It's Rambling Time

Yep, it's time for me to talk without a goal. To wander around the recent moments in my life that stand out to me as I sit this morning.

How does one keep little boys from bickering all day long when the sun doesn't shine? Whether they are busy or not it seems to come pouring endlessly out of them. Legos, crafts, school, firewood, food...doesn't seem to matter.

On the other hand, those adorable smiles, inquiring minds, sharp little wits and glorious hugs make for the best days ever!

A new writing project looms before me. Looms in every best sense of the word. Can looming be a positive thing?? Should I say...uh, strange, a different word to use escapes me at the moment. When am I ever wordless? OK, so it's not looming. I just can't wait to get started. I'm waiting on someone who I'll be working with. Just a little waiting and I'm going nuts. I'm a little excited. More than a little. But, I'm nervous too. I've never worked collaboratively with someone before, not on non-fiction anyway(in high school my friends and I did a little swapping fiction back and forth). I'm nervous to put my words to someone else's thoughts. What if I don't get it right????? Lol! But I was daydreaming last night about having the material in my hands, organizing thoughts and themes, polishing, rewriting and I was getting happy :) Happy at the thought of sculpting with words. After a long, long time away from such work.

We are attempting at last to clean our house of all the clutter, and because of the clutter all the trash, dirt, and piles of un-put-away stuff that has accumulated over the past three years. I started yesterday with enthusiasm. By the end of the day I was thinking this is impossible! I'm trying not to look too closely at anything right now. Trying to keep my mind on small bits of the project so as not to become completely overwhelmed before we even have a good start on this. My plans for yesterday were derailed by a particular circumstance which caused me to have to clean a different room than I planned on starting with. I mostly didn't let any frustration into my thoughts. Until this morning when I will be gone for a while and my hubby can't do what he planned to do while I was gone because I didn't get to do the "before" step I planned to do yesterday...

It's all right though. He and the kids will have a great time hiking up the mountain instead ;-) They are exploring places to make some bike trails. We are excited to share our wonderful property with our mountain-biking friends. Once our house is clean, ahem, we'll have some of them over to help us clear trails and whatever other fun we can get up to.

Well, I'm off to see if the boys' breakfast is ready, do my stretches and otherwise get on with my day. Thanks for joining me this morning :)

For The Crayon Stains...

I am going to try one of the recipes here:

http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf001203.tip.html

Ok, I tried a mixture of detergent, borax, oxiclean, and vinegar. Soaked for a few hours and then checked. Decided to soak overnight. Washed twice(agitated twice I should say, without rinsing); rinsed twice, this morning. The lightest stained clothes came somewhat clean, all of the t-shirts have big oily stains all over though. The heaviest stains still left some color in the clothes. So this was a partial success. Not as much as I was hoping for with all the rave reviews on the site I got the recipe from.

Randomness

Saturday I tried to go take a shower. Joshua had been sitting quietly on the floor inventing lego cars. Perfectly happy. By the time I made it to the bathroom he was hanging on me wailing, "Don't go. Stay, stay" I calmly and then not so calmly explained to him that I was not going anywhere and I would be out in a few minutes. He wouldn't let up. I was starting to get good and mad, ordering him to just go. About that time he yelled desperately "I loooove you!"

What a goober, hehehe. I gave him a big snugly hug and he tripped happily off to return to his inventing leaving me shaking my head.

We read a book about firefighters we got from the library and Joshua got all excited about the kids in a parade wearing "future fireman" shirts. Guess what he asked me to make him? Being the obliging Mama I am I started work on it the first available morning...

I've been having a bit of fun recycling clothes that are not longer loved into something new. I'll try to get some pics and post them here pretty soon.

Brannon is very "buried" in lego land right now. He wasn't sure he would survive the revelation when I told him that at the first hint of warm weather the legos are going upstairs for a while. :-) I have to drag him outside anymore. Like father, like...

While we were standing in church Sunday Joshua was standing on a chair next to me with his arm around my neck. Pretty soon he started fingering my necklace ( a plastic whale tail that looks a bit like ivory or bone). He asked "Is this valuable?" When I hesitated slightly, "Uh" he proceeded to define valuable for me :-)

"Valuable means it's breakable," pause..."and pretty, that's what valuable means."

I asked B later what valuable means and he said "If it's not very valuable it's not worth much. If it's very valuable it's worth a lot." A lot of what? "Money"

I still can't believe the price of groceries! You'd think I'd be used to it by now. It's been this way a while. I still get stressed when the total comes up at the register. That's one area I need to remember to give to God. It's funny, all the rest of the financial stuff in our lives I don't worry about any more. I'm relaxed. I guess I'm still trying to take some responsibility to make this one work. Don't get me wrong, it is my responsibility to be...responsible. I just need to believe God's going to take care of it if I do my part. In theory I've got this one down, in practice, I still stress at the register lol.

Brannon hasn't stopped talking--to me--since I started typing. I've explained to him once that I am writing right now and may not respond to him. Hasn't phased him. Like Father, like...


Does anybody like the slideshow or is it something you don't look at??

I'm enjoying not sinking into my parking spot. When I gasped a little over the price hubby explained how much it would have cost if we had gotten gravel ourselves, one pickup load at a time and how much if someone other than our friendly neighbor had delivered it. Oh. Perspective sure is a handy thing:)

Well, enough rambling for now...;-)