Peaceful Monday

I don't always love Monday.  In fact, most of the time I am not a fan of Mondays at all.  They are, however, growing on me.  The primary reason for this is simple:  I don't have to go anywhere.  Every other day of the week, I have to get in the car and drive someone or multiple someones somewhere to do something.  Swim team practice, swim meets, yoga class, violin lesson, homeschool group, even going to the library - all of those involve me spending time driving back and forth across town.  I love to drive.  I just get tired of running the same routes every week.

This Monday has been particularly glorious.  Doodlebug and I went to a concert last night and didn't get home till 11.  It would have been later, but we left the show early because the poor boy is not a night owl at all and was nodding off in his seat.  He felt bad, but he usually puts himself to bed around 8, and even with a nap yesterday afternoon, he just couldn't stay awake any more.  Obviously getting up early was not in the cards today.  We managed to be up and around by 8-ish, though, which was a good thing because a photographer friend of mine came over after dropping her own munchkins off at school and proceeded to spend the next hour or so taking a million photos of my kids.  It was cloudy and a little drizzly, but not misty, so the lighting was perfect.  When we got done, she browsed through some of the photos she'd taken and made me tear up because the kids looked soooooo big.  Some of her pictures of Doodlebug reminded me of senior portraits.  Scary thought.  Boo had conned Speed Bump into being in some of the shots, so we have pictures of the girl and her dog.  Those are adorable, too.

We wandered upstairs and did school for the what was left of the morning before breaking for lunch.  Broken bowl, lentils and pottery shards all over the floor - sometimes that would have made the entire day crappy, but I just couldn't manage to be grumpy today.  It was - and is - still gray outside, so I asked the kids if they wanted to do the rest of their school work in front of the fireplace.  They did.  I dug out a fall-scented candle (What does fall smell like?  Apples and cinnamon and pumpkin, in my opinion) and lit that to accompany the heat of the fire.  I walked upstairs a bit ago and realized that our new logs are doing a fantastic job of heating the living room.  I may never leave this space.  It's deliciously warm.

Boo has finished her school work and practiced her violin, so she's almost done for the day; she only needs to fold and put away her laundry.  Doodlebug is on his last subject, math, and then will do his own laundry and give the Tom-lizard his daily bath.

As for me, I'm going to do my own laundry and make meatloaf for dinner.  Days like this make me wonder if it's worth having extracurricular activities.  I've been debating whether or not to make the boy take a break from swim team for a month or two this winter, just because he's been doing it for so long without one.  The idea is rapidly taking root.  It would free up a lot of time.  More things to think about another day.  Today... today is for relaxing.

Productivity and... Wait, It's Almost October?!?

I discovered today (quite by accident, I assure you) that tomorrow is the first day of October.  I knew it was coming, because Oz and I spent the weekend watching helplessly as our hands and feet carried us around the house and yard putting up Halloween decorations, but I somehow still expected September to last another week or three.

My mantel.  Most of it, anyway.  You can't see the black roses in this shot.

I may have a serious Dept. 56 problem. 

I didn't even notice the candle had fallen until just now.
Wow, I'm observant.

Suck it, Pinterest.  My son's closet offers
better choices than your store-bought ones any day.

Still, we got a lot done this weekend.  In addition to all my decorating, Oz changed out the rocks in our front garden.  I say 'garden' - that's not entirely an accurate description unless you consider a rock garden a garden, which I guess I don't.  This unplantable space is good only when it rains, because it floods like the Flavian Amphitheatre during sea battles, which keeps the porch from flooding, and I like that, because a waterlogged porch isn't on my list of things that make me happy.  Formerly it held a bunch of red-brown lava rock and several very large pieces of sandstone.  Both Oz and I thought those didn't match the character of the house, and I can also tell you from experience that walking on lava rocks with your bare feet is a bad, bad idea.  The new rocks are much nicer on the soles.  Lava rocks also are not a very effective barrier for plants because they're lightweight and somehow maintain a lot of space in between the stones.  I had to spray for weeds, which I hate doing, about every month or so, and even then the weeds were multiplying.  Oz put down a new double layer of landscaping fabric under the new rocks, which makes me love him even more.  We'll see how this holds up.

New rocks.  Way better. 

I also hauled myself into the kitchen and made cake doughnuts and triple-chocolate cookies.  The doughnuts were for me, more or less, and I realized how dependent I've become on my cast iron pans for frying things when I decided, for some unknown reason, not to use cast iron to fry the doughnuts and the kids came down during the middle of a very frustrating fry session and hollered, "FISH STICKS!!!!"  Suffice to say the doughnuts were getting a bit burnt.  I couldn't get the oil temperature to stabilize to save my life.  Stupid electric cooktops and non-cast-iron pans... I will say this, though.  Toss burned doughnuts in cinnamon and sugar, and all is forgiven.

Please ignore the state of my sink.
We're focusing our negative energy on the pan.

Not forgotten, though.  Stupid pan.

Mmmmm taste the char.  A food blogger I am not.

The cookies were payment to Oz for all the effort he's put in around the house lately.  He's been working overtime to keep me fat 'n' happy, and he's succeeding admirably.  He's been dying for cookies for a long while, so I finally hunted down the recipe I'd saved on Pinterest and made him a gigantic batch (seriously... the recipe made 95 cookies.  NINETY-FIVE.  That number hasn't seemed so significant to me since I was in catechism class as a 6th grader and had to learn about Luther's Ninety-Five Theses in great detail).  I prized a dozen out of his clutches and took them to a friend's house because she was driving us to dinner at a restaurant downtown where we met up with two other women and scored free lemon drops courtesy of the anonymous gentleman who left before the drinks were served so we couldn't even thank him and tell him that for some of us **hackhackMEhackhack** that was the first drink they'd ever had that was sent over and purchased by someone else.  Delicious.

Triple-chocolate cookies make the Oz Cookie Monster happy.

So, anyway, tomorrow is the first day of October.  My son will turn 11 in a week and a half.  I'm really not okay with this, but apparently it's not up to me and time will march on whether I like it or not, and if you try to tell the boy that he isn't allowed to turn 11, he will laugh at you.  Don't ask how I know.  He lost his sixth (seventh?) tooth of the year yesterday, and he's got yet another tooth that's actually being absorbed (GROSS) because there's nothing to push it out and he refuses to let me pull it even though it has no root.  Soon his mouth will be full of adult teeth and adult thoughts emerging as adult words.  With teenage attitude, of course, but the seeds are planted for eventual maturity... I hope.

I simply cannot believe how quickly this year is going by.  I really do think it's time to hibernate now.  Anyone wanna join me? 

Well Played, Monday

After last week, particularly Friday, I was grateful for the weekend reprieve.  However, Monday has rolled around again.  I'm with Garfield the Cat - not a fan of the Monday.

1.  M1 is sick in bed.  He looked like crap before swimming class this morning, and he came home looking even crappier.  I swear he has some sort of light rash on his face.  He's wheezing.  He says his chest hurts.  So he ate a little lunch and went to bed.  Hm.

2.  M2 ripped apart her goggles last week.  I put them back together, but she had separated parts that weren't meant to be separated (they were originally glued together) and they fell apart again during swim class today.  This meant she tried to refuse to jump off the diving board and got extremely angry with me after class when I told her that the money to replace them - if she wanted them replaced THIS summer - would have to come out of her allowance.  Cue the surreptitious beating of Mom in a public place.  She pummelled me with her little fists until she realized people were watching, and then she decided to "hug" me as hard as possible while stepping on my toes.  Adorable.

3.  M2's British accent has returned.  She's currently reading a Halloween book.  Half of it has been a la Liverpool; the other half has been a la Okie.  Bizarro.

4.  It's 95 degrees outside with a heat index of 103, and it's only 12:22 p.m.  Humidity is almost 50%.  I leave it to you to imagine the torture of stepping outside.  I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about.

I think it's time for Tuesday.  Where's the fast-forward button on the 24-hour remote?