be checked, the dishes aren't threatening to overflow the sink, no one is squabbling or complaining about the bread on the grilled cheese being "too mushy" and I can just. breathe. All of the obligations and duties are on hold. No one's happiness or needs are dependent on what I get done. Or don't get done.

Exhale.

Some mood music please.

The One with the Re-enactment

My children informed me today of an adversarial sibling interaction in which the female was subjected to a dodge ball type attack with a flattened soccer ball at close range.

They cheerfully re-enacted the entire scenario for me in slow motion. The boy was undoubtedly guilty.

He was thanked for so readily assisting in his own prosecution. The judge waived incarceration in favor of time served as the injured party was both not injured (it was a deflated ball and really, he just set it on her and didn't throw it)and might have poked the bear with a stick in order to illicit the encounter.

Note that SHE did not volunteer to incriminate herself. Now we sing: "Girls go to Mars to get more cars, boys go to Jupiter...."

Did You Miss Me?

Two weeks with no news here. Really, there has been no TIME to construct a blog post. The kids started school last week which means we had to sort out our routine after 9 weeks of lazy summer days.

It hasn't been a seamless transition. Abby started dance lessons today and J.T. continues with guitar. Add in homework and chores, playtime and supper, all to be accomplished in the few hours between end of school/work and bedtime and you see that we are busy. I prefer to be busy and in a routine, so in an odd way, I feel a little more relaxed as we are finding our groove.

Rob and I have also been finishing the upstairs project. The painting, apart from a few touchups, is done and the carpet was put down today. Dust is EVERYWHERE, and there are lots of small things to tackle, so we aren't at the finish line yet. But the big stuff is done. It feels nice.

Stomper Girl is looking for happy things and it has inspired me to focus on the ups instead of the downs. I'm a big believer in the fact that some days you have to make your own happy. Find it. Reach for it. Turn blue into sunny yellow.

Here is my happy for today:

To Grandmother's House We Go

Mary and Aunty Evil expressed a curiosity several posts ago about our farms. So I thought I'd share a few photos taken between our house and mothers (a twenty mile or so distance). These are scattered along the roadsides. Old wooden barns, sheds and outbuildings. Nature is taking them back over. Rusted tin tops their wooden beams, vines are reclaiming the timbers... but they are, I think, beautiful. Everytime I see one, it makes me wonder who built it? What was their daily life like? 80, 90 or 100 years ago...
We live on a dirt road. Advantage: little traffic. Disadvantage: no road crew to maintain it.
It's not Tara from Gone with the Wind. This type of farm house is actually far more common than the huge, column graced homes of the movies. A wrap-around porch, chimneys on either side of the house. It gets hot here and the goal of heating/cooking would have been to let the heat escape quickly, instead of hoarding it as would be an advantage in a colder climate, where it would be more common to see a centrally placed heating source and chimney. Hallways typically run straight through the center of the house, from the front porch to the back and are called breezeways, as they let cool air flow through the house.
Cotton. Goes through cycles of popularity based on the soil. Cotton is best suited for growing in rocky, sandy soil. You can tell from our dirt roads, that we don't have rich soil. When I was younger, cotton was not THE crop that it is today and was in the 1950s when my parents were growing up. The majority of our local fields are planted in cotton today.
Another gorgeous, fading barn. If you peer in closely, you can see a modern tractor underneath the eaves. Old sheds and barns are still used to shelter tractors, hay bales, wire, etc.

Wild

Living on a dead end dirt road entitles one to up close encounters with native flora and fauna. In the past two weeks we have seen:

eighteen wild turkeys (pictured above... I have NEVER seen more than one, maybe two at one time)

one black snake

innumerable brown rabbits

two centipedes

a dozen frogs

one turtle

two tortoises

100 cow birds

dozens of house wrens

eight squirrels

fifteen wasps (think of these in the past tense as they are no longer nesting among the eaves of our house)

millions of ants

ten lizards

one armadillo

Getting Started

The top picture is Rob's collection room getting a coat of primer. The second is my retreat space, already primed!

Dream a Little Dream, II

The renovations upstairs are a GO! I spent a good deal of time diligently researching possibilities before we met with a loan person at the bank. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we could get a better rate than we currently have and easily afford the upstairs work we dreamed of making a reality.

The framing, insulating and dry wall work is complete. AC unit in and tonight. We paint. This may mean divorce proceedings on Monday, but we figure we can muddle through and save that much money on hiring professionals to do the job. Rob's portion will be a bold blue while mine will be a soft Scandinavian color. I'm stuck between a palladian blue and queen anne pink. Both soft and mellow.

Then I will just need to save up for the fun bits.... I love this desk and will need a reading chair, something cushy and comfortable.... perfect for melting into with a good book. Art for the walls and a sweet touch here and there.

Bliss.