Back to Normal? Whatever That Is

About yesterday... yeah, some of you are right. Yelling at hubby doesn't help. And don't get me wrong. I don't do it very much. For the most part, we dwell in abnormal and almost sickening harmony. In fact we get along SO well, our older kids say we think we are still dating. I tell him it is my goal to wear him out to the point that even looking at another woman is WAY too much trouble... which could be why he doesn't get more done around the house. (Disclaimer: You can believe this or not. Hard to tell on the internet, what is true and what is not... and probably over half of what you read falls in the "not" category. But some things are bizarrely, against "normal" odds, true. You can decide. LOL) But sometimes I just get fed up past the point of patience. Fortunately for us all, it isn't very often.

A little about our "new" house. It is 1450 sq. ft. It has one large bedroom and bath, which we now share with Beverly. Then it has 2, smaller bedrooms (maybe 10x12each, one shared by 2 of my boys and one shared by 2 of my girls) inside the house proper, and another small bathroom near them. Then out on the end of the huge screened back porch, someone before us made another, small bedroom, that Allen uses. It is perhaps 8x10. Other than the porch (which is about to become something else), we have NO garage, no attic, no basement. We have EIGHT people living here, and 4 working cars (and one that needs to be sold for $300) in the driveway. So you can see, we have NO room to spare for the junk.

Ok, on to something else. Yesterday my Beverly (whom we affectionately call Betsy) put a "chair" behind the couch, sat down with a notepad and wrote me a picture or a letter, depending on her 22-month-old interpretation. I thought she was cute, so I took her picture. And yes, she is *really* tall for her age.

Today we all got up not as bright and quite a bit earlier than usual. I took hubby to work, bought donuts, got all the kids up, and forced them like the MEAN mom I am, to go to the next town over and give a speech at the homeschool group 4-H meeting. Veronica took first place in her grade level. Artemas, who was SURE he was going to do this ONE time ONLY, also took first place in the High School level... so next week he and Veronica are expected to go give their speeches in the Regionals. ROFLOL! Artemas said, "You said I only had to do it ONCE!" I said, "That was before I knew you would WIN." I told him it is the same as in the Back to the Future movies, where they go back and change something, and that changes so many other things in the future. Winning first prize changed getting out of ever giving a speech again. Oh I am the MOST terrible mother in the WORLD!

I also finally picked up the 4 Corriedale fleeces that I donated to the group for. Each trash bag must have 10# of fleece in it, easily. It is unprocessed, so there is a lot of lanolin in it. But wow. I now have 40# of Corriedale wool and 10# of llama fur to process and turn into... something. I am trying to find a reasonably-priced drum carder, so I don't have to buy hand cards and do 50 pounds of fiber by hand.

After a brief hiatus at home, we picked up Richie and treated him (and us, LoL) to Burger King for supper. I had the new Angry Whopper, which isn't as hot as the Jalapeno SuperSonic they used to serve at Sonic when I skated there. But, not bad. Made my eyes water. The kids think I am funny, because whenever something makes my eyes water, I pretend to think of sad things and cry. Well, they think I am pretending anyway. But I make a big show of it, wailing "That's so SAD!" and they all go, mom, you are so funny.

We went grocery shopping. Always a joy. I buy Peanut butter by the vat and hamburger by the cow and a henhouse full of eggs (5 dozen flat) at a time... and the cashier always wants to know HOW many kids do I have? LoL. Grocery day only comes every 2 weeks at my house so it is always somewhat of a celebration. For the next 3 days we will have LOTS of stuff for them to get into and then for 10 more days after that, we will have "real" food. And for one day, we will scrounge. LOL.

I got my block for today done too. The calendar says it is the Lovely Lola block, but since I am a fan of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, and her sidekick is Lula, I am calling it Lovely Lula. She loves Chicken too. So there. Mine doesn't look like the picture but I like it better anyway.

Tonight has been TV night... first Bones on Fox, then CSI on CBS, then Burn Notice on USA. I am not a big TV person so it makes me happy that they have put almost all the shows I like (I really only watch CSI New York other than the 3 above) on one night so I can only have a sitting-down guilt attack once and get it over with.

I do have ONE skein of recycled, cobweb weight 100% cashmere drying in our bedroom and a mega-skein of Pittsburgh Steelers yarn soaking in dye, so I guess I don't have to guilt myself too much. It has been a productive day.