Tagged again!

I accidentally got myself tagged by trying to reply to a comment (I think I was lured there on purpose).

Anyway here's how it goes:

Tag: take pictures of the following right now. No staging!

1. Kitchen sink. Oh, boy. Good thing I "cleaned up" last night.



2. Toilet. Not too bad. I won't tell you what prevented me from taking a photo of the other one. (Thanks, Henry.)



3. Laundry Room. We don't have a laundry room, just a spot in the kitchen. I'm in the middle of a project right now (not laundry) so it's a little messy.



4. Fridge. There used to be more food in it but we ate it.



5. Family members. Henry's the only one here. Sans clothes, his usual state.



6. Closet. Eh, heh, er. I guess it's that time of the year again when Maggie needs to stop by and help me reorganize.



7. Favorite room. The uselessly small room at the top of the stairs we converted into the computer room.



8. Favorite shoes. My tennies. If I could get away with wearing these to church I would. Note the neat shoe basket- the only organization I've been able to maintain (mostly because I pick up everyone's shoes and throw them in there).



9. Self portrait. I had to take a lot of shots to get this one.



So, to be nice, I'm not tagging anyone in particular, but if you so feel inclined to participate, just feel glad your house is not as messy as mine.

Why exactly is it that I hate Mondays?

Yeah, Monday, the day after Sunday. Mondays are play date at the park days. Every Monday Henry and I walk a half mile to the park down the road. Henry plays with his friends while I sit in a convenient shady spot and hang out with mine. I'm good for any adult conversations that come my way. After hours of listening to Henry spouting off random gibberish in his spotty four year old English, my brain tends to shut off and I find myself replying, "Yeah, that's great, Henry." He's even given me a new gibberish name and if I could only remember it I'm sure I could hold my own against any Sumerian god. So adult conversation is very precious to me, especially on weeks where I have to teach Joy School. Such as this week. So when Henry asked if we could go to the "dragon" park instead, I said no, I wanted to see my friends. He was a little annoyed, but too bad, this is my brain we're talking about. Two hours later I started herding him home. We took the shortcut back through the woods instead of walking back up the street and Henry headed towards the greenway trail trying to make one last ditch effort to go to the other park across the highway. I said no and he had a screeching cow. We were in a little clearing above the park next to the woods behind our house. I'm sure everyone within a mile thought I was murdering him out there. It'd be the perfect place for it, too. So he pitched a fit the entire way home. Two houses from home he refused to go any further so I had to carry him, kicking and screaming that he doesn't like me anymore, all the neighbors probably thinking, this is the kid who'll be terrorizing the neighborhood in five or ten years because of his mother's complete ineptitude in discipline. Which is sad because he's usually a pretty cool kid. Anyway, once I got him wrestled in the front door he got a nice stay in time out.

Maggie called right about the time he commenced further protestations and reaffirming his desire to have another mom. What, Mugablugoth (or whatever it was) not good enough for ya anymore? Finally he calmed down and sat down on the couch beside me for a make up snuggle.

"I like you, Mom."

Alright, score one for Mugablugoth.

When Ben got home I started plans for Family Home Evening lesson and found a 3-D wooden dinosaur puzzle Mom gave Henry for Christmas that I'd forgotten. So Henry and I sat at the table and started working on it. First thing I broke one of the pieces trying to extract it from the cheapo wood it was cut from. I guess that's what tape is for. After I finally figured out how the thing fit together we constructed a flimsy skeleton of some creature with four big flippers and what I only could deduce was an extra spine and ribcage stretching between its front and rear pelvises. I'm not sure how accurate the model was, but Henry thought it looked cool.

Then we had an early FHE lesson and I walked Henry down to his precious "dragon" park while Ben stayed home. About seven houses up there's a little foot path through the woods that leads down to the park and greenway leading to pedestrian bridge over the highway. The bridge is nice because we can walk to the other park now instead of driving. Every time I walk over it I can't help looking down at the eight lanes of speeding traffic, chewing on little morbid morsels, such as, "Gee, if we were walking down there we'd have been flattened about ten times by now." Although I'm a huge chicken when it comes to heights, the bridge has absolutely no effect on me. I suppose if there weren't a huge chain link cage around it it'd be a different story. The whole way Henry was singing the forest song from the Legend of Zelda Nintendo game he plays all the time. It was a nice walk, what with things cooling off, relatively low humidity, and the bazillion yellow flowers blooming where a huge swath had been cut out of the woods to accommodate power lines. The "dragon" park (Henry calls it that because of a big concrete sea serpent thing sticking out of a hill) is an exhausting one for me, mostly because it's got three sand box areas, a huge jungle gym/tunnel thingy, another ramp and slide thing, a bathroom/picnic table shelter, buttloads of sight-inhibiting trees and bushes, and hundreds of kids running all over the place, so I literally have to stalk Henry whenever we go there or I'll never see him again. I've actually lost him there a couple of times and it really made me consider implanting a GPS chip in his skull. We only got to stay about twenty minutes because I wanted to get home around six. Although Henry wanted to stay, he didn't go all psycho on me like he did this afternoon. On the walk back we almost got run over by a pair bicyclists who said hey before they zoomed off at mach 4 and I recognized them as an older couple from church (they have kids around my age). They're both really friendly and super fit and make me feel even more slovenly than usual. In fact she's the one my sister said had great boobs (this said indiscreetly during Relief Society when said great-boobed fit chick was doing an excellent job teaching the lesson, embarrassing the crap out of me).

When we got home I was happy to see Ben had decided to cook dinner for us. A grilled cheese sandwich for Henry, cool. For us, a big steaming bowl of homemade beanie-wienies. Not so cool. I forbore from eating as long as I could but I was hungry from the walk, so I reluctantly finished off what Ben hadn't eaten, baked beans out of the can nuked in the microwave with four glorious hot dog nuggets floating in the brown sludge. I supplemented my decadent dinner with the last piece of leftover frozen lasagna even though I'd already eaten some for lunch. Ben redeemed himself by emptying the dishwasher for me.

Ack. Tomorrow I get to teach Joy School. Joy.

7's

I got tagged by that naked chick, so here goes:

7 THINGS I PLAN TO DO BEFORE I DIE:

1. Stop being so lazy.
2. Not live in a filthy pig slob dump (that may have something to do with being me lazy, but it also involves two male residents of this household who shall remain nameless).
3. Get the house fixed up sufficiently so that I'm not always waiting for the next catastrophic failure of some important expensive thing.
4. Have more kids.
5. Go on vacation somewhere out of the state of North Carolina.
6. Finish college.
7. Adapt a more healthy lifestyle, i.e., exercise.

7 THINGS I CAN DO:

1. Read whilst ignoring the chaos around me.
2. Draw and paint.
3. Lay and grout tile.
4. Whittle with a pocket knife.
5. Patiently endure the seven millionth viewing of Polar Express or Thomas and Friends.
6. Hold a 30 foot ladder with my eyes shut so Ben can clean the gutters.
7. Make a decent pie.

7 THINGS I CANNOT DO:

1. Watch Ben climb a 30 foot latter.
2. Remember any of my math classes from high school.
3. Sit through a bad movie without verbally ripping it to shreds.
4. Eat raw onions or tomatoes.
5. Pack Henry in the car and go without having to run back inside for at least one forgotten item.
6. Design a cold fusion machine.
7. Pole vault.

7 THINGS THAT ATTRACT ME TO THE OPPOSITE SEX:

1. Good sense of humor.
2. A clean shaven upper lip (I hope Ben reads this).
3. Assertiveness.
4. Willing to work hard even if he doesn't have to.
5. Patience.
6. Good with kids.
7. Polite.

7 THINGS I SAY MOST OFTEN:

1. Crap.
2. Henry!
3. Ben!
4. Stop it right now.
5. Go to bed.
6. Stay in bed.
7. If you get out of bed one more time I swear I'm going to lose it!

7 CELEBRITY ADMIRATIONS- I don't necessarily admire them but like something about them:

1. Jamie Lee Curtis- she's all old and all and she doesn't care.
2. Dolly Parton- she's all old and all and she gets tons of plastic surgery but doesn't care what people think.
3. Christopher Walken- he's funny.
4. That chick who played LaFawnduh in Napoleon Dynamite.
5. James Taylor- not that I especially like his music, but he's bald and hasn't tried to hide it.
6. Fran Drescher
7. Billy Barty

7 FAVORITE FOODS (I had to limit these to the things I absolutely couldn't turn down even if I'd just eaten and was completely full):

1. Blueberry Pie.
2. Homemade chicken pot pie.
3. My mom's enchiladas.
4. Fresh out the oven homemade bread.
5. A nice ripe peach.
6. Fettucini alfredo from Ragazzi's (but not the one in Cary because they're nasty).
7. Keilbasa.

7 PEOPLE WHO NEED TO DO THIS:

Kiki, Sally, Angela, Naomi, Alyn, um, do I even know seven people? Anyway, you know who you are!

Saturday is a special day... it's the day we bail water out of the basement

First off, we are now sans cat number two. The neighbor's cat wasn't coping in our environment (i.e., she wouldn't willingly go downstairs so we couldn't move her litter box to the basement) so Ben took her back to the neighbors'. I have recouped a small smidgen of sanity. No more upstairs litter box, no more stressed new cat to worry about. And Dori's back to her bloated complacent marshmallow self.

Yeah, so Hurricane (or was it tropical storm?) Hanna visited our neighborhood Friday night. Not too much wind, but we got about five inches of rain. Ben and I spent a few minutes in preparation on Friday rolling up carpets and stacking everything on the couches and moved them to the center of the basement. So Saturday morning Ben went down there to check things out and of course the basement had flooded. This has happened at least two times before. A couple years ago we caulked up the floor around the wall where it leaked before and that stopped one leak. While we were sweeping the water out the basement door we could see two or three spots on the other wall near the floor where water was squirting in. Makes me wonder how much water had backed up behind the basement wall. At least we know now where the other leaks are, so hopefully before the next deluge we'll have it fixed.

By Satuday afternoon it had stopped raining and the basement had stopped flooding, so we went out and visited Ben's grandparents. Around four we walked down to their neighborhood park for one of Henry's friend's birthday party. It was nice and sunny and super humid. Ben brought his grandparents' dog with us. She's this morbidly obese poodle/Jack Russel terrier hybrid, what I think people call a jackapoo. Ben tried to run with her on a leash once and I think she almost had a heart attack after about fifty yards. Henry took the leash and led the dog up the play ground equipment and took her down the slide with him a few times. Then Ben took her back to his grandparents' so she could return to eating and lazing around and borrowed a walkman so he could listen to the NC State football game. I told him he didn't need a radio- he could know how bad they were doing by just listening to the boos and collective forehead slaps of the spectators at the stadium down the road. Henry had a lot of fun, ate a hot dog and candy and cake, and got to smack a pinata.

Today was nice because we're back on the morning shift at church. Every September our Branch shifts schedules with the two other wards meeting in our building. So for the past two years we've been on the sacrament-meeting-last schedule, which really wears me out because Henry has already been trying to behave for primary and his Sunbeam class, so sacrament was almost always a huge trial. Today, as we will from now on until next year, we had sacrament meeting first. I was very happy because Henry was very good for the most part. The about ten minutes into the gospel doctrine class I was asked to sit with Henry in Primary because he was acting up. Then he didn't want to go to his sunbeam class and cried and pitched a fit, so I brought him with me to Relief Society. I warned him it would be boring for him because everything was in Spanish but he didn't care. I figured he'd want to leave after a few minutes and rejoin his class, but he didn't. He sat there very nicely beside me and I didn't have to say a thing or make him sit in my lap or anything. In fact he was all cuddly and cute. I figured he must be getting sick or something, but as soon as we got home he stripped down to his underwear and started running amok. Probably the time shift has messed with his internal craziness clock. Oh, well. We'll see what happens next week.