month of mondays

A month of Mondays is a good way to describe all the annoying, annoying shit that is happening to me this June. None of it so horribly awful on its own (although what happened with my car almost was)- and even all together it's not the end of the world, but when it's one after another, after another, after..

It is making me want to just lay down and quit. I really am just so over it- let's move on to July already can we?

First there was the start of the ants and the floor cleaning incident. Then, last Sunday my car..

I stopped at a red light. Sort of, but not like I thought I would. So I let my car roll forward a few more feet. And when I stopped that time.. the brake pedal went all the way to the floor and I stopped soooooo sllllooooowly. (It's a whole nother level of terror when you are suddenly driving a car without brakes and your child in the back.)

I made it over to a parking lot, going about 5 mph, and that was the end of that- my car was towed to the garage. It was partially repaired on Tuesday. Yes, partially- but still fully costly.

Since there is more repairing to still be done (the mechanic's exact words were "your brakes are SO rotted. SO rotted") I don't feel safe driving it (and the response when I specifically asked wasn't reassuring).

On Monday, I took Jason to work so I could have a car for Lily school purposes and to get my former Sunday errands done, but I only got one stop in.

And even that almost didn't happen. Right before I got out of the car- I picked up my bag and.. what? Liquid everywhere. All over my lap.. all over the seat. Apparently before I put Noah's juice in the bag, I hadn't screwed the cap on well enough. My pants were drenched in apple juice- looking quite a lot like I just hadn't made it to the bathroom in time.

So I tied my jacket around my waist and went into the store anyway. (Because I will not be deterred!) It covered up most of the wetness, but there was so much spilled juice that it had run down my legs as well- and there was nothing I could do to cover that. I just pretended it wasn't there.

My usually calm Noah, fussed and cried the entire trip. Once in the car.. I gave him what was left of the juice, but that only kept him calm for a few minutes. Then he screamed. Hysterically. Like an alligator was eating him. For the entire drive on the highway. Twenty minutes?

I kept handing things back to him.. his binky, my scarf, Lily's sunglasses. Music on. Music off. Singing, no singing. Clapping. Talking. Shushing. Twisting my arm around behind me and trying to rock his car seat. But nothing worked. I finally pulled over. Picked up everything he'd thrown and gave him back the empty juice bottle. Which bought me about 20 seconds? Before he fully realized it hadn't magically refilled itself. And then started screaming like a maniac again. It was so awesome.

No it was not.

The rest of the week was full of the same awesomeness.

My children are fully intent on sleeping in opposite shifts. The ceiling in the living room is leaking. The ants started to show up again over the weekend. Wait, did I mention that they are carpenter ants? I killed 20 of them on Monday- four by 7:30am and I knew it was going to be a bad day. One of them was nearly an inch long- and I was fully horrified. Which led to tons more cleaning.

Tuesday brought the news that my car didn't have an appointment until Friday (nearly 2 weeks without a car). Some "fun" at the bank.. to the extent that I thought I was going to punch someone. And then my hard drive died.

It started out like.. "oh hey, that's weird, look at my screen." And ended with one hard drive being removed and another having to be installed. I've gone through 2 hard drives in less than a year now. Jason wanted to know if I was taking my MacBook on roller coasters or trampolines. "Both," I told him.

Wednesday. (Ah, yes, that's today.) I planned to finally get to the grocery store. I took Lily to school and then went home to get Noah and Jason. About 10 minutes after I got home, Lily's school called. Apparently she was vomiting and had a fever. She had a little cough when I dropped her off, but I noticed one of her friends did as well this morning. Lily is always a little warm and when she coughs because she doesn't blow her nose enough.. well, it's gotta come out somewhere. But what was I going to do argue contexts with them?

So on the way to take Jason to work, I picked up Lily from school. "She's not complaining that she doesn't feel good, but.." was the first thing her teacher said to me. I smiled, collected my child, and walked out. Thankfully Lily didn't seem mad, just confused.

I asked Lily how she felt- "fine" she tells me. And then if she really threw-up or if she just spit up saliva/whatever because she was coughing/didn't blow her nose- she tells me it was the later. "Ya, I figured," I said and I rolled my eyes at no one in particular.

I am so excited for all the other awesomeness that the next eleven days are going to bring.

No I'm not.

(As I'm writing this I keep remembering other things that happened. I was staring at the ceiling trying to think, and then.. oh ya.. that big stain.. the ceiling is leaking again. I quit.)

what we did

1. I started buying myself flowers. Cus, I mean.. it seemed like I should.
2. Baby feet. Enough said.
3. And more blue sky.
4. Sigh. There are so many days when, after I've made special order, on-the-fly lunches for two little people, that I just don't even want to bother with my own. So I eat a plate of vegetables and move on.
5. Window garden is thriving. Sort of unbelievably so. But, I've mentioned it a couple of times already so..
6. Peonies at dusk. What else can I really say about it? Pictures like this amuse me, because I feel like it's just a false representation of what my life is really like.
7. Ah.. the "waiting for the tow truck" photo. The start of the stupid, annoying, still on-going week.
8. I watched the Apple WWDC keynote on my MacBook. It was good- I thought it was better than the previous one. And it was the first time I got excited about a new OS and iOS in quite awhile. Good thing Jason has a developers license and all the new fangled business can go on my phone now instead of in a few months like everyone else. (Also, Blogger doesn't recognize "fangled" as a correctly spelled word. I'm disappointed in you Blogger.)
9. And finally, Lily now has to be my friend forever because she picked out the beads for her bracelet.. and I made her one just like mine. I win.

Looking up

The sky has held particular interest to me this year- I'm not really sure why. I find myself constantly taking pictures of the clouds. Every time I can't help but think have the clouds always been like this? Has the sky always been this blue?

If I didn't have so many small children, I imagine I'd spend a heck of a lot more time staring off into the blue. We've had some great looking sky in New England this year. And probably other years as well.

Maybe I should have been a meteorologist. Or a nephologist (someone who studies clouds- yes, I looked it up).

My work-with-what-you've-got garden

The last few days have been annoying, frustrating, and the thing that started it all off could have killed me. Well, I don't want to say that (even if it's true)- I'll just say I, as well as others, could have been seriously injured.

But enough about that.. let me gush more about my windows garden. Or indoor garden? I don't know. I had left a lot of the pots outside during the rain, because I didn't realize it was going to be as bad as it was. When I checked on them this morning, the first thing I said was "oops."

Although all the pots are self-draining, one of them had had enough and was full of water, drowning and semi-burying in dirt its small tomato plants. I dumped all that out, unburied the sprouts, and coaxed them to stand up again. One of the big bean plants had bent near the top due to all the wind. So oops again.

I fixed it up as best as I could with new, longer bamboo skewers (yes, like for shish kabob) and tin foil. Yes, tin foil. And this is why.. my normal fix is tape (scotch, painters, etc), buuuut.. tape wasn't going to stick to wet bean plants. I also thought I'd go back to string/yarn, but it doesn't seem to work as well- only offering one-point of support. (I have also used twist ties in the past, which are better than string.) The tape works well because you have as many points of support as the tape is wide. (I'm such a gardener.)

I was going to try strips of paper, but then (light bulb!) I thought of the tin foil. Like tape, but better! It can get wet, has many points of support, and is bendable. It's easily adjustable, you can slide it up or down the stem as needed, etc.

You think this is crazy? Another one of my bean plants snapped in two places almost 2 weeks ago due to a mishap with a window- I straightened it out, taped it in place, and voila! It's fine. Sort of fine. Fine as in not dead, not wilting, is ready to open a flower, etc- but also not able to stand unsupported anymore. So I basically have bionic/Frankenstein plants. My plants are held together with tape, whatever, so are a lot of things in life.

On the other side of all this nonsense, many of the plants are nearly ready or have already started to flower.. and that's so exciting for this very light green-thumbed girl.

Yes, I'm totally aware of how ridiculous of a gardener I am, but when I have home-grown beans and cucumbers, I will be much less ridiculous. In theory.