The Random Craziness That Is My Life—The Weekend Edition

Posted On October 6, 2008

As I reflected on my 3-day weekend (no school on Friday!), I realized that there wasn’t really one cohesive narrative I could write that would aptly sum up the weekend. Instead, there were many disjointed events that, put together, formed a big blog of chaos that was my weekend (if not my life). So I will present it to you in the same manner:

1) Friday consisted of taking the kids to my parents’ farm to pick apples, make applesauce, and partake in the fall festivities at the Harvest Barn. (Oh, and to do 3 loads of laundry in my parents’ basement! Whoo hoo!) Needless to say, the boys were REAL DIRTY when we headed home mid-afternoon. But they had a blast petting the animals, pumping water to make the ducks race, navigating the kids’ corn maze, throwing corn at each other in the grain bin, and climbing on the hay bales. Before scaling the “hay caterpillar,” Boy #2 took some time to read the sign, after which he asked me the following question:

“Mom, do you have super vision?”

“What?” I asked, wondering what in the world that could have to do with climbing hay bales. I did forget to wear my glasses that day, so I wouldn’t constitute my eyesight as super, but still, why the sudden concern?

Then I saw it.

See it? Isn’t it funny how you can read a word probably thousands of time in your life and then one day see it entirely differently? My sister, mom, and I all had a good chuckle about our “super vision”—or lack thereof!

2) It appears that PetSmart must have gotten wind of our new budget because they called our house on Saturday to see if we wanted a free haircut for The Dog. Uh, let me see…YEAH! Of course! It seems that one of the groomers needed to train on a dog with long hair, and our Dog fit the bill. I’m sure God has better things to do with His time than make sure our dog is well groomed, but it really seemed to be divine intervention that day. I had just realized as we went through our monthly budget that we forgot to create a grooming/vet bill category. Whoops! We had decided we would just have to wait another month to get a haircut for The Dog, who could barely see because his eyebrows were so overgrown and he was basically a bouncing ball of mats. So picking up a freshly shorn dog sporting a festive orange bandanna and not having to pay a cent really felt like a gift. And his tidy appearance makes it a little bit easier for me to forget about this.

3) The ring of the doorbell Saturday evening brought an old friend back into my life. I had taught with Julie way back when and tried to keep in touch but hadn’t seen her in person for five years. Of course, was my house clean? Are you kidding? It’s moments like these that scare the #*$%! out of me, the possibility that someone could just drop in at any time. The entryway was a jumble of shoes, book bags, and toys that hadn’t yet returned to their home. We had to step around the basket of clean clothes in the hallway to get to my kitchen, where a pile of clean dishes was balancing precariously in the dish drainer…and counter…and stovetop. (I avoid putting away dishes because I know they’re just going to get used again. It seems to be a poor use of my time.) This is not mentioning the dirty dishes that were still waiting to be washed on the counter or the pile of dirty dishrags that I had just thrown onto the floor while I waited for the dryer to finish. And what was I doing right BEFORE she rang the doorbell? Shoveling my hovel, as was really needed? Nope. Putting together a Harry Potter puzzle with Boy #3. But fortunately Julie is the type of friend who accepts me for who I am, messy house and all. So I wasn’t too ashamed that this was the FIRST TIME she had seen our new home. Although her hints about seeing the upstairs fell on deaf ears. There was NO WAY I would subject myself to that humiliation! But despite the condition of my house, it was really, really nice to see her and we got to catch up a bit on our kids and our lives. Old friends really are a blessing!

4) Do you know what the Peter Porker, Tales of the Spider-Ham issue #3 comic book is worth? Yeah, I do. Not that I think I’m cool or anything. But I did spend a few hours this weekend looking up the value of my husband’s old comic book collection.*Nerd—cough!* Anybody want to buy the first five issues of Dazzler? Not sure why my husband owns a comic about a disco-dancing superhero, but I digress…No, really, I’m not making fun of him. REALLY! He’s managed to collect something that’s worth way more than any crap I collected in my childhood! Especially that first issue of Captain America. Cha-ching! The boys had fun with the comic books, as well, when Husband gave them copies of some of his that weren’t worth much. It was fun to see them poring over the yellowing pages and acting out their favorite superheroes, especially when they didn’t know I was looking!

5) I tried to be “domestic” by baking and doing something with the zucchini that had been sitting on my counter for weeks. Apparently, though, I wasn’t trying to be domestic by “cleaning,” considering a question I was asked by one of Boy #2’s friends.

“Why is your house always messy?”

“Well,” I said, “I have three boys who don’t help me clean up. And I do things like put puzzles together instead of cleaning. Is your house always clean?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“My house is clean too,” another friend piped up.

Yeah, thanks. Dissed by 7-year-olds.

Back to the kitchen, though—yes, I DID bake a pie. An apple pie. From scratch. Well, except the crust, which the Pillsbury Doughboy made. It was darn good, and wouldn’t you know? None of my kids ate one piece. Oh well. All the more for me!

Besides the pie, I also grated my fingers a zucchini to use in a recipe this week and freeze the rest. How domestic is that? Never mind that I had to call my mom to ask her just how to grate a zucchini. And that I was bleeding from most of my fingers afterward. I was domestic, dammit!

6) We were officially sworn in as the parents of boys as our first window got broken. By what, you ask? A baseball, of all things. How cliché is that? Boy #3. Basement window. The big egress one, not the small one. (OF COURSE) But only the outer pane is broken, so at least we can wait a little while before replacing the glass without having to worry about all of our heat/air conditioning (It’s Iowa–we use both this time of year!) going (literally) out the window! Did I get mad? Naw. It’s just easier to not expect anything less than total destruction at our house. Plus, I’m medicated…for precisely this reason…

7) Last night I was reading to Boys #2 and 3 before bed. The book was about space, and Boy #2 had asked a question about why Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore and then had told me his theory about it being too far away from the Sun, freezing, and breaking up into little pieces. Hmm…interesting theory, I said, but not quite correct. Boy #3, then, not wanting to be outdone by his big brother, told me his theory. It went like this:

“John McCain went and got the Sun and then it was cold and too freezing and then everything went pkshewow! and broke all up.”

*Slight pause as I tried to process what my 4-year-old had just said.*

“What does John McCain have to do with it?” I asked, very curious to see where this had come from.

His answer?

“Oh, I meant Barack Obama.”

Ahh…it’s so much clearer now!

And that concludes The Random Craziness of My Life.

Don’t worry. There’s always more to come!