Fun Around the House

Last Saturday we helped Ben's grandparents uncover their pool. This involves quite a bit of work if there are leaves and water on top of the tarp. But they had a couple trees cut down last fall so there weren't too many acorns to clean out like in year previous. But there were plenty of slugs and stuff under the tarp. And the water was a lovely shade of greenish brown. No dead animals floating in it this year, though. Henry wanted to go swimming that same day and didn't care that the water was disgusting and only sixty eight degrees. I really had to put my foot down on that one. Then I saw a baby snake curled up on the sidewalk beside the pool. Ben said it was venomous because it's head was bigger that its body. So I had to kill it with a shovel because Ben was a little squeamish. I hate having to kill things, especially snakes, but it's not too difficult if I steel myself for it. Then I feel terrible afterwards.

Then there are those dumb birds that fly into our back picture window. Most of the time we hear a smack and the bird gets up and flies off, leaving a few downy feathers stuck to the glass to mark the spot where they hit. But so far two birds have killed themselves. The last one was a cardinal. Henry and I looked out the window and the poor thing was sprawled out on the deck steps, his little legs twitching a little. Ben made sure it was dead and then buried it. I think i'm going to make a cardboard cut out of some big bird of prey and tape it up in the window to keep the kamikaze death-wish birds away.

On Sunday Ben noticed the kitchen sink faucet was dripping. So he tried shutting off the water to the sink except the cold water wouldn't turn off all the way so I pushed the handle all the way to the hot water side and it stopped. Then next day we got a faucet fixing kit and a new wax seal for the toilet in our bathroom which was leaking slightly from the bottom. The kitchen sink is fine now; after Ben's fantastic fit of rage he finally got the faucet reassembled. It's funny to watch him at work on handyman kinds of jobs. Usually at some point he loses it, bellowing ape-like screeches, flailing his arms about. Well, it's not quite that bad, but I still get a kick out of it. Then I pat him on the back and tell him to let me have a try and either I fix the problem or he has another go at it when he's calmer and everything works out. The toilet is still not fixed, though. Id' like to see if my dad can come over and help with that one, especially since I'd really like to get the floor replaced at the same time (the vinyl flooring is peeling up, and it's super ugly, plus the floor squeaks and it's making me crazy). Then after that there's only a million more things that have to be fixed, replaced, refurbished, etc. That's what happens when you buy a fixer-upper. Oh, well.

The other day it was raining cats and dogs so I took Henry to see a giant model train display at one of the old malls in town. It conveniently located next to a DMV, Burlington Coat Factory, and a model train store. So of course we had to go in the store and look at stuff. Then I got him out of there and went to the BCF to kill time until the rain slacked off a little. We went over to look at shoes because Henry's sandals from last year were completely trashed. Water was leaking from the ceiling onto one of the shoe shelves, so I helped a lady, a customer, move the shoes out of the drip zone because none of the people who worked there seemed to care. Henry was adamant that he get flip-flops because his cousin Maddox has flip-flops so of course they didn't have any flip-flops that fit him. (Wow, that last sentence was like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.) So we walked around a little more looking at church clothes (poor Henry) and then he found a Spiderman baseball cap he had to have. I almost never buy him stuff on a whim, but was cheap, so I got it for him. At least when we left it kept the rain off his head. Henry's not really a hat person, but he's been wearing the hat to the park and stuff, mostly because I remind him so that he'll get some use out of it and I'll feel justified in parting with six bucks.

After we bought the hat we went to the other mall, the real mall actually, to look for some flip-flops. We went in several shoe stores but no flip-flops. I was starting to wonder if flip-flops were fashion faux pas now, but then we walked by a children's clothing store and there was a huge rack of them on the wall. Three bucks later I was feeling quite proud of myself for being a frugal shopper and so I bought us a pretzel. Henry wanted another one, but I told him I'd make some when we got home. Then when we got home I made pretzels and we had a kind of German meal that night with potatoes and kielbasa. Henry had surprised the crap out of us the other day when we had the missionaries over for dinner and he actually tried everything I put on his plate: meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans. Shocker. Usually if it ain't cheese sandwich, pizza, cheeseburger or some sort of bread or pasta he's not touching it. So when Henry tried the kielbasa and potatoes I was pleasantly surprised. Hopefully this is the advent of a new and exciting era of pleasant dinnertime experiences. At any rate, by the end of the evening Henry had finished off all the pretzels.

When we went to the park on Monday Henry insisted on wearing his flip-flops, which I didn't think was such a great idea because he can't run in them without tripping. To prove it to Ben I told Henry to run across the living room in his new shoes and he biffed it every time (I'm evil, I know). I let him wear his new shoes and we made it halfway down the hill to the park when Henry tripped and skinned his knee. He was pretty cool about it, no crying or anything, and he let me clean it off with hand sanitizer. For some reason because I put band aids on it he thought no one was supposed to see his blood. We went to the park again today and he fell again and scraped his other knee. Poor kid. He's completely oblivious to cuts and scabs. Hopefully he won't be too scarred and maimed before he reaches adulthood.