Project and kid stuff I found in my office September 20, 2008

I painted my office. Now, 5.5 years after moving in, I’m down to the master bedroom and the laundry room still in ugly old builder white (something that it gives me immense pleasure to cover with color!)

Anyway, of course, the ugly part of that job is the putting everything back. The reason I procrastinated it for so long is because there is one large wall that is covered 80% by hanging shelves. Onto these shelves have gone a) everything my husband has no need of but can’t bear to part with b) everything I plan to go through / do X with “someday” or when I have time (aka never) as well as anything else that seemed it should be kept but had no other place to go. And, of course, all your usual office stuff.

So, anyway. It’s a lot o’ crap. It had been living on the floor of the master bedroom all week (to the delight of my husband, no doubt. It wasn’t in the way as that room is a fine example of wasted space in a floorplan but unfinished projects (mine, in particular) make him a little twitchy. Yesterday was cleaning lady day so it was relocated into my office (seems like maybe it’d be easier to have just gotten it gone through last week rather than moving it 2 more times first…) Today, it all either going back onto the shelves in an orderly fashion or it is going to find a new home.

I just wanted to record 2 pics here because there’s a 50/50 chance I will lose the items I’ve scanned here. The first one is a pic of a stencil I had painted on the wall in my kitchen in Jamaica. This was one of my projects that I was most proud of. And which I would never, ever attempt again. I had found some way cool pepper fabric that I made the kitchen window treatments out of (and maybe some other stuff – I don’t remember). I took a blank piece of “make your own stencil” plastic stuff, lay it over the fabric and traced about a 24″ strip of the repeating pattern of peppers. Cut it out with an exacto knife and then stenciled it to approximate the colors of the peppers in the fabric. This required buying one bottle of stencil paint in approximately every shade of red, orange, yellow, and green known to man. (This is the sort of thing for which my husband has bestowed nicknames upon me which imply that I, perhaps, get carried away with an idea from time to time).

Anyway. I loved that fabric and that stencil. I just came across the photo of the stencil on the wall.

The other thing was from a day when DS1 was in first grade, I think. That’s my best guess based on how long it’s been in my office and based on the writing. I was sick one day on the weekend. He took it upon himself to go get the stuff he needed to make me this little card. Notice the Now and Later faces. I thought it was very sweet but also very funny, and clever.

The apple and the tree September 10, 2007

More stuff from the Sent folder.  This one requires a little background.  My 4 brothers still love to keep a “torment Rose” sort of joke going to this day some 30+ years after it started.  It went something like this (although there could be numerous variations on the theme)… it’s dessert time and my job is to serve, say, cake and ice cream.  So I’d ask who wants ice cream on their cake and my brothers would proceed to make me nuts by saying “I don’t” which wasn’t what I asked.  I was only looking to hear from who did.  So, I soon adopted it to “who wants ice cream on their cake, if you answer me it means you do”.   They’d still do it, I’d still get mad. Rinse lather repeat, ad nauseum till we all (ostensibly – although the fact that they still enjoy doing this to me would seem to provide evidence otherwise) grew up.  So… here’s a note I sent to them.

 OK, the inlaws may have to ask their spouse why this might be perceived as humorous.  (I just found my voice recorder a.k.a. surrogate memory so now I can share this) So, the boys are playing I spy in the van and [DS1] is doing the spying.  [DS2&3] are not guessing it so [DS1] says “do you give up, do you give up?”  [DS2] and [DS3] say “nope”.  [DS1] says “So, don’t say anything.  Only answer if you give up.  So… do you give up”  [DS2] and [DS3] “no”.  

[DS1] “ONLY SAY SOMETHING IF YOU GIVE UP.  IF YOU SAY ANYTHING, IT MEANS YOU GIVE UP.  … So, do you give up?” 

[DS2&3] “No”.   It was very, very hard for me not to LOL.  A lot.

Idioms September 10, 2007

Collected from my email sent file that I’m busily purging as I transfer all my 4 years of unorganized crap from my computer to my new laptop.  DS1 had the most awesome teacher for first grade.  This is one of many emails I sent to her – just so she knows the concepts are sticking. 

So, [DS1] is totally into the idioms.  He talks about them all the time, points it out when one is used in conversation etc… It’s quite amusing.  So. Last night the 3 of them were on my last shredded nerve.  I’d promised to make cookies which I was trying to do and they kept coming through the kitchen pushing their noisy trucks (do you have a visual of me with my hair standing on end yet??).  So, I said “Please stop doing that out here, that noise is going to send me straight through the roof.”

[DS1] pipes up in the background “[DS3], that’s an idiom”.  LOL  I was not in the mood for his smartass self at that moment but it did crack me up.

{03/07/2007}

Now that would be a useful search engine February 27, 2007

Yesterday, after I picked DS1 up from school he had, as usual, 9000 questions for which I do not have (and probably never have had) an answer stored in my brain. Things that require knowledge of all manner of historical detail…

So, we talk about how the great thing about computers is that whatever questions he has, he can just type it into google and get all kinds of information and answers about anything he wonders about.

About 30 seconds later, I realize I’m heading on a route to DS2/DS3’s school that is not the way I wanted to go (traffic, construction, etc) so I mutter to myself “Why am I going this way?” DS1 pipes up “if you want to know, you can just type it in google”.

 Yeah. If only google worked that way. Maybe I could ask it where my phone charger is, too.

The perks of being the parent June 29, 2006

So, I’m bathing DS2 and DS3 the other night and they start talking about something about babies and then the conversation (inevitably) goes to the fact that “but I’m not a baby anymore, I’m a big boy”.  DS3 pipes up with “but after I grow and grow and grow and am finished being a grownup then I’ll go back to being a baby”.

So, I say “no, once you’re done being a baby, you won’t be a baby anymore.  But when you’re all grown up, someday you might have a baby of your own.  Then you’ll be the Daddy”.

DS2 gives me a funny look like “that’s not right”.  Then he gets the mischief look on his face and says “Then *I’ll* be in charge??”

The eye of the beholder May 16, 2006

This is a DS1 funny.  And since I’m not being productive atm anyway (unless one considers debating spending $15 to ship a $30 box of chocolates for a Fathers Day gift “productive”) thought I’d share.

About this time 3 years ago, I was just pregnant with DS2&3 (although we didn’t yet know it was a BOGO deal).  We we were introducing the idea of babies in tummies to DS1.  There was some book from the library that gave all the details including a side view / cross section kind of picture of a pregnant mommy that showed how the uterus is inside the belly and the baby is inside the uterus.

So, one day I’m reading “The Places You Will Go” to DS1 and we get to the page that says “You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing” and I’m pointing to each picture and saying what it is.  There’s a picture of a Dr. Seuss-esque guitar so I point to it and say what’s this?  And he says “That a uterus, Mommy.”  All matter-of-factly.  It’s just not something you expect to hear from the mouth of a 2 y.o.  I just about died.  Of course, then I tried to correct him, but he was not to be dissuaded from the idea that it was a uterus.  Finally I just moved on, leaving him to think what he wanted to.

No one ever told me February 17, 2006

That I had to donate my brain matter to make the placentas.

That I would turn into my mother.

That kindergarten homework would stump me.

How much it hurts to step on stray legos in the middle of the night

FTTS February 3, 2006

DS1 is home from school sick today. DS2&3 are also home because of a health forms issue which I brought on myself with my excellent procrastination skills. [I'm a bit irritated by this...]

Anyhoo. I am going to sit in DS2&3’s room to get them settled for naps. I tell DS1 he can find something quiet to do or watch something on tv while I’m in there. When I come out, he is sitting kind of curled up on the couch in the family room (no tv in there) with his face in his arm. I leave him and go into my office for awhile. I don’t hear anything so go out to suggest that he lay down since he obviously needs to.

Me: DS1, why don’t you go lay down on my bed.
DS1: (head still on his arm) But *mom* (in that 2-syllable way that is usually a precursor to an attempted negotiation) you said I could watch this.
Me: Um, DS1, there’s no tv in here.
DS1: (without missing a beat) Well, I’m watching the show in my head.
Me: Oh yeah. What show is it?
DS1: (pops up his head, gives me a blank look for a few seconds in which I realize he was really pretty much asleep) I forget.

Turning 41 January 31, 2006

(mined from the email sent box)

I did, in fact, have a great birthday.  Other than being depressed about it.  I really wasn’t done dealing with the trauma of 40 yet…  now I’m not “just turned 40″.  Now I’m “in my forties”.  Oy.  That’s way worse.  (No, I’m not aging gracefully…)

It’s wonderful to have a birthday on a weekend – I should try to arrange that every year.  I slept in till 10 (well, intermittently, being awakened each time a scrap broke out)  When I got up there were a bunch of packages on the counter with cards for me.  Of course, the boys opened everything for me.  My new robot (it’s not a vacuum cleaner, dammit!  DH insists on calling it one) is cleaning my bedroom as I type.  Sadly, my housekeeping skills are such that it has already “abandoned the mission” once and needed to be reset.  Hopefully, with more regular use it will be able to complete its missions w/o requiring interference.    (I just like referring to cleaning as “its mission”).  I’ll be anxiously awaiting the release of the bathroom cleaning attachment.  And the toy picking up attachment…

I also got this cool purple snakeskin key chain photo holder that I’d put on my list for Xmas and forgotten about so that was nice.  I always feel like a lame mother when people ask if I have pics of the kids (like in my wallet or whatever) and I never do.  So now I will.    And DS1 was so cute / sweet when I was opening stuff (or sitting there while they did…) he grabbed all the cards and ran off saying he wanted to do something to them first.  So, he comes back a bit later with the cards which have clearly been opened and reclosed.  When I open each one (which DH had the boys write in
themselves – they were so proud of themselves) there’s a dollar from DS1’s piggybank in the ones from DH and
DS2&3.  Then there was a dollar and a bunch of change in the one from DS1.  LOL.  They all got money in cards
from a few relatives for their birthday and it was a big deal so I guess he thought my cards should have some money
in them, too.  DS3 then informed me that now I could get a toy at the toy store too. 

Other highlights of the day were a *nap*  (yup, I slept in AND had a nap!!), DH completing the laundry, a really yummy
chocolate cake delivered from Buca [...] and dinner at out where the kids all behaved pretty well.   They have a margarita that was on special.  It knocked me out.  I laid down at 9 and was OUT.

So, I guess the theme of the day was sleep interspersed by chocolate.

Deductive reasoning of a 6 y.o. January 3, 2006

(from the email sent folder)

This is just a DS1 funny… I like to say that I’m the queen of the castle (by virtue of being the only female in the house).  He gets annoyed with me when I say this.  So, I tease him with it a lot. 

The other day I said something about it and he says “mom, you *not* a queen because if you *were* a *queen* you would have a castle (that last part is spoken in the “duh” tone of voice – for effect).

So, I told him I do have a castle.  That our house is my castle.  He’s quiet for a minute with a look on his face that says “that’s not right”.  Then he says it can’t be a castle because it doesn’t have a moat.