PHOTO ONE:
The weather here (and everywhere, apparently) has been downright CRAZYTOWN. On Thursday of last week, it was beautiful out - temps in the mid-sixties, sunny, and muddier than the pigsties in hell. The kids played outside for hours and hours and hours - only for me to discover upon their swarming descent into the house that they'd been spending their time exclusively wallowing in the mud. Their pants, boots, jackets, shirts, hair, faces, everything - completely caked.
Unfortunately, the next morning we needed to go meet a friend, and I couldn't find a single pair of shoes for Atticus that wasn't completely covered in mud. In our desire to get out the door, I attempted to rinse out his play shoes and this is the resulting nonsense that accosted me. The clean white part around the drain hole is the effect of my needing to constantly scoop out handfuls of muddy leaves and sticks. (To any of you moms out there who are supernaturally more nonchalant about shenanigans like this than I am, or whose kids have grown up and left, and you don't actually remember the anguish that is stirred in your soul when something like this happens the literal day after you just hauled your third-trimester self into the tub to scrub the grout, and took the shower curtain down and actually washed it: you are welcome to think this muddy mess is endearing as long as you're prepared to come help me clean it up. Otherwise, grieve with me.)
We did finally make it out the door (Atticus was wearing shoes that were two sizes too small, because that's all I could find) to hit up the Burger King Play Place 15 minutes away, so the kids could run around and I could sit and chat with a friend about a local homeschool co-op opportunity (co-opportunity?). The drive over there was cold (in the twenties!), but fine. Clear. About half an hour into our visit, it started snowing. About 20 minutes after that, we decided to head out because the snow was sticking. In just that short amount of time, the roads had become absolutely terrible. It took me an hour to get home, taking the interstate, and I very, very nearly got rear-ended. A car behind me didn't see me having to slow down for an accident (eight-car pile up), and it lost control trying to slow down, swerving between me and the metal grating along the shoulder. It finally came to a stop parallel to a car three vehicles in front of me. In the lanes going the opposite direction, the reigning chaos was even worse. We saw an HVAC van accordioned between a dump truck in front of it and a semi that had hit it from behind. There were service vehicles everywhere. We were so glad to get home in one piece.
The next day, Todd went to shovel a path up our driveway, only to discover that all of our snow shovels had been filled with mud the previous day, which had now frozen into solid bricks, so we didn't have a single functional shovel. That muddy day was the gift that just keeps on giving.
PHOTO TWO:
I am now 32 weeks along. THIRTY TWO WEEKS ALONG. What have I been doing all this time?! It certainly hasn't been preparing to bring an actual baby into our actual home. I need to get my crap together. ORRRRRRRRRRR... I need to organize my garage, because that seems more pressing at the moment. (Pregnancy makes people crazy, but it also makes their hair thick, so I don't complain about it. LOOK AT THAT HAIRLINE UP THERE. Let it bask in all its hormonal glory. Its prognosis is short; after a few postpartum months, there will be nothing to show for it except a very clogged shower drain. Sigh.)
Other items of note this week:
*Todd taught at Salt last night, and took the three big kids with him.
*We buckled down and got two weeks worth of schoolwork done, to catch up and hopefully get a bit ahead before the baby comes.
*I started and finished Eve in Exile by Rebekah Merkle in under 24 hours. So very, very, very fantastic. I would recommend it to every single Christian woman walking the face of the earth.
*We cancelled Connection Group in anticipation of further bad weather that never came. Whoops. This is the weirdest winter ever in the history of time. Luckily, we now live in Missouri, where people are super casual about weather cancellations. They aren't leaving their houses if there's snow predicted anytime in the next seventeen days. (It reminds me of this incredible, artfully crafted, hilarious op ed I read recently: "In Case of Blizzard, Do Nothing." Please take the three minutes it will take you to read this. You won't regret it. For one thing, the phrase, "quotidian American crudscape" has been delighting me every time I think of it in the weeks since I first read it. Absolutely pristine writing. If you read it and don't like it, I think you need a brain scan. Something is broken in there.)
*Callista is now fighting off a fever and some really serious stomach issues. I'm not sure whether to chalk it up to teething, or if she ate something verboten, or if she's actually battling a virus that I should concern myself with, but she was up much of the night on Wednesday, which left me with very little giddyup yesterday. I'm hoping to finish this week off strong today, but chances are 50/50.
*Here's what's currently in my reading rotation, which is particularly good at the moment:
And that was my photo-anemic week.
1 comment :
it truly was armudgeddon. it was crazy how long it took to get all that grime out of the tub. and the boots in the garage... ahhhh the mud covered boots. just crazy. i remember doing something similar when i was little. we had a neighborhood picnic at Children's Park and some of the kids, including myself, went down to this creek and just got COVERED in mud. i remember having to ride home with my neighbormates in the back of a truck because we were just filthy. like a moth to a flame is a child to a mud pile apparently.
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