Mystery of the Ratty Couch Transport

When my brother and I were little, I'd guess around six and eight years old, he had a bunk bed in his room. His room also had two large windows that looked out across our driveway with an excellent view of our next door neighbor's back yard. Every so often we'd convince mom to let me camp out in his room. Then we'd sneak in some papers and pencils, and each lay on our respective bunks next to the window and watch across the driveway to the yard. The yard consisted of gravel and a generic assortment of grasses and weeds and wasn't very interesting in and of itself. The neighbors, however, were interesting - at least to a couple little kids who can't imagine being outside past ten o'clock at night. There were always people stopping by just for a few minutes, then leaving quickly. Occasionally someone would go in, never to be seen again (or not to leave until after we'd fallen asleep on our pages).   The mysterious guests would always pull right up to the back step, and we'd write down their licence plate numbers and the time and other details, like "wearing plaid shirt" and so forth. Once, they even moved a ratty old sofa onto a decrepit trailer. Imagine our disappointment that there were no license plates to be seen - they backed the trailer in at an angle. The thing is, I don't remember what started all this, and what we did with the note pages. I'm just glad I didn't wake up with a pencil in my nose, falling asleep writing like that. Decades later, I still remember wondering WHAT was the point of moving the couch so late at night? For all our sleuthing, we never discovered the Mystery of the Ratty Couch Transport.

These oranges were grown just for me, and my little family. A lot of seemingly random things fell into place and here they are, in our kitchen. Someone nurtured them with us in mind . . . we are blessed, and every once in a while, I realize it, and appreciate it.

Telling Myself: to live HERE

Do you ever get so busy, you forget you had a goal for the day? Maybe in all the craziness of real life, the To Do list was updated to the To Do Tomorrow list. I've been feeling like that for a while. Come to think of it, probably since I was sixteen years old, which feels like both forever ago, and only a few days past.

On those nights when I didn't collapse into bed and immediately pass out in exhaustion, I'd lay there trying to slow my brain down by making a mental list of the things I'd do tomorrow, then wistfully imagine my magical home once I got things organized. My children would be well behaved, the dryer would never gobble another sock, I'd cook fabulous meals from scratch out of thin air, things would be simple, relaxing, and beautiful.

When I was in college, I thought it'd be so much simpler when I had a career. When I was working, I thought it'd be so much simpler if I could stay home with the kiddos. Here's the shocker: now that I'm home with the kiddos, life is as complicated as ever. Maybe even more so, as I'm responsible for more than just my own self.

The commonality to all this, besides the busy craziness and wishing for a calm existence? In this case, it would be me. My commitments made, to do lists of both the necessary and completely unrealistic, the mental picture of an ideal home and family life . . . in all these "should do" and "could be" things I've collected, what did I do with myself? What did I do with that handsome, wonderful man I married and sweet, angelic little babies? Well, they'v stuck with me, though all my craziness. Lately I've been reminded (or been noticing all the blatantly obvious hints!) that one can do wonders with what one has on hand. That life slips by far to quickly, and I've slipped back into the mindset of spending every day wishing it was Friday instead - wishing my life away.

So I'm giving up all those aspirations. I'm going to sit on my duff!   Wait! That's not where I'm going with this rambling :)

I'm re-evaluating all these illusions I've adopted of what an ideal life, home and family would look like. I want to scrub away the nonsense and get down to what is true, right, and good. I'm reminding myself of the things that I need to be and trying not to include one of the stereo types tagging along. Right, I'm human, and I'm sure at times this will be an abysmal failure. Will I be a better me? Wife, Mom, Friend? I hope so.

One day I'm going to reread this post with aged wisdom and realize what a goof I am/was. That's okay, I'm going to do the best I can with what I have now. :)

chocolate fried pickles - taste just like PB&J

Sometimes I get the feeling that my little girl is tuning me out. This morning she answered everything I said with, "uh-huh." So I asked her, "do you eat chocolate fried pickles with your toes?"  She answered the same, "uh-huh," even nodding her head. I looked at her pointedly and repeated, "Do you eat CHOCOLATE FRIED PICKELS... with your toes?" 
"Uh-huh."
"What do they taste like?" 
"Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!" She grinned. 
Sometimes I get the feeling that my daughter is really the Cheshire Cat.

anything is possible when you are five

Good ol' technology. With it, I can order a pizza while I'm sitting in my pj's in Idaho to be delivered in somewhere in Texas for my hubby and have it delivered within the hour. Unfortunately, my five year old thought that we'd get a duplicate of the pizza delivered here. When I told her to go get in bed, her eyes welled up with tears and she said, "Mama, I wanted pizzzzaaaah!" Poor baby. I suppose if we hadn't already eaten dinner and I had a lot of extra cash or something, I could in theory order the same order to be delivered here too, from our the pizza place local to us. But no, I'm not going to. I explained that if they delivered the pizza here for Daddy's dinner it would be pretty old and gross when he got home, and he'd still be hungry right now. That seemed to make sense to her so she moved on and convinced me that it was a great idea to let her stay up and watch an episode of Star Trek DS9 on DVD with me.

A Real Conversation Today

"Mommy, our house is too small," my daughter said to me while she was drinking her bedtime ritual glass of water.

"Actually honey, our house is huge. It's the same size as your grandma and grandpa's house," I responded thinking that our 1700+ square feet was plenty. "We just have too much junk. If we took a bunch out, it would seem bigger."

"Okay mama! That's a great idea! Tomorrow, we can take all your stuff and everything and put it in the garage and then we can play and the house will be BIG!" She stopped and thought a moment. "Well, except the kitchen stuff, in case I get hungry."

Dream: the one where i have a summer job in a mountain ghost town resort and military uniforms look like the old AWANAs shirts

Last night I dreamed:

I am step out of a old traveling bus along with most of my close family and some people that I know I know (in real life (RL) I cannot recall ever seeing these people before). We step out into a clearing on a mountain, an old ghost town lies before us. It's cool, even though I know it's summer. The old buildings are quite spread apart, stable, but not restored by any means. There must have been a bustling town here as the spaces between buildings are where I know more of the town used to lay. My sisters and I run the hotel building, we go there to set up, we bunk in the basement, the main floor for guest check in and the second story has guest rooms. My mom runs a the c-store laundromat that is one of the more prestigius businesses in town. I never see it but I know its near the hotel and is a cinderblock construction painted white, out of site since its the one modern edition to the ghost town proper.

Somehow, observing the town in the course of walking from the bus to the hotel, my clothes became a dusty rose colored plain 1800's dress, with dark buttons down the shirt, my shoes the dark nondescript old high-top lace-up boots. Nearly everyone is in historic but plain costumes. All the ghost town buildings are open, like the front is missing and all laid out, showing the floors to the outside. As we are barely settled in, the first guests (and only people in my dream that I know are guests) arrive, a couple in their early thirties, arrive.

I leave the hotel by the front and wander through the small town area and behind it, up the mountain and behind a screen of trees, coming to a 1970's brick school building, where my daughter takes her classes. I've arrived just in time to get some of her projects and the review of her school year. She is busy running around the class rooms with her friends while a large blond woman that I know from the bus comes up to chat and ask if the bathhouse is open yet. I don't experience it in the dream, but we have a conversation and part amicably from my impression as I walk away from her to find my son and daughter.

As we head down back through the ghost town, there are tourists wondering around, bright spots of modern technology and colors with their cheesey outfits and cameras in the drab and dust. I'm called to the aid of the couple that were the guests I checked into the hotel, the woman is in labor now, though I don't recall her being pregnant when they first arrived. My mother in law is there too, but she is taking vitals and calming the woman, and I'm left catching the baby - after of course, ordering someone to boil water. There is no labor scene, just suddenly I'm holding this newborn, a glowing, beautiful essence of innosence, and wishing we had one of those heated baby stations like they have in the delivery rooms at hospitals. I was lucid enough at this point in the dream to wonder why my mother in law, who is an RN in RL, wasn't the one playing doctor.

Suddenly I'm pulled back into the dream, and my daughter and son and I meet up with my husband, our friends Tiff and Tyler, and my sister in law Jessi. We have to drive down into the town about an hour or so away to pick up Jessi's hubby, Casey, who is just coming back from a couple weeks in the field with the armed services (yes it was non-specific in my dream). We are there, in the outskirts of the town almost imidiately in my dream expericance, all of us piling out of a metalic grey Ford Tarus that there is no way we all could fit in, but I know we drove there, all together.

We're waiting in what I can only describe as a large hanger like building, with hotel and storage rooms built in the middle almost like enclosed cubicles on a single floor, the ceiling is the roof high above us. Casey should have arrived by now, it's late in the day. We walk down the outer wall of cubicles and some of the walls have windows, there's a classic 80's blond lady sitting inside of one smoking. As we continue we come to the cafeteria area where we see his uniform shirt hanging over the back of one of the large colorful chairs (like the ones in kindergarten rooms, primary colors, but adult size). There are blue and red chairs visible and the red chairs are just a little off so they are a bit orangy. I never see the yellow chairs but I know they are in the mix too. My sister in law picks up the uniform shirt and I recognize it - I know someone who had that shirt before, but I'm not lucid enough to place it (RL it's a AWANAs uniform shirt, the kind you would have seen in the 90's, LIGHT grey, plain, no awards on the red and yellow badge area yet). We go outside looking for Casey and run across a closed market, but the owner, an Asian man, is still out front at the table he has set up outside. He's quiet, and I know his wife is in the store, fearful of why we are wandering about, but he is calm, like he'll quell any trouble with amazing kung fu. He cuts up some super sized double king sized Snickers bars and gives us all samples before we move on. I know we start to leave, and are concerned about getting some type of employment, that maybe he can help us with, when I am woken up by a text message from my sister.

Dream over.