Searching for Happy

Last week, I honestly wondered if I was having a nervous breakdown.  But then I thought, if I’m aware of the nervous breakdown, is it actually a nervous breakdown?  Or am I just throwing a tantrum?

Jamie is four years old, almost five, and thank you, God, he is starting to show signs of moving out of the Fucking Fours.  I understand the Fucking Fours, though: his emotions outpaced his ability to cope with them.  Well, I think that’s what happened to me during the two weeks that followed spring break; my emotions outpaced my ability to cope.  So maybe Jamie’s not growing out of the Fucking Fours but my ability to empathize is increasing.

Do you know what’s not a good coping mechanism when you’re overtired, overstressed, and overwhelmed?  Texting your overworked, overtired, overstressed husband, “I quit.”  He couldn’t do anything about it.  I probably should have just given in and let everyone eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinnner for a couple of weeks. 

And then, at the culmination of tax season, we said our sobbing goodbyes to Buster.  He was physically healthy but mentally very unhealthy.  He perceived everyone outside of the family as a threat.  He was unsafe.



I miss him.  God, how I miss that stupid dog.  He wasn’t a very good dog – he never learned to fetch, he stopped being able to run with me a couple of years ago, his belches could clear a room, and he was aggressive – but I loved him.  The house is rather lonely without him, despite the tribe of rambunctious boys.  It hurts when I think of how he used to be many years ago, when I think of the dog he became over time, and when I remember our last moments with him as he slipped away.

Posting might be light here for a few weeks.  I need to find my happy place, the one inside my head, again.  I laughed with Tony a couple of times this past week, I mean really laughed, and it felt new.  I realized that I hadn’t laughed in a long time.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter how funny the joke is; it matters how light your heart. 

I’ll be back when I can be back, friends.

Stand-Up Guy

He’s inordinately proud of himself.

 

 

Every milestone, it seems, comes with an increased level of panic and security in the house.  No longer is it enough to clean up marbles and other chokeables from the floor; now I have to make sure that the spilled yogurt is immediately cleaned up from the chair and that Freddie doesn’t crawl too close to the stools (they tip over when he tries to hoist himself up to standing on them).

 

 

Not long from now, I’ll have to re-lock all the cabinets and figure out how to keep the toilets from attracting baby hands.  Charles always went after the toilets, but Jamie never did, so we haven’t locked them since Charles was a baby.  Given the frequency with which I find Freddie playing in the dog water bowl, playing in the toilets is a reasonable worry.  Toilet seat up?  Easy access to whatever’s in the toilet (oh, your toilet only ever has water when no one is standing in front of it or sitting on it?  Mine has any number of things in it at all times: poop, pee, dinosaur figurines, Cheerios… life with children is pretty exciting).  Toilet seat down?  Perfect opportunity for a small person to lift the seat up and then smash it down on his own fingers (we are experienced in such.  We are also experienced in wiener smashing, when one child wanted to lift the toilet seat juuuuuust a little bit instead of putting it all the way up to pee and then accidentally dropped it).

 

 Splish Splash 

 

Also, books on the bookshelf within reach are being dumped to the floor every day and the poor, beleaguered  houseplant is being decimated by small hands and teeth.

 

 

This is why we can’t have nice things.  Good thing I don’t really care, right?  Pass the wine.

Walkers

As I was walking my kids to school this morning, a beautiful, young woman waiting at the crosswalk in her car rolled down her window and shouted (nicely) at me.

 

“I see you walking your herd everyday and I just want to tell you that you are such an inspiration to me!” she said.

 

“Thank you!” I said.

 

“Seriously, I just had my first baby and you give me hope that I might be able to do things like that in the future!”

 

“Thanks!  It’s not easy, but it’s doable!” I said, and then waved and pushed on my way.

 

Everyday, I walk Charles to school, a half-mile there, a half-mile back, repeat in the afternoon when school is over.  I take Jamie in the stroller, Freddie in the frontpack, and Buster on a leash.  Charles rides his bike or his scooter, and Jamie sometimes rides his scooter about halfway to school.  It’s controlled chaos, made more stressful by the fact that every. damn. day. I see someone run a red light at the major intersection we cross not a block from our house. 

 

 

Tangent alert: WHY DO PEOPLE RUN RED LIGHTS?  Obviously, their time is SO much more important than anyone else’s time or safety.  A few weeks ago, a bicyclist was hit at the same intersection we cross four times daily.  I’m just waiting for another, bigger accident; these selfish assholes see the light turn yellow from three hundred feet away from the intersection, they gun their engines and then speed through the intersection at 40 miles an hour.  Just STOP IT, already.  Don’t run red lights.  You’re putting everyone in danger, especially the small person riding a bike whom you can’t see because he’s small and moving quickly.  Sheesh.

 

 

It was so wonderful to hear such a nice compliment from a perfect stranger.  I know I don’t have it all together, but hell, I look like I do.  The secret is to do the things that are difficult until they either become less difficult or you are numb to their difficulty.

 

 

The walks in the morning and the afternoon have helped with my peace of mind immensely.  It’s a nice, clean break from the mom I am right before we leave the house, shouting “C’mon, c’mon, let’s go, we’re LATE!”  All of the sudden, there we are, in the fresh air, hoofing it up and over the hills to school, Charles calling out the numbers on the busses, Jamie pointing out the garbage trucks that pass, Freddie falling asleep on my chest.  The extra time to walk to and from school twice each day means I spend less time at the office, but it’s worth the extra sense of urgency when I work because I get to that fresh air, that exercise, and that time with my boys.

 

Snug in the Ergo, fast asleep.  The cover is a Peekaru (everyone asks).

 

Sometimes I get overwhelmed when I think about making that mile-long walk, twice a day, everyday, for the next ten years.  But, like most things, it helps to take it one day at a time.  And I enjoy that walk each day.  May I always see it as a joy and never a burden.

I Smell A Rat

It had been a long day: up all night with the baby, up early with Jamie (that kid – it’s like he’s on amphetamines with the way he doesn’t sleep).  Tony took his truck to the shop (it was leaking antifreeze, which now I realize is probably why all the neighborhood cats have been hanging out in our front yard.  Sorry, neighbors, I hope your cats don’t die) early and then went to basketball, coming home after I had fed and bathed and dressed everyone, a feat just short of miraculous and possible only because Freddie wisely slept through the morning chaos. 

 

 

Then began my work as a chauffer, since it was payroll day and I had to go to the office.  First, Tony to work.  Next, kids to school.  Then, me and Freddie to work where we worked for a couple of hours.  Then, to our business’s new building (!) to meet the sellers and discuss some stuff.  Then, me and Leland to the chiropractor (oh, that was so needed – I hadn’t been in a year or more and the pregnancy, delivery, and caring for a baby had taken their toll for sure), Leland back to work, and finally, me and Freddie home where a good (the best, really) friend was waiting for us with lunch.  After lunch, I started the reverse process by taking Tony to pick up his truck, getting the children, and getting everyone ready to go to a birthday party that evening.

 

 

I nursed Freddie twice in parking lots, had a tearful breakdown at daycare, and drank too much coffee while eating too little throughout the day.

 

We got home from the party full of strawberry shortcake and refreshed by fun conversation with great friends.  As we always do, we pulled the van into the garage and extricated all our children and belongings (babies come with so much STUFF).  Charles barreled past me as I opened the door into the house with the car seat in one hand and the diaper bag in the other and we were immediately hit with a stench so powerful, so thick, my eyes started to water.

 

“What’s that smell?” I yelled, thinking that one of our neighbors must be grilling some particularly disgusting meat or maybe hadn’t cleaned their grill from the last time they grilled some particularly disgusting meat.

 

As usual, Buster was excitedly waiting for us at the top of the stairs, wagging his tail so hard you’d think his butt would fly off (“They’re home!

They’re home!  I thought they’d never come back!  They’re home!”).  The sun had started to go down and we hadn’t left any lights on, so Buster was almost a silhouette.  He was so happy to see us.

 

But he had something in his mouth.

 

Something dark.

 

Something with a tail.

 

“WHAT is in Buster’s MOUTH???”  Charles screamed.

 

I immediately connected the stupefying stench with the obviously dead creature, which I presumed to be a rat based on the tail girth and length, and screamed for Tony to “Eeeew!  Get it away from him!!!”

 

The only other time Buster has presented a dead animal to us was on Tony’s thirtieth birthday, six months or so after we moved to Mount Vernon.  I screamed, shooed the damn dog outside, and called Tony to come home and deal with the situation (happy birthday!  Your dog got you a present!).

 

God DAMMIT, you disgusting dog.

 

Turns out that both the squirrel that Buster had six years ago and the rat (or baby opossum or whatever) that he had on Friday were long dead, but that made him no less proud of his prizes.  How he got them in their decomposing states, we’ll never know, but after this most recent incident, I’m beginning to suspect he likes them that way.  Like a fine wine, he catches small animals and then ages them for later retrieval and enjoyment.

 

Tony, bless his manly heart, somehow got the rotting animal away from Buster and disposed of it while I went all the way upstairs to nurse the baby and gag every time I thought about that rat.  I pleaded with Tony to mop the floor in case their were bits of diseased, decomposed rodent that had dropped off of the thing, just waiting to be ingested by one of the kids when they pick up a dropped spoon from the floor.  I sniffed phantom odors of putrefied varmint meat for the rest of the evening.

 

Because I must be fundamentally incapable of looking on the bright side, all I can think about now is that, at some point, there was a live rat in my back yard, happily spreading bubonic plague and God knows what else, digging around, having little rat babies, and somehow finding a food source.  I just… I can’t… YUCK.

Headed for a Slowdown

A daily nap?  Please, I’ll take two.

 

Life is getting slower here chez Cook.  I still exercise, I still do laundry and make dinner, but I’ve started asking for help with many other household chores.  And I’m not really going anywhere anymore, except the swimming pool.  In the hours following a session at the pool (during which I watch my children splash and play while I just sort of lounge in the water), I feel 20 pounds lighter than before.  I wish I had access to one every single day.

 

All that to say that I am feeling particularly boring these days, so here are some photos of my brood to liven up this space:

 

Moon Sand.  Get some, it’s awesome.

 

I love how pulling out a box of the next-size-up clothing is like Christmas for my kids.  Jamie has found some cool new duds in his drawers lately, and it’s always amusing to see what he’s drawn to.  And the sunglasses?  Well, the kid who refused to wear them for the first (almost) three years of his life can no longer be parted from his shades.

 

His future’s so bright.

 

I try not to let Charles have access to my phone, because when he does, I end up with 25 photos just like this one:

 

His father’s son, he is on his way to mastering the cheesy smile.

 

My mom brought some new toys for Buster.  It took him a few days, but he disemboweled them with his usual precision.

 

 

Charles woke up and looked outside and said, “Mommy, is that SNOW?  In SUMMER?”  Nope, just the consequence of your dumb dog being dumb.  And then I made Charles clean it up, because I don’t bend down unless I have to.  Also, I am mean.

 

In the heat, he acts more feline than canine, stretching out lazily in the sun.  His most active time is at night, which he spends outside.  Not because I’m cold-hearted, but because he wants to, and I am tired up getting up (or making Tony get up) at 2 am to let him out to play.

 

For all my idleness lately, Tony is working double-time.  He fixed our fence (which blew down this winter) and is working on the bathroom floor (new linoleum and baseboard).

 

That’s a lot of cement.

 

But he wasn’t too busy to bring me some beautiful flowers:

 

West-East-West

We left Friday at about 5 pm and took our sweet time getting to I-90.  First, we dropped the dog at the kennel, where he acted as if he couldn’t get away from us fast enough.  It’s a good thing he’s just as happy to go home as he is to get there, otherwise I would worry.  It starts with the whining and squealing when we get off the freeway, then evolves to prancing in the backseat and trying to move back and forth between the back window and the windshield to get a better view of the kennel.  Aren’t we going to the kennel?  We’re going to the kennel, right?  THERE IT IS, THE KENNEL.  I SAW IT.  I SAW IT.  WE’RE GOING THERE.

 

We leisurely drove the back roads and avoided I-405 and the mess that is Greater Seattle Traffic (it’s totally a proper noun), arriving in North Bend right around dinner time.  We went on our merry way, hitting some traffic over the pass and finally arriving in Richland shortly after 11 PM.  We put the kids to bed (Jamie sang and danced in bed for at least ten minutes, happy to have arrived at last), watched the meteor shower (we saw one meteor), and took ourselves to bed.  All in all, a fine trip.

 

Our way back, however, tested the limits of car and bladder endurance.  We left Richland around 11 am on Monday, Memorial Day.  I knew that the pass would be busy, I was totally prepared for a slow drive over, but I failed to take into account the many thousands of people leaving the Sasquatch Music Festival at the Gorge that same day.  Not your regular holiday traffic.  As we passed Ellensburg, I thought, hmm, there’s an easy rest stop near Cle Elum, we’ll stop there for a bathroom break. 

 

Juuuuust beyond the last Ellensburg exit, we slowed to a stop.  A dead standstill.  Not even a crawl.

 

 

It took us two hours to drive the 21 miles from Ellensburg to the Cle Elum rest stop.  At one point, a young guy got out of the car next to us (clearly a Sasquatch attendee) and walked on his hands around the car he had just vacated.  “Girls,” Tony said.  “He’s riding with girls.  He has to show off.”  Whatever, if I could walk on my hands, I’d do it all the time.

 

Do you have (or have you had) small, potty-trained boys?  Ever noticed how they can’t just pull their pants down a little ways, or unzip their flies (if they even have them) to pee?  No, they have to drop their pants all the way to the ground, putting their cute, little boy-butts on display as they do their business.  Lucky me, I got to teach Jamie and Charles about why they shouldn’t pee into the wind.

 

You know who didn’t pee by the side of the road, a road bordered by fields and low scrub bushes, with nary a copse of trees in sight?  Me.  I’m not sure I could have balanced to squat anyhow, but there was literally no place to go.  I held it until the rest stop, at which point I didn’t even get an offer to let me, the visibly pregnant lady, cut to the front of the line.  Where has common courtesy gone?

 

We split off a couple of miles (and many, many minutes) later to head north on Highway 97.  We hooked up with Highway 2 and started over the pass.  It was a beautiful drive and passed at a reasonable pace.

 

A rest stop near the Wenatchee River

 

Until we got to 20 miles east of Sultan (which is on the west side of the pass, about 30 miles from Everett).  Then, another standstill.  Stopped cars, no explanation.  Except, weirdly, every once in awhile we would move about 50 car lengths.  It took us two-and-a-half hours to drive the 20 miles into Sultan.  The reason?  Sultan has three stoplights, all of them timed for about 50 car lengths, despite the nonexistence of cross-traffic. 

 

Of course, the entire time we were stuck outside of Sultan, the kids asked, every five minutes, “When are we gonna beeee theeeerrre?”

 

We arrived home around 8 pm, hungry, tired, and sore (if you’re keeping score at home, that’s a NINE HOUR CAR TRIP).  At least I was sore.  My back, my butt, my pelvis, my hips.  I was dehydrated because the last thing I wanted to do was have to pee every half an hour, especially when we might not have moved more than five miles in that half an hour and there was no bathroom anyway.

 

It’s the mark of a good weekend, however, when a drive like that cannot eclipse the fun we had.

 

Boy cousins had the BEST time together

 

We played with cousins and I got to catch up with a great friend (who also happens to be my sister-in-law).  Tony’s brother-in-law set up an elaborate splash park in their backyard and we had a barbeque that was also (surprise!) a birthday party for me.

 

Cousin Juliet was BEGGING to have her chubby cheeks chomped all weekend.  Lucky for her, I was too hot and swollen to attack her in all her cuteness.

 

My friend Maggi visited from Walla Walla, so we got to sit around and be lumps of pregnant inertia together.  We’re due within three days of each other, so I’m hoping our babies can be birthday buddies.

 

 

Ultimately, the weekend trip was all about family.  We won’t get a chance to drive east again for awhile, and despite the God-awful trip home, I’m really, really, really glad we went.

 

     

But I’ll say this: Never again will we travel on Memorial Day.  Never.  Again.

Updates - Updated

I’m on hold with the IRS right now… this must be what Tony’s job is like a good chunk of the time – goofing around on the internet while listening to terrible hold music.  Actually, I’m certain that Tony doesn’t goof around on the internet while he’s on hold; he does other work, because he’s efficient.

It’s Monday, friends, and well, I know you know how I feel.  The whole week is rolling out in front of us, taunting us with how much we need to get done, barely an end in sight.  It could be worse.  I could be on hold with Vonage or some other service provider whose customer-service representatives read from a prescribed script and cannot actually help you.  Then again, maybe that’s how it goes at the IRS phone bank, too.  In the interest of being able to abandon my train of thought at a second’s notice here, I’ll go all listical and give you some random updates about liiiiiiife:

Buster had surgery last week, and is recovering nicely.  In fact, he doesn’t seem to be bothered at all, even though he had a sizeable tumor and some muscle removed from his butt.  The vet called the tumor a “poorly differentiated sarcoma,” which is another way of saying “cancer.”  But not a type of cancer that metastasizes, thank God, so we just have to watch for re-growth in the coming years.  He has a pretty nasty scar and he’s half shaved, which makes me think of a baboon every time I look at him.  Ha.  Baboon Butt.

I have heartburn.  All the time.  Water gives me heartburn.  My 30th week of pregnancy has signaled the onset of that and other unfortunate symptoms, like swelling hands and feet and growing out of all my clothes (again).  The only comfortable position for me to sleep in is semi-reclined on the couch.  I am tired, and my muscles are constantly fatigued, regardless of my level of activity in any given day.  And you know what food sounds good to me?  NONE.  None food.  Which is not to say that I don’t eat, of course.  Sigh… ten weeks to go.



We went to the beach this past weekend and got rained out of almost all our activities.  The boys took a trip to the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse and Dead Man’s Cove while I napped on Friday, and Saturday we did our best to entertain the kids indoors while it poured buckets outside (after the cancellation of the day’s activities).  It must have worked, because Jamie fell asleep in Tony’s arms on Saturday evening, about 15 minutes before dinner:



Of course, even though we woke him for dinner, he and Charles refused to sleep before 9 pm.  They got to have a fire engine ride on Sunday morning and we watched the big parade before heading home. 

Foot-long, hand-dipped corn dogs, fresh maple bars from the best bakery, and candy thrown from parade vehicles: win.

We’re making one more road trip before this baby comes and after that, I am DONE travelling.  I love seeing family and friends, I love visiting different places, but being old and worn out and pregnant really makes these trips tough.  Not that they’re un-fun, just tough.  The mounds of laundry after a trip is over aren’t all that exciting, either.

Hey!  What do you know?  I was on hold for 15 minutes but then a five-minute conversation with an IRS representative who sounded like she knew what was going on totally solved our issue.  I’ll take it.

Update on Buster, 8:30 PM: He's in pain now.  I guess the meds finally wore off.  Poor Bear.

Minor Catastrophes

It’s turning into one of those days: a shitstorm of minor catastrophes that slowly suck the life out of you.

 

My company website and our email are down.  I have done what work I can, but now I, and all of my employees, are sitting around “making” work.  I’m about to go clean the bathroom, which tells you how bad the situation has become. 

 

The news that the website was down came as I was loading the kids into the car, on time for preschool for once.  I already knew I would be late to the office, though, because my dog is broken.  That’s the other minor catastrophe: sometime between yesterday afternoon and last night, Buster stopped being able to get up from the floor.  Or at least get up easily.  He’s at the vet’s and I am awaiting diagnosis.  I found a big tumor under the fur on his butt, but it could just be that he has a herniated disc and the tumor is nothing.  *Just* a herniated disc.

 

And then there’s this tragedy in Oso.  I really just have to stop reading the news, but it turns out that they just found the body of the missing 4-month-old girl, and I immediately started crying.  It’s just so terrible that I’m overwhelmed sometimes.

 

So, you know, I could use some cheering up today.  Anyone know any funny jokes?

Thankful

I hope you’ll forgive me for being a bit absentee here at T&A lately, but I’ve been putting all my free time into enjoying the last few moments of decent weather outside (it’s not decent anymore, but we try) with my kids, ditching work and school to spend time with my family, and getting through all the daily tasks that come during this busiest season of the year.

 

I’m late, but I want you all to know that I am grateful in this season of gratefulness.  I am grateful all year long.  I might not participate in the “30 Days of Thankfulness” postings on FaceBook or tweet constant photos of my happy family, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings.  I do.  I have feelings.  And anyway, happy family photos are few and far between; Charles just glares at the camera these days and Jamie reaches for it before I can snap a photo.

 

“No!  Don’t take my photo!”

 

“I want to see!”

 

I am thankful for my healthy, stubborn children who drive me crazy in a thousand ways every day. 

 

I am thankful that I have extreme work flexibility and can take a day off just to play with them.

 

On our way to the Everett Children’s Museum on Wednesday

 

I am thankful for my family and Tony’s family, all of whom are fantastic people and who love my kids almost as much as I do.

 

Even the furry ones

I am thankful for a wonderful husband who works so hard for his family (and who turned 36 yesterday!).

 

 

 

And I am thankful for you, my friends, for your love and support all year long.

 

      

Happy December!

Dancing With The Stars

I love to dance.  When I’m in a good mood, nothing else but to dance like a hyper fourteen-year-old darting through the aisles of the grocery store striking poses and flinging her body into innocent bystanders and cereal displays will do (wait, you didn’t do that?  Oh, you were one of the “cool” kids who understood decorum).  The only differences are that now I have music that I can play it as loudly as I want and the cereal is in the cabinet.

 

 

I’m not particularly graceful and I don’t have great balance, despite my enormous feet.  The dog gets stressed out when I dance and nips at my hands when they windmill toward the floor and my husband thinks I’m insane. 

 

 

The kids, though.  The kids love it, for now.  And they don’t yell at me to stop dancing like they yell at me to stop singing.  In their defense, my voice is terrible.

 

 

We need a little more uninhibited dancing in our lives.  We all do.  I can’t hide the tears in my eyes when I read about terrible events in the paper in the morning, and I won’t be able to shelter my kids from those events forever, but I can always show them unfettered joy by dancing like a fool. 

 

 

Hopefully, I’ll be the crazy dancing lady at my grandkids’ weddings, with viral YouTube videos showcasing my awesome devil-may-care moves (or whatever format their space-age media takes) in my sunset years.

 

 

Take the edge off.  Dance like an idiot today.

Pooh Bear

Do you have a dog?  Does he eat his own shit? 

 

I’ve pretty much gotten over all the gross things that come with being a dog owner: hairy clothes, house, and car; dirt tracked in from outside; cleaning up messes in the back yard.  I think, though, that I would prefer to clean up more messes if it meant that Buster would stop eating his own freaking poop.  And then breathing poop breath right in my face, so I know he’s done it. 

 

This time of year, I can keep the back yard pretty clean, thwarting Buster’s disgusting tendencies.  It’s lighter later and not so cold and wet when I go to poop-scoop.  Charles is a big helper, too, yelling, “Mooooom!  There’s dog poop over here!”  It used to be a fun game for him, finding all the poop in the yard while I followed after with the trash bag.  Ahh, the ways we use our children, right?

 

Buster, despite the aforementioned occasional fecal-eating issue and shedding an ungodly amount, is a huge source of comfort for me during tax season.  There’s not an axe murderer in the world who would bother trying to kill us – he’d have to go through Buster, and he is one menacing dog.  I love taking him on a run because I know I won’t get jumped with his intimidating presence by my side, even if he does annoyingly stop to check his pee-mail every quarter-mile.  If you can’t have a husband in the house, one who is basically required by his full-grown Y chromosome to defend his woman and children, the next best thing is an asshole dog.

 

 

He’s not always an asshole.  Only to the bad guys.  To me, he’s a cuddle bear.  To the kids, he’s an awesome eating machine and a snot-licker. 

Beach Babies There on the Sand

Sunny weekends at the beach can be near-perfect:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, plus pizza with friends, time spent with both my parents and my in-laws, brainstorming business ideas, a beautiful Sunday-morning run along the bay, and an astonishing amount of food ingested by my children.

 

Here is what they ate on Saturday ALONE: two bowls of Rice Krispies (each), a half an English muffin with jam (each), a link or two of sausage (each), MY bowl of Cheerios with yogurt and jam (which they stole and devoured), and two fried eggs… and THEN WE WENT TO BREAKFAST, where they each had a pancake and scrambled eggs and milk, and then our friend Mike made Charles a plate-sized Mickey Mouse pancake, which he nearly finished.  Then we went home for naps and chill time and then after nap went to McDonald’s, where Jamie ate five chicken nuggets and Charles ate an entire cheeseburger, they both had fries and ice cream, and Charles ate both packets of apple slices.  THEN they had some cherry cream-cheese pie, some popcorn, and some applesauce at snack time.  And we haven’t even gotten to dinner yet!  At dinner they ate rice and veggies and meatballs with milk.  Phew.  Neither asked for a bedtime snack.

 

I think they’re growing.

 

We came back Monday to a dirty house.  Tony worked all weekend long, and by all weekend, I mean that when I talked to him every evening or even late at night while we were gone, he was either taking his dinner break and about to head back to the office or he was at the office.  Tax season is a good time for us to leave – we all miss Tony, and I think he misses us, but allowing him to work without feeling distracted or guilty for being gone is the best for him and for us.  It’s easy for me to slip into resentment this time of year, and that’s not constructive.  This is the nature of his job, it will soon be over, it pays the bills.

 

However, I have decided that I am going to cull the herd, so to speak, in his underwear drawer so that he will have no choice but to do laundry more often when he is home alone.