somebody's got a case of the mondays....

And it ain't just me....Camille, oh my goodness. She is so independent. She used the toilet, called to be wiped, Margaret so nicely told me she would help her, but nooooo. She wanted MOMMY. So I went in and helped her. Then Jonathan thought he would be helpful and flush the toilet for her. Bad idea.

So....she is having a little tantrum....(well, medium-sized).....I will just let her go for a while, then I will ask her if she wants to be good now.....she will say yes.

Okay...fast forward to now...the Camille crisis has passed....and now some of the kids are going to the ZOO. Aaron is taking Margaret, Sonja, Jonathan, Charlotte Claire. They are going with their cousins (my sister's girls), and two second cousins, Will and Grace, whom we just call cousins, without the "second".....Aaron suggested we all go in the big van, but....I might be getting old or something, but going to the zoo when it is 88 degrees and humid sounds like a form of torture. I want to be near water, or in air conditioning. Anyway, this meant I had to get clothes out for the little ones, and pack some lunch and a jug of ice water, and I put some Mountain Dews into a small cooler for them....and I brushed hair and counted out money....

Margaret has made eggies-in-the-basket for some of the kids. She cuts a circle out of a piece of buttered bread, puts it in the frying pan, and cracks the egg into the circle....

I am tired today....we had some fun last night when one of the teenagers decided to go for a midnight stroll without telling us....thought we wouldn't notice....this child was gone for just long enough for us to consider calling the police....then this child returned, and wondered what all the fuss was about....just going for a nice long walk in the night, to think..rrrr. What was I feeling? Partly anger, mostly fear. I may have sixteen of them, but I love each of them so fiercely I cannot even deal with thinking about anything bad happening to any of them....and when the fear and worry start to creep in, and I realize that life is not a movie with a guaranteed happy ending, I wonder how I am doing as a mom, I wonder how many things we have done totally wrong....as the clocked ticked away the minutes, and this child didn't come back, the panic started to edge in, and I thought I was going to seriously barf. Kathryn and Evelyn were up with me, I woke up Paul, he went outside looking, and driving around, while we cleaned up the living room....partly because I had to do something, partly because one cannot call the cops with a messy living room. Anyways, the child came back, we had some three-in-the-morning heart-to-heart, had a chance to tell child how much we care and how we are always here to talk to and help.....

So I am tired today. Life is interesting, and there is nothing we can do about it. It is a helpless feeling sometimes to be so vulnerable to what could happen to these guys. I kept thinking,"God knows where this child is. He knows what we need." What would I do without that comfort?

Anyways, I have things to do...I have to call the septic people. It shouldn't need to be pumped yet, but it smells awful in the backyard when we run alot of water....never in all the years we have lived here has it smelled like this....it was just pumped in the fall...so we are hoping it isn't a big problem. $$$. And I have to cancel our camping reservations, wah. Paul is leaving for India during our vacation, albeit at the end of it. We figured he would have to leave earlier than that too, to get ready....and I am NOT going to tow a 35 ft camper, not behind that 15 passenger van. No sir. So it isn't worth all the preparation. We will just stay home for his vacation, and try to make it vacation-y. We could go and stay in the camper where it is, but hey, my bed here is much more comfy and all the packing again...ugh. I wish we could just go to a hotel somewhere for a few days, or rent a camp on a lake....but whatever we do, it will be nice. I just realize sometimes that I have to seriously stop and count my blessings. I am waking up to those thoughts that lead to discontentment, learning to stop them dead in their tracks.

I need to make those phone calls.....