I'm All Caught Up!!!

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

What a scream. I just thought I'd see what it sounded like to say such a thing. At this moment, it's absolutely hilarious. No, not really. I'm not laughing. I'm sighing. I don't think I'm EVER going to be caught up--and I'm not even referring to my blog. We all KNOW I'll never get or stay caught up on that.

I'm talking about the house. I don't know what my problem is, but I just can't seem to GET THERE. It's like I work and I work and I work, but no matter what happens I just can't seem to get the whole house whipped into shape and looking good all at the same time. I conquer one thing (the floors or the laundry or the kitchen or WHATEVER), but then while I'm working on the next project the thing I just completed seems to self-destruct. Of course, a house doesn't wreck itself so I can only blame the actual culprits--MY CHILDREN. I'm going to hurt them all. We go through waves of this every so often where it's like they completely forget anything they've ever been taught and they live like a bunch of piggly little hoodlums who've had no upbringing whatsoever. It makes me crazy!!! I've obviously failed in this department of child training. And it seems like it's worse right now than it's ever been before. Either that or I have an extra hard time keeping up with a house that has more than one floor. Nah... let's blame the kids. :-)

Sister Powell is right. Her rug is horrible. It needs vacuumed eight times a day. Of course, I'm more likely to vacuum every eight days than I am to vacuum eight times a day. HA! Seriously, you vacuum this thing and within the hour--even if everybody is sitting still and not walking on it, it seems!--it just starts collecting STUFF again and looks like you haven't vacuumed in a week. Crazy. So not only do I have piggly children, but I also have a rug that seems to serve the sole purpose of making me feel like a failure as a house keeper even when I haven't been--which is rare enough already.

Then there's the laundry. I'm a once-a-week launderer. Monday is laundry day. In theory (!), I get all of the laundry done on Monday and all of the ironing done by Tuesday, then I'm all caught up for the week and don't think about it again until the following Monday. Not anymore. For one thing, I'm paranoid about the humidity here (which really hasn't been all that bad as of yet) and I just know that our clothes (or worse, the Powell's towels) are going to get all mildewy and smelly and nasty if I don't stay on top of things. I've noticed that the Powells don't have a lot of towel racks or hooks around. Does that mean that you are supposed to wash the towels after each use instead of hanging them to dry and use again? Besides that, the kids sweat and stink here. They've been starting to get smellier even before we came here, but now I smell dirty, sweaty little boys all the time. And their clothes feel damp and soggy so I feel like I have to wash those, too. So does this mean that I need to make the smelly children shower, then wash all of the towels they just used as well as their soggy, smelly clothes... EVERY NIGHT?! Surely not! I'm simply not that good of a mother, I can tell you now! No, I'm the kind of mother who DOESN'T do that every night, but then feels like a dismal failure because I didn't (at least the laundry part--the smelly kids DO have to shower) and wonders if the clothes or towels will be okay until I get to them. ~sigh~ It means I feel like a failure all the time. Like there are things that should have been done today that didn't get done. It was much nicer when I KNEW I didn't need to do any laundry until the next Monday, but now I feel like I OUGHT to be doing it every day--so there's never any way to get caught up and feel like you're on top of that job. You're just stuck with it being undone day after day after day--even if you DO it every day, there's still more that needs done. ~sigh~ I hate jobs that don't end. I have to feel like I'm ACCOMPLISHING something, like I'm WINNING and when we come to the END I will have CONQUERED the job and it will be OVER. It makes me mad to lose to the laundry. ~sigh~ It's just so wrong.

One area of success for me: I've been cooking for my family again! Wa-Hoo!!! I don't know why, but I've had a terrible time cooking since we've been here. We were here for three or four weeks before going back to New Mexico and I only cooked a few times! It's like I felt lost in somebody else's kitchen without my normal stuff. Apparently I'm not nearly as flexible a person as I've always thought I was. Ha! Anyway, since going to New Mexico, closing on our house, getting back here, and moving all of my cleaning supplies in under the sink (ha!), I suddenly feel SOOOOO much more at home here and have been functioning more like I'm at home than like I'm a guest at somebody else's house. I made lasagna a few days ago, homemade chicken and noodles yesterday, and Joe's favorite tostada casserole tonight. It feels good and "familiar" to be eating some of the things our family is used to eating. I even made dessert tonight and though it looks nothing like the picture (!) it tastes great. I've never tried this recipe, though I clipped it out of a magazine a year or two ago. I can't remember what they're called, but it's a layer of chocolate cake-type stuff on the bottom, then marshmallow in the middle, then the top layer is melted chocolate chips, peanut butter, and Rice Krispy treats mixed together. You chill 'em, then cut them into bars. They taste GREAT, but the marshmallow part is pretty chewy. I'm going to blame Sister Powell's marshmallows for that. Ha! The recipe called for mini-marshmallows (they melt quickly and easily), but Sister Powell had some GIANT ones here (really, I'd never seen anything like it--"They've got food as big as your head!!!" Ha!) so I tried to melt them and use them. Now I know better for next time. ;-) They still taste great, you just have to chew more. Ha!

Hhmmm. I was supposed to be writing and catching up on our New Mexico trip. ~sigh~ Don't know if I'm up for that tonight. I have LAUNDRY to do, you know. Wet towels in the washer needing to be transferred to the dryer. This is my second load today because I let the kids go "swimming" in the creek this morning. We got home and I made the boys strip down to their ghandi's so I could hose them off, then sent them inside to finish getting cleaned up and dried off, then had Katie come around to the back of the house for her hosing. I looked for ticks while I was hosing them, but Joe still found two later on. The ticks here are really grossing me out. Worst of all, this afternoon when I was sooooo tired and laid down on the couch to take a nap and was just about asleep... I felt something crawling on me under my shirt. Bleagh!!!! It was a tick, of course. I can't decide which creeps me out more, FEELING one crawl across me, or finding one later on that's already attached itself. ~shudder~ Either way, it's beyond nasty!!! I'm about ready to go with Sister Washburn's suggestion and go buy some tick collars in bulk at Sam's Club--we can all wear them around our necks and each limb of our bodies! Charlie is, to date, the ONLY one we've never found a tick on, so that little red collar of his must do the trick. I WANT ONE IN THE WORST WAY.

Anyway, back to the kids' adventure this morning... They all begged to go "swimming" because it was "so hot" this morning. Truth be known, they've been dying to have a chance to get in the water with permission so they won't have to be punished for it later, like they have been every other time. ;-) I figured this was as good a day as any. You can look wa-a-a-a-a-ay down from the back deck of the Powell's house and see the creek, but I'd never actually ventured down there personally. And I had no intention of it. Ha! It's a very, very steep hill, covered in leaves the whole way (making it very slippery--and providing good cover for venomous snakes to lurk in, something else that creeps me out if I think about it too much) and not very easy to get to. But the biggest reason I'd never gone is because I knew I would then have to climb back UP the hill, something that looked simply dreadful! Ha! So when the kids wanted to swim this morning I told 'em to go to it and be careful. I put Joe in charge, instructing the others that they'd better listen to him if he said they were getting too far away or into a dangerous area or something like that. We only have two life vests, but they said they'd take turns. Besides, my kids are such chickens around water I knew they wouldn't be brave enough to go anywhere even slightly dangerous anyway. Still, after they left James said something like, "I can't believe we just sent our kids down there to swim all alone without any supervision." ~sigh~ So now I'm not only failing as a house keeper, I'm also failing as a mother. I hate feeling like a failure!!! So what did I do??? Exactly what James knew I would do when he made the statement. I went trudging (actually slipping, sliding and grabbing desperately for tree limbs) down to the creek to check on the kids. There. Now I've succeeded at something. I'm suddenly a good Mom. :-) Besides, I thought to take my camera with me for a change (wow!), so now I have pictures to share. Not great pictures, but pictures nonetheless. And a video clip, though I'm sure it's probably quite boring for anybody except a grandparent. The creek isn't nearly as exciting as the kids seem to think it is (it's probably two feet deep at it's worst right now--ha!), but don't tell them that. They think it's a terrific adventure. I was laughing real hard on the inside at the thought of them wearing those life vests in such calm, shallow water. They'd have to try real, real, REAL hard to drown down there, I'm telling ya'! After a good storm the creek transforms into a raging river and is quite dangerous, I'm sure, but at this point it's nothing more than an overgrown kiddy pool. Perfect. :-)

When I first got down there I found all three kids hanging out on this fallen tree, talking. I love catching them getting along when they don't know I'm watching. :-)

Had to edit this picture a bit because Katie swims in her "bloomers." Since she doesn't wear them in public (they are below her knees, but still not decent to be seen in by the masses) I can't very well post her wearing them on my blog. I'm always surprised at the pictures people post on the Internet. "...All things decently and in order" comes to mind. :-)



I took the Charles with me to check on the kids. The hill was too steep for him and I had to carry him down most of the way (I know--pitiful), but he loved it once we got there. This is what he looks like all the time around here--loose, but dragging a leash behind him "just in case."

I'm so disappointed that this picture is so deceiving. I took this while standing down at the creek, looking up at the Powell's house. In the picture it looks like a nice, gentle slope. HA. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

This picture captures the angle of the hill a little better. Brother Powell set up a rope path to assist in climbing back up to the house. I'm sooooo glad--I would've had to crawl on all fours if it wasn't for that rope! Ha!

Here's the video clip, though most of you might think it a bit boring. The greatest thing about it is watching Sam shiver (his bottom and legs were cracking me up!) and listening to Joe try to talk through chattering teeth. :-)

And one last shot before I go. This was taken on our way home from church one night recently. Sam was sooooo tired, but it's terrible trying to wake him up when we get home, then get him coherent enough to change clothes so he can go to bed. So I was trying real hard to keep him awake. I talked to him, teased him, tickled him, and took several pictures of him hoping the flash would wake him. He tried real hard to stay awake and would giggle here and there at my efforts, but he just couldn't handle it. We lost him before we made it all the way home.

And that's it. Got another long day planned tomorrow. We'll get up early and try to leave plenty early (takes real effort for us) for church, then after morning service we've got appointments set up to see two For Sale By Owner houses, as well as do about eight drive-by's of other houses to check out the settings and areas and all that stuff. That should fill our afternoon until time for evening service, after which we'll have a hard time keeping Sam awake until we make it back home again. Maybe I'll just join him and nap, too. :-)