pieces and ponderings

I like lists.  I’m not an obsessive list-maker, but I do find that lists help me remember things that need to be done.  I keep a running grocery list and Sam’s list.  They are not the same.  There are certain items that our family purchases at our local Sam’s Club and other items we purchase at grocery stores.  The bad thing about these lists is when I return home from a shopping trip only to discover that I need an item that was not on the shopping list and have to begin a new list while I’m still putting away food items that were just purchased from the old list.

I also make lists to remind me what needs my attention for the day…“to do” lists.  Sometimes my memory needs help remembering an errand that needs to be done or a project that needs completing.  I don’t keep these lists every day but occasionally I need a “to do” list to keep me on track.

I have also found that it is helpful to make chore lists for my children.  They just seem to respond better when their task for the day is written down.  They see it…they do it…I’m happy and therefore they are happy.

But my favorite thing about the lists that I make is when my children sabotage my lists and add their own list items without my knowledge.  I like it because it makes me laugh.

There have been times when I’m in the grocery store adding milk and bread and cereal to my cart and I look at the next item on the list and it reads, “Pony.”  I know immediately that child number 2 quietly and sneakily has gotten hold of my list.

There are times when I’m extra-forgetful and a regular list on the counter simply won’t do and I tape a note to my back door so that I won’t forget to do something and then find a note next to my note that says, “Play Monopoly,” and I know that child number 4 has been at work.

Today I came home and found that my children were baking chocolate chip cookies, which I realized as soon as I saw the cookie dough melting into delicious cookies that I NEEDED a chocolate chip cookie.  I asked child number 3 about the cookie-baking and he told me that baking cookies had been right there on the chore list that I had left this morning.  I looked and sure enough…there it was…written in an almost mom-looking-handwriting, “Bake cookies.”  I smiled and laughed and then ate three of those chocolate chip cookies…compliments of the day’s chore list.

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Our home went through some major re-arranging this past weekend.  Late Thursday night, a wonderful three-piece sectional sofa was moved into our living room.  On Friday, man-sized children, child number one and child number three moved various pieces of furniture around the house as their mother (me) directed.  It was much like a symphony being played by an orchestra…I waved my conductor’s baton and movement would begin…ok…not quite, but maybe it was a little like that.

Old sofas were moved, chairs were moved, desks were moved, our computer was moved, a china cabinet was moved, sundry cabinets that I don’t know the official names of were moved, and pictures that hung on walls were moved.  Lots of moving.

At the end of the day on Friday, I looked at all of the work that had been done and  declared it “good.”  I liked it.  Not only do I love the sofa that can seat our entire family if we so desire, but I like where our computer now sits on its desk, where I can write blog entries and stuff.  I like the china cabinet in its new home.  I like the pictures on different walls.  All of this change, which I behold as good, seemed to send our golden retriever dog, Ellie, into a mild depression.

As new furniture entered our house and old furniture was shifted around and her favorite couch was moved into the entry-way of our home and then out of the house completely, Ellie looked a bit dazed, somewhat confused and at times a little panicky.

As my celebratory exclamations grew louder and louder over the few days of re-arranging…Ellie began looking sadder and sadder.  My husband brought home a nice, soft, fluffy doggie cushion to give her a place that was all her own…a refuge in the furniture re-arranging storm.   She has laid on it a few times…when one of my children or I have knelt down by the cushion and patted it to indicate it was time for her to lie down.  But a few moments later, we would find her lying in front of the cushion…seemingly mourning the loss of her favorite sofa.

I can relate to her feelings of attachment…usually I don’t like change either…I tend to push against change in my life.  But, I love the new sectional sofa…have I mentioned that already…and I had awaited the day when we would wave good-bye to the three-person-used-to-be-an-off-white-color couch that turned into a sort-of-a-dingy-gray-and-stained couch (Ellie’s favorite).

I think that Ellie will eventually adjust to our household re-arrangement…probably about the time my oldest two children head off to college next month.  Then I’ll  join her lying on the floor in front of her cushion…lamenting the change.

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I went through a patriotic stage as a child.  I don’t think this is a typical childhood stage that most pass through, but I could be wrong.  I have  never heard other moms talking about their children being the in “patriotic stage,” where they only wear red, white and blue clothing, and put posters of presidents and national monuments on their walls, but this is what my mom had to deal with.  My own children haven’t followed suit, though there have been replicas of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on a bedroom wall at one time.  (I just went and looked and the Constitution replica is still on the wall.)

Anyway, sometime between the ages of 9 and 10, I was very patriotic.  I wore a lot of red, white and blue.  It was the ‘70’s, so I even had striped red, white and blue pants AND red, white and blue suede shoes.  Oh, I almost forgot, I also had a red, white and blue bowling ball as well.  Yes, it was extreme…possibly obsessive.  (My kids are going to tell me that I was weird.)

I visited our nation’s capitol twice as a child and there are pictures somewhere of me standing in front of national monuments, decked out in my patriotic everyday wear.

I loved reading biographies of U.S. presidents and other historical figures…I found them interesting and inspiring.  (My kids are going to call me a “nerd” also.)

I don’t know where this love of country came from that grew in me, but it was there…and I’ve always loved the Fourth of July…Independence Day…the birthday of  the United States of America.

I was reminded of all this the other night, when my family and I attended the Freedom Fest celebration at Fort Rucker, near our south Alabama home.  The Lieutenant Dan Band, with Gary Sinise, performed a good concert and there were fireworks that my family enjoyed, along with a few thousand other folks.

As the band played their closing song, Lee Greenwood’s “I’m Proud to be an American,” the crowd rose to their feet and sang along.  I felt a little awkward at first and then  I looked at my husband standing beside me singing…and the crowd of servicemen and women and their families that surrounded me…and I thought about my husband’s military service and that of his brothers and our nephews…and I sang a bit louder.

Then the fireworks began with oohs and aahhs from the spectators.  I was sharing a chair with child number 5 and we commented on the size and colors of the bursts of light at first…then we just sat in silence, as we drank in the beauty of the display.

I was thankful to be sitting close to my family, celebrating our country together.  I am proud to be an American, though I don’t wear red, white and blue very often any more.  I am thankful for the nation in which I live and the freedoms we enjoy here.  We are a blessed nation!

  Happy Birthday, United States of America!

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My children, numbers 3-5, helped me with grocery shopping at our local Sam’s Club this morning.  I bribed, or rather, enticed them by offering to stop first for breakfast at Chick-fil-a…this usually works.  As the four of us munched on breakfast food, the older two began a tongue-in-cheek conversation about being the middle children of our family.

Child number 3 claims that he is the “true” middle child, having two older siblings and two younger siblings.  They decided that child number 4 is really the “lower middle,” not quite as “middle” as number 3.

They went on and on about how tough life is as middle children (they’ve had it ohh so rough…yeah, right).  They spoke of all the privileges of the oldest child, not understanding of course that child number 1 is the test pilot of the children in a family.  Firstborns are the ones that parents begin learning about parenting with…and they often carry more responsibility when the younger children come along.

Then there is child number 2 in our family.  The two middles say she doesn’t even count, because she is the only girl in a family with 4 boys…she’s like an only child, they say (yeah, right again).

They continued to joke about their older siblings’ advantages and their suffering.  Then they turned their diatribe on their little brother, child number 5…the baby of the family…poor guy.  Of course, just my saying, “Poor guy,” in reference to their little brother, would in their eyes back up their argument of the youngest receiving special treatment.

It would seem that no matter how hard we try as parents, there will always be times when a child sees their place in life as unfair and wonder if the grass is actually greener on the other side, or sides, of the birth order fence.

As my “true” middle and I were waiting at the check-out line for little brothers to return with ice cream (see, I told you they suffer), child number 3 looked down at me from his 6’4’’ point of view and said, “Mom, I finally know what the 2.5 children per family means in all of those statistics you hear about.”

“Really,” I replied, because I’ve always wanted to know how you can have 2.5 children.  “Please, tell me,” I asked.

“The 2.5 is really 3 children, but the .5 is the middle child because they only count half as much,” he said with a smirk on his face.  I laughed at his clever thinking and wry sense of humor.

“Yeah…right,” I said.

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This is the scene that greeted me this morning at 6:15 when I opened our front door to let out our dog, Ellie.

A four foot purple flower just happened to grow in our flower bed overnight.  It was a good morning surprise planted by an unknown, but highly suspected, prankster some time in the night.

It made me smile…I love it!  The flower’s usual home is in a stand in the room of child number 2.  I sort of figure she must have had something to do with it having been transplanted into the front flower bed.  I’ll just leave it there for others to see.

Opening my door and my eyes to such a funny sight was a great way to start the day.  Good morning, world!

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I knew it would happen…eventually.  I have a husband and five children, who aren’t all children any more, but are right now living in this house and so that makes them fall into the category of “children” for blog writing purposes.  All that to say, I have a lot of laundry in my life.  As I was folding a load of whites while the washing machine and dryer were humming in the background, I thought that maybe I should write down the thoughts gently floating into my head as I try to figure out whether or not the man’s medium-sized t-shirt belongs to child number 1 or child number 4.  Yes, I resorted to sniffing the shirt and I think I figured it out.  (Child number 4 just told me that I got it wrong.  Shirts have been switched to proper owners.)

So here are some random thoughts about laundry.

Way back when there wasn’t near as much laundry to do…but I thought there was a lot because I had younger children and didn’t understand that younger children grow up to be teenagers who have work-outs and laundry increases exponentially…back when ignorance was bliss.

In those days, the laundry room in the house we lived in had a soft light green color of paint on the walls and a bright white trim…soothing colors for a room where I spent a lot of time.  I used to separate the laundry into piles and sing “Climb Every Mountain” as I tackled the mountains of clothes to be washed.  It was inspiring.

Recently…that means in the past few months…I was playing the game “Whoonu” with a few of my children.  This is a game where players choose what they think might be another player’s favorites among the item cards they are dealt.  I love this game.  Anyway, while playing a round of “Whoonu,” it was my turn to be the “Whoozit,” the player for whom the others players guess your favorite things.  When I looked at the cards that were chosen for me to rank, “Laundry” was one of the things chosen.  It made me giggle when I saw the card…it made me laugh out loud.  Once I had ranked my cards as to my favorites, I asked the child who had given me the “Laundry” card why he picked that as a possible favorite.

“I thought you must really like ‘Laundry’ because you do it all the time,” he responded.  He was incredibly sincere in his answer…he was serious.  He truly thought that I just hang out in our laundry room for large portions of my days because “Laundry” is like a hobby for me…something I really like and am trying to improve my skills at doing.

His sincerity warmed my heart…at that moment I could have eaten him up (something moms may say when they are totally moved by their children’s cuteness and sweetness and possible innocence…even when the children are now taller than the moms).

The mountains of dirty clothes have only gotten bigger in recent years…but really I don’t mind.  Like shoes in my living room floor (see earlier post), dirty clothes are a sign of life…and I like the signs of the lives of the family that I love.

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I just finished watering the flowers and fruit trees on our property.  The June temperatures in southern Alabama have been unreal…or maybe I should say, much too real.  It is so hot!  And it is so dry!

As I was watering our fruit trees, which are pretty young fruit trees, I noticed unusually dark brown leaves on one of our pear trees.  At first, the sight alarmed me, but then I remembered what had transpired a couple of days ago when child number 5 and I had been looking at the trees.  (The pear trees are just a couple of years old and this is the first year that any of them have produced any fruit and there are several pears on each of our four trees.)

We noticed that one of the trees was so laden with pears that the weight of the fruit had caused a branch to break.  It was hanging by a very thin branch thread to the trunk of the tree.  I raised my hand to touch the drooping branch and it broke off in my hand.  My son carried the broken branch into the house with all of its underdeveloped pears.  We didn’t really know what to do with it.  Throwing it away was the right thing to do, but that was difficult because of all of the baby fruit that was on it…so as I said, we took it into the house.

Child number 1 saw us coming into the kitchen with the broken branch laden with pears.  “What’s that?”  He asked, and we explained to him the sad saga of the skinny branch on the young fruit tree that was unable to bear the fruit it had been blessed with.

“Duct tape,” was his response to my sad story.

“What did you say?” was my response to his response.

“I think we can duct tape the branch back to the tree,” he replied.

“Really?” was my spoken response, as my mind thought about his solution.

I had flashbacks to his childhood.  Child number 1 had always loved duct tape.  He had found many uses for duct tape in his growing up years…some good…some not so good.  He was convinced that duct tape could fix anything.  Evidently, he still held to this belief, and out the door he headed with a large roll of duct tape and child number 5 following along behind, still carrying the broken branch.

I remained in the house, hoping against hope that perhaps the duct tape just might work and a miracle would occur and the branch would become grafted back onto our tall, but skinny pear tree, and child number 1 could look at me with a grin and say, “See, I told you it would work.”

Fast forward to the day that I’m watering the fruit trees and looking aghast at the tree with the dark brown, dead leaves.  “Oh, it’s that tree,” I realize and walk over to get a closer look.

When I get to the tree, I find an expertly executed taping job connecting a dead branch to a skinny pear tree.  It was a good try, a marvelous attempt.  I applaud the effort…and now I have to figure out how to remove the heavily duct-taped dead branch from my skinny pear tree.

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I just waved good-bye to my three men:  Bryan Darling, child number 1, and child number 3.  They won’t be gone for long…they are just going on a bike ride.  It’s not a parting that’s a big deal.  I’m just feeling very thankful right now, having watched them drive off in my husband’s truck, with bikes in the back and plenty of water and ice in cooler  jugs.

Bryan Darling just got home last night, after being gone for 2 weeks serving his Army reserve duty.  He had a long day of travel…driving an hour from the Army base to the airport, where he discovered his first travel delay, which meant that his flight at the connecting airport would also be delayed.

That last flight, the one that was supposed to bring him to the airport that is about 10 minutes from our home, where I was going to be waiting at the gate with children numbers 1-5, was cancelled.  He tried getting on other flights to other close-by airports, but to no avail.  He tried to rent a car to drive the rest of the way home, but that didn’t work either.  He was stuck on stand-by, waiting to see if he might win the “you-get-a-seat-lottery” on a late night flight.

All of our little “welcome home” plans got scrubbed…and my heart shrunk at the knowledge that he would not be arriving in our town at 5:39 central standard time.  I had been waiting for 5:39 p.m. central standard time on Friday, June 17, 2011, for two weeks now.  I think that maybe I was waiting for this specific time for a week before he left.

And I came face to face with what I know is true, but can usually mask as I go about daily routines and taking care of kids and house and phone lines and blogs and stuff…I miss him terribly when he is away.  My heart aches when he is in one place and I am in another.  I find myself having to get outside in the evenings to let God’s creation quiet and still and refresh my thoughts when it’s around the time that he is supposed to be coming home.  I really, really, really love him…and I can’t really separate who I am apart from him.

So this morning, I’m thankful that he won the “you-get-a-seat-lottery” and he walked through the airport gate at a later time last night.  I’m thankful that he told me “good-night” in person and not over the phone.  And I’m thankful for the sheepish little-boy look that I got this morning as he was watching his sons filling their water bottles and hefting their bikes into the back of the truck.  He looked at me as he remarked to them, “I would go with you, if your mom didn’t mind.”

“You should go,” I replied.

A smile spread across his face as he went in search of old athletic shoes to wear, since his are in a bag somewhere in the deep recesses of the Atlanta airport.

“Welcome home,” I thought as I watched my men drive away, on this lovely Saturday morning, where I’m pretty certain that the sun is shining a little brighter and the sky is definitely a more brilliant shade of blue.

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We had a thunderstorm last Sunday, which I am very grateful for because our area is under drought conditions…it may be under “extreme drought” conditions officially…I don’t remember exactly what the 6 o’clock news said.  Anyway, we got some much needed rain, and along with the rain came thunder and lightening.  All of this…the rain, the thunder, the lightening came while I was away from home for a short time.  When I arrived home Sunday afternoon, child number 5 asked me, “Did you hear that lightening?”  (Lightening is not the part that can be heard, but you know what he meant.)  “It was REALLY LOUD,” he continued.

And right after the REALLY LOUD lightening, we began having a REALLY LOUD buzzing sound on our phone line.  It was REALLY LOUD and annoying and kept me from hearing any conversations for a few days.  Phone conversations with the REALLY LOUD buzzing sound went something like this:

“Hello.  Hey, ________.  Sorry about my phone and this REALLY LOUD buzzing noise.  I can’t really hear you because of this REALLY LOUD buzzing noise, so can I call you back on my cell?”

End of conversation.

So yesterday, I spent time talking to a really nice person from our phone company trying to diagnose our phone problem.  As we spoke on the phone, she would have me unplug phones and modems and plug them back in to see if we could discover if the REALLY LOUD buzzing noise was an in-the-house phone equipment problem or an outside-of-the-house phone problem.  After the indoor plug testing, she told me that I would need to go outside and check the phone line box.

“Have you ever checked your line from the phone box?” she inquired.

“No,” I replied.

She instructed me to get a flat-head screwdriver and a corded phone for this task.  The screwdriver was to open the box.  The corded phone was to plug into the box to check the clarity of the line.

“You will need a phone with a cord, not a cordless phone,” the nice phone lady instructed.  “Do you have a phone with a cord?”

“Yes,” I answered, and wondered how people without phones with cords test their phone boxes.  I was then very thankful for our green wall phone that we have had for eons.  We rarely use this phone, but now it was just what we needed.

Child number 3 fetched a flat-head screwdriver and child number 4 retrieved the green wall phone with a cord.  The three of us tromped around the back of our house to the gray phone box.  I felt like a phone-company-worker-man…make that phone-company-worker-woman.

Child number 3 opened the box door with the handy dandy flat-head screwdriver and then I tried to plug in the phone…except there was no visible place to plug in the little phone pluggy thingy…I ceased feeling like a phone-company-worker-woman and just felt kinda stupid.

Child number 3 discovered that you can press down on this little place in the box and a cover swings away from a plug-in place.  There are actually two little gray doors that can swing open to the great plug-in phone box territory.

So I plugged in the plug connected to the green corded wall phone and found the connection that provided a dial tone.  I dialed the 800 number that the nice phone lady had given me…feeling a little like a phone-company-worker-woman again…and after a couple of conversations another nice phone person told me that a repair man would be stopping by within the next 24 hours.  He did and found the source of the problem…Yay!…the promise of no more REALLY LOUD buzzing noise was becoming a reality.

So after the nice phone repair man drove off in his big white phone company truck, I was doing some stuff in the house, and when I came in our kitchen/breakfast nook area, I found child number 4 jumping rope with a green jump rope.  I wondered to myself, “Where did we get that green jump rope?” and then realized that child number 4 was jumping rope with the green corded wall phone…holding the receiver in one hand and the wall unit in the other, with the long green cord bouncing up and down in between.  I yelled his name in humorous astonishment and he laughed and said that the phone cord was a great jump rope.  I removed the phone pieces from his hands, the cord in between following right along and placed the phone on the counter.

I left the room and re-entered a few minutes later to find child number 4 holding the wall unit part of the phone and child number 2 holding the receiver end, with the cord stretched way out in between them.  They were pretending to carry on a phone conversation…again humorous astonishment on my part and smiles on theirs.

I left the room again, to get my camera.  They both dropped the phone pieces away from their ears and put the phone back on the counter, as they ran away screaming something about not wanting their pictures on my blog.

They came back though and I did get a couple of pictures.

Child number 4 and child number 2 were thoroughly entertained by this “old” phone.  “Vintage” was a word I heard used.  Child number 2 said that she might even try having conversations on the green corded wall phone because it might be fun.  I no longer felt like a phone-company-worker-woman…I just felt old.

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I sit in my quiet living room this morning…before children numbers two through five are awake for the day.  I drink in the stillness of the morning…I love morning stillness.  Child number one is already up and gone, traveling back to his college town to visit friends.  I sit drinking my coffee, looking at the shoes scattered around the living room rug.  Three pairs of sneakers and two pairs of flip-flops (one of them mine…they don’t hurt my feet…see earlier post) lay there, devoid of the active feet they belong to…unable to move on their own.  Now as the momma of the house, I am very capable of being bothered by shoes not placed in their proper putting-away-places, even when they are my own…but not this morning.

Maybe it was because I had just said good-byes to my first-born, but as I look at those shoes scattered about, I see the lives they represent…my younger boys who are not as young as they used to be.  I see the getting-too-small-knock-off-crocs that my youngest recently told me need replacing…I think of his smile and his laughter and how he makes me laugh all the time.  The imitation crocs were shed close to his worn-looking Pumas, the ones he’s wearing to basketball camp, where he is discovering muscles sore from stretching and exercising…welcome to big guy work-outs…where basketball is taking on a whole new meaning.

In close proximity, to child number five’s footwear, lay child number four’s…the new flip-flops recently purchased because last year’s don’t fit too well anymore.  He has Pumas adorning the floor also…topped with smelly athletic socks from yesterday’s workouts and practices.  He’s about to be in his second year of high school…really?  But just yesterday or just a few yesterdays ago, he was bailing off the spray-painted-purple bike (see earlier post).  Now he’s taller than me and consumes much of the grocery budget all by himself.

And over by the footstool lay the cross-trainers of child number three…he owns the largest sized shoes in the house…yes, bigger than dad’s by a good bit.  He’s a senior in high school now…really??  Another senior year??…with more pictures of his growing up years to find for the yearbook.  How did this happen so fast??

This morning there are shoes scattered all over my living room rug…but I don’t mind…REALLY!!

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