Postus Interruptus

I am supposed to be putting a chicken into the oven to roast; but instead I am snuggling with my littlest guy, still groggy from his nap. 

He wouldn't be awake, except that Truen dropped an aluminum pail right in the front entry while begging me to come outside (as I readied the aforementioned chicken).  The giant reverberating crash that it produced as it hit the ground woke his baby brudder up.

Sheesh.  Go figure.

The last two days have been warm and sunny (and not the heat box we've been living in).  It has been delightful.  The entire house is open and breezy, flooded with fresh air.  It feels good to go outside.  Hearing the birds chirp under the shade of a tree with the breeze on my skin felt like a downright luxury this afternoon, especially after the weeks and weeks of scorching misery.

Ahhhhhh . . .

Jamie is up and running with his brudders, so I'd better get back to my chicken. 

We are finishing a run of two weeks with Squeeze working overtime, up an hour earlier every day and skipping his lunch hour.  It has been a grueling couple of weeks for him.  The poor guy was almost slug-like on the couch last night and eventually crawled upstairs to bed like a beaten dog.

A catch-up list

• Various posts keep running through my head.  The one stuck on repeat most recently would have been titled "Things I Thought I'd Never Hear Myself Say as a Mother", with the headliner of "Please get your face out of my butt".  Yes, I've said that.  More than once.
• But(t).  I'm not in the mood.  I'll just do a list-post to catch up on life.
• Jamie is starting to connect words with concepts.  Like today, when he put his fingers in the bottom of the glass sliding door, then held up his filthy little hand and said, "Doh-dee".  It took me a second for it to register, then I realized that he telling me that his hand was dirty.  The sweet little fella.
• Or yesterday, when we were in the garden and he was nervous around the sprinkler.  He kept on backing away and saying, "Cold! Cold!" whenever it veered in his direction.
• Speaking of veering.  I am actively trying to reprogram my nickname for Schtinky.  The time has come for a change, mostly because I don't want him to get upset about it as he gets older.  Recently I've been calling him "Voosy", which is Squeeze's nickname for him, or have defaulted to my new one: "Tsamie".  He answers to all of them.  Schtinky, Stinky, Jamie, Tsamie, Voos, Voosy.
• Our summer has been very hot and dry.  We've had one real rain in the last two months.  All the grass is brown and we are watering our young trees to keep them going.  Ditto on the gardens.  Squeeze runs the sprinkler almost every morning or night.
• Because of the heat, we are going to have AMAZING melons, squash, eggplant, peppers, okra, etc. this year.  It is looking doubtful for the tomatoes, though.  The plants look phenomenal, but it isn't cooling down enough at night and we are losing blossoms, especially on the big juicies.  No flowers, no fruit.  Frustrating.
• This is definitely the hottest summer we have had here.  Squeeze heard somewhere that these are the warmest temps in Minnesota since 1987.  In the past, we've run our air conditioner maybe once a summer, perhaps for 3-4 days, during a miserable run of hot, humid days; but this summer, the a/c has been on for most of July.  Life would be miserable without it, though I am getting very tired of feeling cooped up.  We have enough of that in the winter months.
• My parents and sister are coming for a visit next week.  They will be at our house for a few days, then we are all heading to the Twin Cities for my grandparents' 60th where we will meet up with another two brothers and a SIL.  One brother and a SIL won't be able to make it, so it won't be a complete reunion, but fun nevertheless.

Back to the old grind.  Nap/Quiet Time is officially over.  Goodbye, silence . . . you carressed my ears and mind, but my jaw still hurts . . .

I love my boys. ♥

The brudders with their great-grands

In Wisconsin, the week before last

Domestic bliss

We've been here for 5 years now.  A post on that fact (five. years!) brewed in my head for several weeks, but nothing ever came of it.  My thoughts aren't transferable amongst the screaming and I haven't had the inspiration to sacrifice my sleep/stare/read times as of yet.  Besides . . . that last post?  Yeah.  All hell broke loose with the brudders and the baby scribbled on the wall with a pencil in the chaos.  It just isn't worth it.

Nevertheless, we've been here for 5 years.  And it has been just this year that we are starting to get radical on improving irritating things about this house.

Squeeze replaced the high-tower toilet.  He replaced the leaky plumbing under the sink and the faucets in the bathtub and bathroom sink.  But most deliciously . . . we had our neighbor come this spring and install shelving into a long kitchen closet (it actually used to be an elevator) that turned a piddly few shelves into a true-blue Pantry Closet that I can't gush enough about.

Here's the BEFORE shot.  Why the previous owners had three shelves so-very-far apart is beyond me.

We were able to consolidate a number of scattered storage spaces into something entirely more efficient and amazing.  Seriously, we batted our eyelashes at it for days after install at the beauty of it.  We kept the light on in the evening that first night just to LOOK at it.  Storage room and plenty of it.  Shelves for food, shelves for surplus kitchen equipment, shelves for craft and art and paper supplies.  Shelves for games!  Shelves for toys.  Shelves for cookbooks.  Shelves and shelves and shelves!  The glory.

This is the AFTER shot.  Things are gotten even more wonderful as we have settled in.  Oh, the beauty!  It has definitely added to my overall level of happiness and sanity.  I am thankful for it every single day.  (The filing cabinet was moved to the bedroom closet and the food dehydrator went to the top of the dryer and we added a plant near the window.  Whee!) 

The three existing shelves went upstairs to the closet directly above this one (the top portion of the former elevator, about half the size of this one due to the slanting roof). It also only had three shelves, just as far apart. Squeeze screwed the two additional shelves between the existing so now we have five! shelves! in what we call the Holiday Closet. It is 100% seasonal decorations. Who knew one family could amass that much decor??

All the glory and grandeur of the reorganized closets has inspired us to finally organize the other storage closet upstairs.  Yesterday we went to what Truen calls "The Bernards" (AKA the hardware super-store called "Menards") and bought steel storage shelving.  The wonder!  I can't wait.  We are going to pull everything out of the closet this evening and reorganize.  The weather is nasty (90 degrees F and above), so indoor work is ideal.  It is going to be awesome.  Totally tubular.

Estoy aquí

Has it really been over two weeks since I posted last?  Ugh.  Time flies, especially with less an hour of down-time each day.  I could stay up later I suppose, but I'm just not willing to do that.

Updates?  The only thing I have time for is to report that I've started pulling out gray hairs.  Double-ugh.  Just within the last couple of months, I've noticed stray white hairs glimmering on the top of my head.  They are shorter, bristly and they stick straight up. !!! 

They are getting the boot.  I don't think I would mind so much if they laid down flat, but they stick up like little wires.

Lovely.