Night-vision Goggles

Ahhhh. It's night. And the kids are in bed. Not necessarily asleep, but in bed. My night-vision goggles allow me to change from my daytime perspective of half-empty to overflowing glasses. Too often, I catch myself counting up the things in my day that bother, annoy, irritate or otherwise alarm me:

• Blazing-hot sibling rivalry.
• Spilled drinks. Again.
• Wiping down the toilet seat. Again.
• Wiping down little behinds that don't yet use the toilet seat.
• Constant chatter.
• Trying to produce a good enough "Ha-ha!" for that joke I've been hearing for over a month.
• Less-than-flattering imitations of myself, performed by one of the boys.

The list does go on, but I'll stop there. However, as you may already know, night-vision googles are designed to gather any tiny glimmer of light and create a clearer picture of the scene before your eyes. This same magic occurs every night at our house, shortly after bedtime. Basking in the blessed quiet, I see a happier picture of my day:

• Sweet phrases like "Dayt-doo, Mommy!" (That's "thank you".)
• Naptime.
• There may be a lot of chatter, but at least the kids still want to talk to us. (I know, those days are numbered.)
• The pleasure children derive from the smallest things. Gum, for example.
• Naptime. Wait...did I already say that? Well, it's worth repeating.
• For 2 out of the 3 kids, public hugs and kisses from Mom are still permitted.
• Leftovers night - minimal cooking and, therefore, fewer dishes to clean up.
• The words of a 2-year-old learning to pray.

Yes, night is good.

James E. Faust said, "If there were no night, we would not appreciate the day, nor could we see the stars and the vastness of the heavens."

Cyber-tapped

For awhile now, Google has been reading my email. As far as I can tell, its purposes are benign and possibly even beneficent. If I have written to a friend about tennis, Google might provide a link at the top of the page to a site that lists local tennis instructors. Or, when a friend writes to me about a new movie, Google helpfully provides a link for a movie theater, in case I might want to see the movie, too. And whenever I clean out my spam, Google responds in a kind of cute, non-human way by providing a link to Spam recipes.

I found it a bit disturbing when I first discovered the undeniable connection between the content of my email messages and the links that would appear at the top of the page. But I have become used to this infiltration into my privacy and have assumed that no actual person has access to my account.

However, events of this morning have led me to wonder whether this connection goes a bit further than I think it should. My basement guy showed up early this morning to get back to work on the hopefully amazing basement he is building for us, and I informed him (verbally, mind you, not in writing) that a small leak had started downstairs during the heavy rains we experienced over the past few days. I called out my comments to him across the room from my position in front of the computer. When I turned back to face the screen a few minutes later, Google had provided a link for "Basement Waterproofing."

Coincidence? I certainly hope so. I am seeking additional information from anyone in the know. Big Brother seems to be watching. Or, at least, Big Google is.

The Naked Truth

Two axioms: Clothes become wrinkled over time. Children are brutally honest.

A few days ago, I had an event to attend that required me to dress better than I usually do on a Friday afternoon. After rummaging around in my closet, I finally put together a nice-ish outfit and soon discovered that it would be impossible to look well-dressed without a bit of ironing.

I have long despised ironing. It takes forever to do properly and then five minutes after you put on the ironed item it's wrinkled again. My favorite dressy shirt is made from one of those wrinkled-on-purpose fabrics. Such delight! It looks fabulous and I never have to iron it. Too bad it wouldn't work that day.

So I reluctantly pulled out the ironing board and set it up, when Daniel walked into the room and said, "We haven't used THAT for a looooong time." I had just been thinking to myself that I hadn't used the iron since before we moved last May.

The truth is, we were nearly at the point of having to choose between naked and wrinkled, which is why the iron came back out from its lengthy hiatus. I ironed three shirts, which means we should be good to go until sometime in January.

Nerve Gas

My nerves are shot. I think my body has accumulated a near-toxic level of mental nerve gas. For those who don't read the espionage genre, here's a quick blurb on nerve gas:

Nerve gas causes a chain reaction that allows neural impulses to be continually transmitted, causing muscles to contract, organs to produce chemicals, etc. If neural impulses are not blocked after the initial transfer, those muscles and organs will not be able to relax until eventually...one of the effects kills the victim.

I'm starting to feel like I have just such an overload in progress.

A few days ago, our water was turned off for the day while the plumbing in our basement was being done. We managed to not use the bathroom for about 7 hours (though the boys--not including Eric--did relieve themselves in the woods, Eric was at work--or maybe he would have done the same, and Stephanie is still in diapers, so really, it was just me). I also managed to cook dinner without having the water on. I know, you're thinking, "Most people would have ordered out." Aren't you impressed? Well we don't have any spare change right now while we're paying for the basement.

Later that day, the air conditioner quit working. Just FYI, our first 3 days of fall have all been in the 90s. It was too late to get anyone to come look at it that day.

The next day, our electricity was off for almost the entire day while we had a new fuse box installed and inspected. This meant no one could come look at the A/C then either. Again, I managed to cook dinner instead of ordering something.

Somewhere in the middle of this, my basement guy said something in passing about a new building code that required better grounding of the water main, because if something or other happens to touch it while someone in the house is in the tub or taking a shower, they will be electrocuted. "That's it," I thought. "From now on we'll just have to hose the kids off. No more baths at our house. Too risky." (He tells me it's really nothing to worry about, but I just couldn't bring myself to put them in the tub last night and risk frying them. So they still stink--though, interestingly enough, that same day they hosed themselves off without permission at a neighbor's house, while wearing their nice shoes, no less.)

Today, a guy came to look at the A/C. He tweaked some things and fiddled around in there and got it going again. It stopped working less than 2 hours later. Did I mention we had record-breaking heat today? 98F! And at 6:20pm, I still entered my 85-degree kitchen and cooked dinner.

Amongst all this, I am still homeschooling (it feels like I'm running an independent-study program) and making hourly decisions on various aspects of my basement. Now that the whining is done, I should point out how thankful I am to be able to finish the basement right now. I remain convinced that, when it's all over, it will have been worth it. For the first week, Daniel asked me every day, "Is the basment done yet?" He thinks they are way behind schedule.

I think what I need is a night out... and a long weekend.

Plumbing the Depths

This is the current state of our basement. You could consider this the "before" photo, though I assure you the true "before" photo would reveal a much less disastrous scene. We are in the process of finishing our basement. I say that like we are personally doing some of the work involved. We are not. Unless you count choosing doors and windows and deciding where light switches and closets go as work.

We vibrated for much of the day yesterday while a couple of men with jackhammers and cement saws created the piles of rubble depicted above. The trenches they created will become the major plumbing works of our soon-to-be wonderful basement. Hence the title of this post. Finishing our basement (or at least paying someone else to finish it) is plumbing the depths of our patience, our noise endurance, and certainly our budget. Hopefully, the "after" photo will justify all the means. Yes, I know it would save us a lot of money if we did at least some of the work ourselves, but as Eric says, we want it to look good. What do you think so far?

Crypto-plates

I can't help myself. Whenever I see a license plate that clearly has been personalized, I must figure out what it means. And when I can't decipher it, it simmers in the back of my mind and waits to be solved. Someday, I will be an old woman, wandering through the grocery store, muttering things like "A lily z r. A lily z r. What does it mean?! What could it possibly mean?!" I hope for a brighter future than that, so I'm asking you to help me decipher a few of the more troubling plates I have recently come across:

GRMBIC
I'm thinking this could be germophobic. Kind of lacking in letters, though. Other ideas?
APLSNT
A pleasant...? What? Apple scent?
PARONLY
This person never hits over par in golf?
ALILYZR
This is the one I'll be muttering because it just keeps saying "A lily z r" to me.
CNTRGR
Cent Roger? Center gear? C-note ranger? Nothing makes sense!
SLEWFOT
This one sounds so much like a made-up word, I just can't think straight! It also sounds possibly borderline profane, so, my apologies if any of these are offensive and I just didn't realize it.

Obviously, it's only worth paying to personalize it if other people can tell what you meant to say. I truly appreciate a well thought out license plate. This is my favorite ever:

H8UDMV
I love the irony of picking on the very place you have to go to get the plate personalized. So clever.

Alright, get those mystery-solving juices flowing and give me some solutions.

Private "I"

My one-room schoolhouse

Following week one of home schooling, I am in serious need of some alone time. It doesn't have to be in large chunks, but I could really use a bit of private time, alone, to myself, for just me, with no one else, for maybe 45 minutes every afternoon. That would be bliss. People are here. All the time. And they talk. All the time. I love these people, but...I really do need some private time.

During the course of this first week, I've been able to ferret out some other secrets that may help me be successful this year. Here's what I've learned:

• We need a box of kleenex in the school room (not that there's a LOT of crying).


• We need a garbage can in the school room (for all the used kleenexes).


• We probably should have a clock in there somewhere.


• I need to start interviewing possible substitute teachers so I can have my life back once in awhile.


• I will just have to turn a blind eye to Stephanie's consumption of large quantities of cheetos, oreos, juice boxes, and gumballs, since they are extremely useful in occupying her attention.

Actually, things have gone very well this week and I still feel very positive about doing home school. Yes, there has been a teensy bit of crying, quite a lot of kleenex use (for drippy noses), and an unprecedented amount of cheetos in the dining room, but I'm learning to cope.

Into the Unknown

Today, I jump with both feet, and definitely both eyes wide open, into a great unknown. I will send my middle child off on the bus to a new school and then I will greet my oldest child in the dining room, where I will be his teacher, while simultaneously entertaining my youngest, who is two. Was that a run-on sentence? Oh no! Maybe I can't really do this.

The job of mother gets more interesting and more demanding with each passing year. While home schooling is a choice (that I do not have to make), it is really no different than the choices we are all making as mothers every day--to do whatever we feel is best for our children regardless of the personal cost.

Wish me luck. Here goes!

Mysterious Footprints

Luckily, these photos of footprints on the beach are somewhat mysterious, which gives me an excuse to write about our family beach trip. But really, take a look here. The footprints in the first two photos look strangely inverted. They did not look this way when we took the pictures and they don't look that way when you view them on the camera. But on the computer, they do. It's very weird. The last one, I think, looks normal. Usually. But sometimes, it goes inverted too. What is going on? Is there a technological explanation for this mystery? (The purpose of the photos was to show the vast difference in size between Stephanie's feet and Eric's, which would have been shown in the second one. But instead you can see the difference between hers and mine in the third. I wear a 7 1/2. So you can see how tiny and adorable her little feet are. In case you're interested, Eric's are size 13. No, that's not a typo. 13!)

Inspect this one closely as well, and you will see that the boy on the left is playing the game on the DS and the boy on the right is listening through the headphones to the obnoxious repetitive sounds of the game. They were both perfectly content with this arrangement. ??? Another mystery.

Stephanie wasn't too sure about going out to the water, but she loved having it come to her. Eric dug little wells in the sand so that when the waves came close enough, she would have a pool of her own to play in.

Daniel asked Eric to do the ever-popular "bury me in the sand" trick. You can see on his face that he loved it. However, when I helped him get out, I could not believe how deep Eric had buried him. Wasn't there something in the news a few years back about a small child dying this way? Something about the weight of the sand and the effect on the lungs? Anyway, I gave Eric one of my usual wifely lectures about it after the fact.

Last one. One of our favorite things to do at the beach in the evening is rent a family bike. This year, we graduated to the two-bench bike since Daniel is clearly too big to ride in the front basket. Stephanie loved the ride up front. Nathan took a turn in the driver's seat again this year, which was much less frightening than the last two years. I wish I believed this was good preparation for actual driving. It would put my mind more at ease about the near future.

P.S. I would love to get some feedback on how those footprint photos look to other people--are they inverted or normal on your screen? Mysteries were made to be solved. Most of them, anyway.