Get a grip, people.

It's  getting to be that time of the year again.

Fall is coming and people are anticipating cooler weather, and for whatever reason it seems that people just have to equate that with one thing.

Pumpkin.

Pumpkin everything.

Pumpkin all the things.

Personally, I despise the stuff. I think that the taste and texture of pumpkin is nasty, and yes, I've tried to eat it numerous times, and no, I don't give a crap how YOU make it - I don't like it.

Pumpkins are good for 3 things: jack-o-lanterns, roasting the seeds after making said jack-o-lanterns, and then smashing the aforementioned pumpkin after Halloween is over. That's it. Nothing else.

But yet, there are people who worship the almighty pumpkin. As soon as there is a hint of fall weather (or even before), their eyes glaze over, drool runs down their chins, and all they can think about is adding pumpkin to everything edible and/or drinkable.

They act as though they can only get their beloved squash for a limited time each year - which for the most part is true - if they're going to wait for one to ripen on a vine in their garden. However, with the dozens of people I know who are afflicted with pumpkinitis every year, not a single one of them stands in their garden, guarding the plant, watering it, weeding it, talking to it, waiting patiently for it to ripen so that it can be harvested and cut open and gutted for its (supposedly) delicious flesh. Instead, they do what most people do.

They go to the store and they buy a can of it.

See that? I bought that can of pumpkin last year specifically to make a point. It's been sitting on the shelf in my pantry for close to a year so that on the off chance I decided that I wanted a pumpkin pie in June, I could make it.

Want a pumpkin roll in February? Well, by golly, whip that can of pumpkin off of the shelf and make it!

You want pumpkin cupcakes in May? Crack that can open.

Got a hankerin' for some pumpkin pancakes for a delicious brunch in December? Guess what? YOU CAN MAKE THEM ANY TIME YOU WANT THEM.

You don't know how to cook/bake, or you don't want to? I bet you can find another pumpkinitis victim who would gladly do it.

Oh, but then there are the people who think that their coffee needs to be laced with the crap too. Pumpkin spiced lattes and cappucinos and whatever - well guess what? Some of them DON'T EVEN CONTAIN PUMPKIN!!! They contain "pumpkin spice" which is usually a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and allspice (all of which are available at any grocery store *GASP* year round). If you don't want to make your own "pumpkin spice" mixture - you can buy it already made and sprinkle it in your drinks until your little heart is content.

Now from what I understand, some of these places that sell these grossly overpriced fluffy coffee drinks are now adding 'real' pumpkin to them - but a quick google search brought up about eleventy bajillion recipes for drinks with pumpkin in them - so if I had the desire to ruin a perfectly good drink, I could do it myself for a lot less money. And you can too!

Of course it doesn't stop there. Corporations feed into the pumpkinitis epidemic by adding the crap (or some imitation of it) to everything that is prepackaged whether we want it or not - Oreos and M&Ms and peeps and salsa and candles and soap and pudding and bagels and marshmallows and air freshener and cookies and soda and toothpaste and ice cream and it just. keeps. going. on.

I even found an image for pumpkin spice flavored condoms - which I found are NOT a real product. But I wouldn't be surprised to see them on the shelf at the local drugstore any time now because people will somehow feel that they just can't live without them.

How long until we have pumpkin scented toilet paper?

Seriously people. You can buy pumpkin year round. If you love the food that much, make it whenever you want to make it. SEIZE THE FREAKING DAY and make a pumpkin pie in March if it will make you happy. If you love the candles so much and they're not available at your favorite candle store year round, then stock up on them in October when they are on the shelves. Burn them whenever you want to BECAUSE YOU CAN. All of this prepackaged food has the shelf life of Twinkies anyway, so if you love the Oreos that much, buy a case of them and stash them in the cupboard to enjoy year round.

Stop acting like you can only get the crap for 2.5 seconds out of the year.

Oh look - I still have over
15 months to use it.

Bit by bit.

Know what I hate?

(Besides pumpkin flavored anything, that is....)

I hate the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Whether it's the unending list of things to do, financial obligations, scheduling conflicts, or emotional crap, I don't like to be overwhelmed. I like simple. I like easy.

Unfortunately, life isn't always simple or easy.

We came back from vacation a few days ago, and I've been trying to get things done ever since. There's so much laundry and cleaning and sorting and catching up to do, and even with my plethora of lists, I'm still having trouble figuring out where to start.

I spent the majority of the day yesterday mowing the grass. It was wet and overgrown and awful. A job that usually takes less than 2 hours and about a half a tank of gas took me over 5 hours and about 2 1/2 tanks because the grass was so high that it kept stalling the engine. It was a nightmare, but I got it done.

The other really big thing that has been nagging at me, waiting for me to get it done, was weeding the garden. I did it right before we left in the hopes that it wouldn't be so bad when we got home. But, we apparently got upwards of 5" of rain and the weeds went crazy. What makes it more difficult is that we dug this garden this year, so the grass keeps growing back in from the edges.

I knew I had to get it done today, no matter what. I was tired, I was sore, and I was in no mood to do it, but I forced myself to get out there and do it. The ground was just wet enough that the weeds weren't hard to pull, so once I got started, it went fairly quickly and easily, and although I only planned to do about half of it tonight, after about 3 hours I had it completely done.

I worked on it alone, with Alex and Daniel occasionally coming outside to tattle whine give me progress reports on getting their laundry put away. As I worked, I replayed various scenes from our vacation.

I kept thinking about the devastating scene with my mother, replaying it over and over again, until I couldn't tell if I had sweat or tears dripping off of my face - or maybe a little bit of both. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what happened, and so far I'm not succeeding at it at all.

The only good thing about feeling so helpless with that situation right now is that I can flip that good ol' coping mechanism switch. You know the one - it has that crazy label on it that says "If you can't control one aspect of your life, push this button and you can control something else instead".

Eventually I'll be able to accept this new normal with my mother and get past it and deal with it better than I am right now. At this moment I might not be able to get a grip on the emotional baggage that came back with me a few days ago, but I can sure as hell make sure that there are no weeds in my garden.

Getting fresh snacks is a bonus.

Observations from the day....

Today has been insane-crazy. I'm pretty sure that we reached a whole new level of crazy over the past 24 hours, and it's only going to get worse.

It started with a phone call from my mother to let me know that my father had to be admitted to the hospital after what was supposed to be an outpatient procedure this morning. It's nothing serious serious, but he's 88 years old so there are always risks. They only expect to keep him overnight, but I've learned to brace myself for more bad news when things like this happen. Of course Mom is getting stressed out because we're having our big family reunion next weekend - I told her not to worry and that we'd try to get on the road earlier than planned so that we can get there Monday instead of Tuesday.

Of course, since we had originally planned to leave Monday evening and we now want to try to leave Sunday morning, we've basically lost 2 days of prep time. We haven't started packing anything yet, laundry isn't done, we don't have food to take on the road, and we are just totally not ready.

Along with all of that, there's approximately eleventy bajillion things to do around the house before we can walk out the door and leave it for almost 2 full weeks. The garden still needs to be weeded, the grass needs to be mowed, there's a huge pile of tree limbs that really need to go away to prevent rodents from taking up residency before we get back, the house needs to be cleaned, mouse traps need to be set now that those little a-holes have decided that they like my pantry, I need to get the house key to the neighbors, and so many other things that I haven't even thought about yet.

And here I thought that I was being so efficient by getting the oil changed in the van the other day. "Woohoo, look at me go, getting it done ahead of time." Ha.

Of course while this is all going on, we have a major opportunity for recruitment for Scouts tomorrow and I've been running around all week getting stuff ready for that, including taking about 3 hours to get set up for it this evening (not to mention making some really generic derby cars for people to play with at the event) so that I can maybe sleep a little bit later tomorrow - but basically my whole day tomorrow is shot too.

I have no idea how we're going to get all of this done. None.

But I just keep reminding myself that it will get done. I might lose my mind in the process, but it will get done.

Why is it that there is one wheel missing every time I buy more
than one derby car? 

Starting to weed the garden as the sun goes down was an amazing
 moment of peace in a day of chaos and stress.

By about 9:15pm it was too dark to see what I was doing,
but at least I got everything watered and started weeding.
And it was still 99 degrees outside.

The bats come out around 9pm. And it's really hard to
catch a picture of them with a cell phone.

If it was a full moon, I might have had enough light
to keep weeding.

Checking things off....

Today was a crazy busy day.

I managed to get the entire front flowerbed weeded, which was more of a challenge than I had thought it was going to be - but it's done and shouldn't be completely overrun with weeds before we get back from vacation.

Hopefully at some point there will be more flowers in there than dirt, but until everything that I planted establishes itself, it's going to continue to look relatively pathetic.

After I got done with that and got a shower, I took Alex and Daniel into town for their very first official eye exams. I figured that since the older three kids now all wear glasses, I might as well get these guys checked out too.

Luckily, we escaped from that appointment without any new glasses - which actually disappointed the boys. I, however, did a happy dance on the way out the door.

We then ran a ton of errands - stopped at a paint store to pick up some paint chips for a friend, ran to the library to make a whole ton of copies of stuff for Scouts for a big recruitment thing this weekend, got the oil changed in the van, grabbed some (late) lunch, picked up a few things at the store, got gas, stopped and got a new air filter for the van, and then came home to keep working on clearing the fabric pile out of the garage.

Oh. The air filter.

The oil change place wanted $35 to put a new air filter in the van. I might have laughed at the poor kid who was working there when he told me the price. So I bought one (granted, it's still a stupid expensive filter) and changed it myself when we got home.

In the meantime, The Dude went to get the Scout trailer to bring it over here and stash it in my garage as we had planned. I was still out there going through the fabric and suddenly a thought came to me - I walked to the open garage door and reached up and touched the top of the opening with my hand without even stretching (and I'm short). I pulled up the pictures of the trailer on my phone and tried to judge the height of it.

My fear was right.

So now, the garage is cleaned out for a trailer that's sitting in my driveway. Because that's my luck. But the latch has been repaired and it's here and safe for the time being, and I'll work on going through all of the stuff over the next few days and get that all sorted out.

But.....other than balancing the checkbooks and washing the rest of the fabric (those are at the bottom of the list) I've gotten everything done that I set out to do today.

That means one thing - time to make tomorrow's list.

I'm so ready for vacation.....3000 miles in a vehicle with 5 kids will be a cake walk after this week.

Take a step back

We had some pretty nasty storms yesterday here in our neck of the woods. They didn't last long, but they packed a punch with a lot of wind and rain. We got stuck driving home in it, and for the first time in a long time I debated pulling over until I could see better, but at that point I was only a few blocks from home and wanted to get the boys inside in case it started hailing.

Luckily, the weather passed quickly, and we got cleaned up and headed out to Scouts and then to the library for a bit. We didn't get home until close to 9pm, and after the boys went to bed I went downstairs to work on a sewing project.

This morning, when I finally rolled myself out of bed, I looked out the window of my bedroom like I usually do - and then without even stopping in the bathroom I put my crocs on and went out to my garden.

Or what was left of my garden.

A good sized branch came out of the neighbor's tree and landed partially on their fence and partially on my garden. I couldn't really tell at that point how much damage there was,but I knew that the only way I was going to find out was to get in there and start cutting. I went back inside, went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and went over to the neighbor's house to make sure that they were even aware of the situation.

She came to the door and said that yes, they knew, but they didn't know how bad it was on my side. I showed her the picture that I took and she gasped in shock. I told her that I would clean up my side as best I could, and she said that they had already called their son (they are both in their mid to late 80's) and hopefully he would come over after work to help clean up the mess. I assured her that I would help clean it up since I knew that they would be unable to help.

Then Alex and I started cleaning. We got the clippers and started cutting the smaller branches to remove them to see just how much damage had been done to the garden. Once we got the worst of the branches out, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the damage was contained to one potato plant and possibly a raspberry bush.  That was it.

I was thrilled.

We went ahead and did a quick weeding since the ground was wet, and then he helped me to stake up some of the more wobbly plants and we piled all of the branches we had cut into the wheelbarrow.

There were a lot of branches. The wheelbarrow was completely covered.

But then I took a few steps back and looked again.

And a few more steps.

A few more steps back, and I started to see just how much bigger the problem really could have been.

And at the same time, I started to realize how small the problem really was in the grand scheme of things.

Perspective. 

Sometimes it takes a blinding storm to see things a little more clearly.

The house and stuff

As a continuation of the questions that people asked the other night, I figured I'd go with the topic of the house.

Honestly, this whole I Now Own A House thing is still so surreal. I catch myself smiling as I drive down the street toward it, thinking "Hey, that's a pretty cool house over there on the corner. Well, would you look at that? It's mine." Seriously. I have conversations in my head like that on a regular basis.

"I'm going to stroll down my hallway into my bedroom past my walk-in closet and go to my bathroom to use my toilet." Then I sit on the toilet and look around and think "Yeah, I think I'm going to rip this tile out of here and just paint the walls - because you know, it's MINE."

"I think I'm going to rip this hideous bush out of the flowerbed and plant something else, just because I can."

"I'm going to put my garden over there. No, I want my clothesline there. The garden can go over THERE."

It's an odd feeling, this MINE thing.

But at the same time, it brings a whole host of frustrations. I had help with the actual move, as in relocating stuff from the old house to here. But that's pretty much where it ended. The Dude hasn't been able to do a whole bunch because of medical stuff, so the majority of it has been on me. For the most part, I'm ok with that. I'm a bit of a control freak about some a lot of most stuff. What's hard though is when I ask for help, and there's no one there for whatever reason. Tonight, with Alex's help (you know, the 8 year old who just had a skin graft done on Monday?) I was able to move the pool table out of the way so that I could get the floor underneath it painted - I have been trying and trying to get help with that, but .... yeah. It's moved. The floor is primed. I should be able to paint it and get the pool table put back by the end of the weekend, with or without help from a grown-up. I also pulled everything out of Jared's room and primed his floor so that I can get his room done too.

(And before any of my local friends get offended, this isn't aimed at anyone in particular. Got it?)

I still have a ton of work to do yet. I have to finish the basement, which involves a few more steps to getting the floor done, then moving the massive pile of craft stuff out of the living room and sorting it out down there, to actually getting my craft stuff set up so that I can catch up on projects whose due dates passed MONTHS ago - literally. I am desperate to get my basement done just so that I can catch up on everything and get stuff out to the people who are waiting for it.

But honestly, looking around this place makes me realize again how lucky I am. I talked the other night about how I can afford to own a house and even though I know that for at least right now, I don't have to worry about having the money to make the payment every month, I feel a responsibility to make improvements on the house to make it acceptable (in my eyes) for the kids. I have a fear that something big is going to break and I'm not going to have the money to fix it. For example, the central air is acting a little wonky right now - and I'm terrified that it's going to cost me a lot of money when realistically it's probably something stupid. But I'm doing something amazing here - I bought a house. Me. Just me. Alone. It's mine.

And that, to me, is so amazing that I can't even begin to explain. I just can't. There are no words.

At the same time though, while it's mine on paper - realistically The Dude and I bought it together. We looked at every house together and we discussed everything and made every decision as a couple. He doesn't live here - yet - but ultimately, this is going to be the home that we share. He has had a bunch of health issues over the past few months that have put some kinks in some of our plans - but the plans are still there. For now, I am doing the physical stuff - and he is my biggest and loudest cheerleader. We are working toward combining households, but there are so many things that have to happen in order to get there.

Finally for the million dollar question about whether or not we'll ever get married.....I still say never.

(If you want some background on that, you can check out this post and then this post to get the basic understanding.)

Marriage still terrifies me to no end. The Dude and I have now been together for almost 2 1/2 years, and life is good. We don't get to spend nearly enough time together for a myriad of reasons, and I'll be totally honest and admit that I've been picking fights with him - but I'm going to blame it on stress and not seeing enough of each other and stress. I get pissed, I get unreasonable and obnoxious and hateful and yell at him, and he calls me out on it and then we kiss and make up. And then I sit here and wonder "what just happened?" and "why is he still here?" Bottom line is that he IS still here - and that in and of itself is terrifying to me because it's making me think that maybe he really IS planning on sticking around for the long haul.

Even after 2 1/2 years, I'm still getting used to the idea that he's not going to walk away any time soon - but that's still not enough to convince my overly dense head that he might just stay around forever.

One day at a time. It applies to so many things right now.

Trashy gardening

It was quite a productive day.

I had to get up early to feed the kids before I went to work and as I was making the waffles, The Dude came flying into the house muttering something about having to go back to the store. It took me a few seconds to figure out what he was talking about, but as it turned out he had stopped at the store across the street to get some soda on his way over here to watch the kids, and his truck died. Again.

Long story short, we ended up pushing it from the parking lot across the street into my driveway so that he could figure out what to do with it while I was at work. I got dressed and took off for my shift.

By the time I got home, he had pretty much figured it out, and it appeared to be a relatively easy (and cheap) fix, so the kids and I followed him to the auto parts store, he got the stuff that he needed, swapped out the stuff in the parking lot, we followed him home, and then we came home.

Once we got home, I decided that it was too nice to stay inside, so the kids played around on their bikes while I finally got started on my "garden" (after a quick trip to WalHell). I can get a hold of these wonderful green buckets from work, and since I can't have a real garden here at the house, they will have to do - and once we find our new house we'll be able to take the stuff with us. You know, assuming that it actually grows.

Making drain holes - not so easy with a drill with
dead batteries.

Our "trashy garden" - peppers, squash, gourds....and something
else that I can't think of off the top of my head.
(I know, squash and gourds might not work in the buckets.
It's an experiment.)

Another experiment - morning glories in bags. I'm hoping that they'll
grow and vine and I can just wrap them around
the hooks. So far, they're growing.

Rosebush that was here when we moved in to the house.
It's going nuts this year.

Love the color.

Seeds sprouting in pots on my other porch.

After the outside productivity was done, we came in and the kids started to get baths while I made supper. During that time, I decided that no matter what, the kitchen was getting cleaned tonight. I just couldn't take it anymore. I have been totally slacking in there, and when I do that things just start to spiral out of control. You know, the dishes are dirty, so we might as well go out to eat instead, blah blah blah. Anyway, I cleaned it tonight. And I dumped all of the moldy leftovers in the fridge (that was scary). And I washed all of the dishes.

Before...

After.....first time in months that I've actually had the runner
on the table....and visible.

The silly picture that made my page go nutty tonight.

Oops. There's a dirty glass that I forgot.

So yeah, there's proof that my house does get trashed (don't they all?) but I did clean it up once I got started. Now I just have to keep up with it so that it doesn't get that bad again.

Who am I trying to kid? It'll be just as bad again within days.

There are days...

...when I seriously doubt my sanity.

...when I wonder if I'm really cut out for this whole motherhood thing.

...when my kids push me to the brink and I come *thisclose* to totally losing it.

...when it seems like the universe is out to get me and wants nothing more than to beat me down just a little bit harder.

...when all I want to do is crawl into bed and hide from the world.

I'm not going to lie. I'm going through a rough time right now. There are a lot of things that just aren't making my life very easy. There is so much drama right now that there are days when I seriously just want to run away from it all and hide somewhere warm and tropical with a fruity drink beer in my hand on a beach somewhere.

But the reality is that I can't do that. I can't go anywhere. I have to deal with the crap that is thrown at me - and as it's being thrown I have to decide if I want to catch it, drop it, or throw it back at someone. There are people who are making life difficult for me. There are situations that are beyond my control. There are choices to make and plans to implement and things to do - but somehow something always manages to get in the way.

Realistically - I know I'll get through it. I'm not sure how right now, but I know that I will. One, because I'm stubborn as hell and two, because I have no choice in the matter.

Kind of like my tulips that got frozen the other day - I was pretty sure that they were goners, but they survived. Maybe I need to take a lesson from the flowers.

I'm back! So...you want to see the quilt?

I've been kind of MIA for the past couple of days - my computer monitor decided to die on me, and while I could still play around on my facebook page, it's just way too hard to blog from my phone. So I just took a break. But now, thanks to The Dude and his spare monitor, I'm back up and running!


I did finish the quilt, and I delivered it yesterday. But, before I show you that, I have a couple of other fun pictures first.

 This is my crazy rosebush in front of my house. Apparently, the rose did not get the memo that it's already mid-October and we've already had below-freezing temperatures a couple of times. I don't know why I'm surprised - I have pictures of it blooming last year (or was it the year before?) in November or December.  Silly thing.

For a more seasonal look, my mums are also blooming. They actually don't look that fabulous though - I had planted them last year in pots on my front steps, and never did anything with them. I figured that I'd just have to replace them every year, because I didn't realize that mums were the kind that came back (I can never remember if those are annuals or perennials). Anyway, they started growing again this spring, and they're really tall and scraggly because I didn't pinch them back or whatever it is that I was supposed to do with them. Oh well - live and learn, right?

Later this afternoon, we heard a bunch of sirens - which to be honest, is not that common in this town. I looked outside and realized that there was something happening, but I couldn't tell what it was at first. And then I heard the roar!

Yep, it's Toy Run time again!

Hundreds of bikers were cruising past, so of course the kids and I ran out to watch. They definitely had a beautiful day weather-wise to do it.

Kids walking back to the house after watching
the Toy Run.

So, the quilt.

It's done. I'm not 100% happy with it, because of the issues that I had with my machines. But, I was able to borrow another machine from a friend and got the quilting done on it. But I think all in all, in came out ok.

Here are a few shots of it in progress:

Still on the frame, but done with the quilting.

Quilting done, off of the frame, ready to be trimmed.

Trimming the batting/backing to size

Attaching the binding.

And, voila! Done.

I miss my clothesline. That always made it so much easier to get pictures of finished quilts! But many thanks to The Dude, Emily, and Jared for helping me to get this shot!

Also, I did shoot some video of the actual quilting process so that those who were wondering could get a better idea of how the whole quilting frame gizmo worked - BUT, because of my slow internet connection, it is taking well over an hour to upload a 5ish minute video. Once that's uploaded though, I will post that as well. And if you want to see it, and don't see me post it, feel free to nag me about it.

A quickie

So it's late, and I'm just getting started on this, because I've had a million and one distractions today.

First off, I had a request for a picture of my "bucket garden" so here it is...super simple. Take a couple of old laundry detergent buckets, scrub them out really good, drill some holes in the bottom for drainage, fill with potting soil, plant some plants, and voila! A bucket garden. My plants don't look so hot in this picture because they had wilted and hadn't quite recovered after being watered and before taking the picture....and again, it's been really hot here.

As the tomato plants got to be too tall to stand, I just tied them to the porch railing. It might look a little ghetto, but it works. I can't plant anything in the ground here because my neighbor has walnut trees and apparently the nuts release some kind of toxin or something into the soil, and it makes it nearly impossible to grow anything. Plus, I don't have any sort of outside water source on my house - so every day, I'm carrying huge cups of water out to dump in the buckets. It's a pain, but again, it works.

I was finally able to make arrangements with the car dealership to get my van in there to get it diagnosed. It's been more than 3 weeks since it died, and I want it back. And running. Anyway, a friend of ours came over and he and The Dude towed it to the dealership this evening. Hopefully they'll call tomorrow with a nice verdict. I don't want an ugly verdict.

And finally....apparently this is what the boys think I mean when I say "go potty, brush your teeth, and go to bed". Not quite what I had in mind....yes, they are asleep. Yes, Alex is sleeping while he is half standing up. And yes, they are both snoring.