Home again, home again, jiggety jig!

 Hiya! This will be brief; as my creative juices are still a little sludgy, but I am HOME. We got booted out yesterday morning after I was able to waddle around the hospital floor in my grippy yellow duckfoot socks, use the bathroom, eat several times and pass all the mini exams they have you perform. I'm going to be in recovery mode a little while, but wanted to thank you all for the prayers, cards, texts, calls, all of it. Truly the best tribe ever! 

They did have to do the long version and that included sending the 2/3 of my right side lymph nodes out for inspection, so we won't hear the results of that right away. However, my docs were pleased, my nurses were proud of me, and everyone seems to think I'm doing very well. I'm alternating Advil and Tylenol every four hours, have no dietary restrictions, and I will not be power lifting anytime soon as I can't lift more on my right side than two pounds until I have my follow up appointment next week. I promise that I will try to behave myself and not overdo things. I am very much looking forward to my first shower, my surgical drain is doing a good job sucking out my fluids, and it was nice to sleep in my own bed with tons of pillows!

Have a wonderful day, my excellent tribe. I love you all!

Winter break challenge, indeed

Twas the day before back to school
after a long holiday break.
Mama was prepping kids' backpacks
and lunchboxes for them to take.
Dismayed, she found an assignment
that was due the very next day
despite having asked many times
if such things were hidden away.
The lesson learned: never assume!
Empty the kids' backpacks yourself
so that mad frustration can't bloom
and ruin your prime mental health.
"It's their responsibility!"
You moan, and yes, that part is true.
However, it's your sanity.
Somehow you've got to make it through.
So while one kid reads his eyes out
fervently hoping to get done,
another from the shower shouts
that his fight with soap's not been won.
School clothes are out for tomorrow, 
we know who will pack and who'll buy.
The sun will rise on the morrow
and we'll give our new day a try.

Venting in the November breeze

I. Can't. Get. Warm.

It is the first week of November and we are already experiencing wind chill that says, "feels like 19." We skipped Indian summer completely and I reluctantly sadly despairingly boxed up my sun dresses, tank tops, floaty summery skirts; I begrudgingly unpacked my sweaters, long sleeves, and pants. Not that I don't like tights and sweaters, I'd just prefer to not have to wear multiple layers every single day for the next six months. Leggings under pants is ridiculous, but here we are. Some of you woke up to snow. I don't want to talk about it.

I have my largest pot on the stove with bone broth simmering away for up to the next 12 hours. Between the dark and the cold, I can hear the pounds sneaking on from the steady stream of comfort food that I'll be consuming. Our spring break is the very first week of March (yes, I'm serious), so there is zero chance of anyone spotting me in anything revealing until... oh, around May when Ohio gets her act together and recognizes that spring started two months previous. Why not indulge? The calories will keep me warm. Warm-er. Ish. Surely?

That is, if I don't end up on the news and living in a new venue before then. One where I'd be wearing orange. Or, perhaps, stripes. 

I don't know about you people, but let me set the record straight; boys do not have less drama than girls- they merely have different drama. 

For example, our resident middle school student made it to his fourteenth birthday last week by the grace of God. The vast majority of our meals together, he needs reminded, "get your knees down under the table. You are smashing your stomach and feeling full before you're actually full. Get your food in you. Quit playing around. Eat. Eat your food. Close the book." Repeat ad nauseam. By "vast majority" I mean 95% or higher of our meals. Often with food he likes!  

And will someone please invent a water shut-off valve that can be remotely activated by a parent's phone so that there issues a hard burst signifying a "you-have-two-minutes-left-so-rinse-and-get-out-lest-you-stay-sudsy" warning? Said child was given 10 minutes in the bathroom yesterday and took 45. Granted, some of this issue is caused by the bliss of having A) hot, running water, B) more than one bathroom, C) parents who are busy doing other things than standing around timing how long one is taking in the bathroom. However, short of taking the hinges off the bathroom door (which, while I have seriously considered, I object to the almighty draft I'd have to deal with when having my own shower) how does one pry another person out of the shower when one is on the opposite side of the bathroom door?!

People, I need a beating breakthrough. I'd rather not end up on the news. Eighth grade means this child in particular should be spectacular by now at getting himself ready for school. He lays out school clothes the night before. He makes his lunch the night before. He sets out what he wants for breakfast (unless it's refrigerated, obviously) the night before. Why then, are we having the same battles every day? 

Some would say, "just let him do it all on his own. He's gotta figure it out." Then he will miss the bus, and who does that inconvenience? Me. I'd have to take him to school. Especially when Dada is out of town for work. And his younger sibling, who is not old enough to be left home to get himself on his own bus yet, so he'd have to hurry to get ready to come with me. And the dogs, who have been built into our morning routine. Let's just empty the entire toolbox into the works, shall we? The heck with the wrench. 

Out of curiosity, I checked google maps. It would be around a 45 minute walk from our home to his school, and I know at least some of it doesn't have sidewalks. That would make him that much later if he missed the bus. The whole point of getting on the bus is so I don't have to drive him, adding more gasoline burned and more emissions and so forth. If I had any desire to take him to school, that would be built into our routine already.

How do we raise someone whom other someones (college roommates, apartment mates, future spouses) won't want to maim because of their inconsideration/selfishness/obliviousness? The child has zero money because, as our children, we don't believe they should be paid to help around the house. They live here, they should help, period. So we can't fine him the price of the water bill to open his eyes to the cost of sitting under the hot water for ridiculous amounts of time. How do we waken the (I hope) innate self-awareness of, "hey, I'm being kind of a jerk hogging the hot water, I should get clean and get out"? It is clear that what we/I am doing now does not work and is unsustainable. 

I don't want to leave you with the idea that he is a problem child and the other two are angelic by comparison; they most certainly are not. We have three great kids, each with their own issues. Would I trade them in on a yo-yo, as Nana used to say? Do not tempt me, Frodo. 

No longer bionic!

In addition to being a quarter of my way done with the Nerlynx med I'm on, yesterday I had another milestone. My port is out! I no longer have anything other than Just Me in me, yippie!

Sorry, no peeking. I'm to leave that on until after I shower, 24ish hours after the procedure. Then I'll have a new scar to show off, woohoo!

Aweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemoweh

Lest y'all think the boys get all the good stories, here is a classic Carrie Tale. 

Yesterday Thing One is sent to the showers. She hops in and about two minutes into her shower is when I think to turn on some music for her. Using an app on my phone, I select the Iko Iko station we like on Pandora radio and set it to play in the bathroom. The first song happened to be "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". 

Carrie, already in the shower, remember, hears "dee dee dee dee dee deeeeee dee dee dee ah wee ohh mam eh waaaay" as tones emanating from the shower head. She comes downstairs and informs me, "I thought for real that the song was coming out of the shower head, making different tones, as the water spewed out of it."

Insert crying with laughter face here. 

She then states, "I thought the shower head had accepted me as one of its own and was singing to me! Then I realized, 'oh wait, there's a speaker in here...' "

Never a dull moment around here, folks. 

Ah weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, indeed.

#EmptyGlassCity

We are on our second day of "do not use the water" advice. I do find it completely ironic that the kids and I spent the entire day on Friday at Maumee Bay, having the time of our lives with several other moms and all their kids. We had joked about the kids glowing, but had no idea that first thing the next morning all the stores in the area would be bought out of bottled water. Crazy times. Whoever coined the "#emptyglasscity" slogan should have copyrighted it fast.

There have been a lot of jokes about not showering, and how we can all stink together, and stories of people checking on neighbors and volunteering to distribute water and neighbors letting other neighbors know when a shipment of water arrives at a nearby store. Sadly, there have also been stories of people hogging resources and scuffling over what we all take for granted every day.

They are claiming that it is okay to shower in, as long as you keep your mouth closed. A doctor friend of mine advised against washing laundry right now, saying that we'll get rashes. We're not to boil the water; apparently that increases the potency of the toxins they've found in the water. The powers that be seem to hold off on telling us results of tests they've sent away for. They announce that we'll be told at a certain time, the certain time rolls around, and then we're told we'll be informed later.

I mentioned to Dada that perhaps they have the problem solved already and they're just using this set of circumstances to further plan and adapt in case of a situation where there really IS no water. We're blessed that we have power. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be without both, though thankfully it isn't anywhere near as hot as it could be. Dealing with this right at 80 degrees is one thing, but if it hit 92 or something, it would be unbearable.

We are coping fine. We picked up water yesterday. Nobody has showered since Friday night. I've always wanted to try dreadlocks- now might be a good time!

The dishes have piled up alarmingly, but they will wait. We have paper supplies from the Christmas in July party that happened last weekend instead of this weekend, thank goodness.

It is humbling to think about places in our world where this is a regular aspect of real life. Where simple things like showers are luxuries. Where running to a faucet and having clean water come out is a remote possiblity, not a privilege we assume is a right.

My mother, for years, has fretted over the Southwest and their water situation. It strikes me as odd that we are on top of a Great Lake and have no water when there are entire desert communities who manage to find what they need every day. Life is strange. I'm not to first to recite, "water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink."

Knocking wood, so far so good. We're healthy and the inconvenience has given us a chance to reflect and be thankful that this is not our life usually. I guess the hashtag should really be #blessedbeyondmeasure and we should all take some steps to be more responsible stewards. It's easy to throw the farming communities under the bus by saying it's all runoff from them and their practices, but while they are part of the problem the blame is not solely theirs. We need to have a much broader perspective. City council people need to plan for the well-being of their great grandchildren and not just settle for the cheapest bid to accomplish x,y, or z. Nobody is too small to help. Recycle. Plant trees. Pick up your own mess, and perhaps someone else's. Reuse. Don't be suckered; use your brain and ask yourself if you really need to buy every new thing that comes along. This experience should be a wake up call, not a pity party. Be part of the solutions, whether you're here in the #emptyGlassCity or in your own slice of heaven on earth.  

Exciting times

We can say truthfully that things are never boring around here. For example:

Dada got home safely from his two-week China trip. He'd left on a Saturday morning, was gone all that week, over a weekend, and came home the following Friday night. Then he needed to sleep most of that weekend to get back on our time zone. He had a very good first experience from the food to the people to the haggling that is shopping. The worst part was probably the neverending plane rides there and back!

While he was gone, I took the kids to church, dropped them off in their Sunday school rooms, made my way to the sanctuary and lasted through one song before I was paged. Damon was standing against the wall, sobbing his heart out, and refusing to be comforted. I ended up in the lobby, holding him on my lap in my metal chair, until he fell asleep during the offering. He woke up just in time to go collect the big kids and head home. Kids-1, Mama-0.

Monday after school brought Carrie home coatless.
"Where is your coat?"
"I left it at school."
"What were you doing when everyone else was putting theirs on? Didn't you notice you didn't have yours on?"
"Nobody else was wearing theirs, either!"
"..."

Tuesday night, I asked Carrie to please tell Liam to finish up in the bathtub. This included rinsing, getting out, draining the water, getting dry, then getting pajamas on. I hear hysterical laughter from upstairs but proceeded to finish the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, more fool me. By the time I made it up there, I found a still-soapy Liam in the tub along with a fully clothed Damon. Kids-1000, Mama-0...

Two Thursdays later was the first swimming lessons for the big kids. Their classes are in the evening, while Damon has one right before lunch. We're at the Y a lot! Anyway, Liam is old enough to be in the male family locker room. So I pop Damon in the child care section, go through the female family locker room side and watch their classes. When they are done, they are instructed to rinse off the chlorine, get changed, dry, into pajamas, etc. so we can go home and go to bed. It's a school night, and I have to rescue Damon before the child care part closes. Carrie gets done, I get Damon, and we are waiting, waiting, waiting. A towel-clad Liam pops out into the hall with his swim trucks in his other hand, proclaiming with just a tinge of panic that his stuff is gone. Turns out, he was in the wrong locker bay and his stuff was intact on the other side. However, it takes eons for him to find it and get dry and get dressed and get packed up and get his coat on.............

I tell Carrie, "I am SO GLAD Dada's job will have him home more now. Next time, I can stay home with Damon while you take care of yourself after your lesson and Dada can do the guys' locker room with Liam." She sags against the wall in relief.

You get the idea. There was something like that every.single. day. I was overjoyed to see Dada come home. My Girlfriends all suggested I dump the kids on him every single night of the following week, but alas, it was not to be.
"Did I mention that I'll be gone Thursday and Friday of this week? Um, and of next week?"
"..."
Life- infinity, Mama-0.

Fast forward to this Thursday past. Once again, there's a clean, dressed, book-in-hand (she's wised up) Carrie in the hall. I get Damon, and we wait. And we wait. And we WAIT.

Carrie sets her book down and marches into the guys' side. "Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam!"  She finds him still in the shower. No joke.

He does eventually make it out. To the tune of FORTY MINUTES AFTER HIS CLASS ENDED.

This week, we'll take sleeping bags. And snacks.

That Friday, he confided to me that he'd been scrubbing the shower walls. They were nice and shiny when he was all done.

Paging Alexander, once again. Is there room in that suitcase for me to join you in Australia?

So Sunday night, as some of you know, well, most of you on the Facebook nation know, one of our wonderful wintry windstorms swept through. It was powerful enough to knock down wires in more than one spot, and we lost power just as we were ending dinner. I'd gotten groceries, some Christmas presents, and had snuggled babies at church earlier in the day. We got candles and flashlights and headed to the basement as our tornado watch devolved into a tornado warning. We even took Triskal down there, which was a first or second time only, as Newfies are not big fans of stairs and they're bad for their hips so we purposely never encouraged her to be anywhere but our main floor.

So we're as snug as can be (and may I add that spending a decent amount of time in the basement makes one take a serious look into redecorating so that they're more comfortable furnishings for extended stays?), the warning subsides, we head to bed, and wake up the next morning with still no power. A two-hour delay turns into school being cancelled. Are you even kidding me!?

No. They weren't. Okay, so there's no school. What are the kids doing? Cross my heart, they are packing suitcases. Where are they going? To camp in the front yard.

...

Yes, that's what they said. They were going to move out.
"Did you not notice that school has been cancelled because of inclement weather? And you want to try to set up a tent in that wind? And it rained yesterday so the ground isn't going to be dry?"
"Auuuuuuuuuuuugh, FINE."

At this point, I quit keeping score.

Thankfully Dada came home at lunch and treated us all to Bob Evans. We stuffed ourselves silly and spent a little bit of time in the bookstore nearby to stay warm. "CanIhavethat? Canwegetthis? CanIhavethat?"

I received an ecstatic text from our next door neighbor saying the power's back on. Hallelujah! Let's go home and turn on the heat!

We were blessed. Yes, the power was out for 20 hours, but we didn't lose anything in the fridge or freezers because we'd kept them closed and the groceries were fresh and unopened. It only rained before the power went out, otherwise the sump pump wouldn't have kept up since there was no electricity and we could have flooded again. I haven't found any shingles in the yard, our garden gnome Virgil Eugene is merely laying down instead of smashed to bits, and our cars were undamaged. It could have been so much worse. They were on the other side of town. Some of the same areas that were hit by the tornado when Damon was born got blasted again. The outage taught the kids to not depend on the iPad or the Wii or the TV to entertain themselves. A little, anyway. And nobody got hurt. Blessed.

Camp ain't ALL roses...

Sometimes there are accidents at camp.

The toilets clog.
 

 

The steps break, nature takes over.
 

 

The Dutch oven dinners burn to cinders.

Boots fall off.
 

 

Your buns... er, the kitchen's buns get really big.

Uninvited guests show up and expect to be fed.
 

 

The roof springs a leak.

The Hobart destroys your water bottle.
 

Not only do you get into the wrong shower, you forget to get undressed entirely!