school again?

The Evil Hill, The Evil Dog.

There were two dead snakes in the road this morning. I detest snakes. One of the neighbors, who also has been walking every day (my new friend, old enough to be my mother, but very sweet) saw a huge one last week. She took a picture of it. blah.

I got on the Evil Scale this morning. I do not know exactly how it compares to the dr.'s scale, but this morning it was three pounds lighter than the dr., and it was four pounds lighter than the last time I stepped on it, which was like nine or ten days ago. So....it is working, this suffering! Ha, what I really mean is that I had ice cream yesterday, and I still lost a few pounds!!!

No pool for me today though, some of the kids are in the school Band Concert tonight. I just ain't Supermom enough to go to the pool, come home and feed and dress them, and get them to school in time for the concert. To be truthful, it will be challenging enough without going to the pool.

Today we shall go to the grocery store again. We need milk and bread, and bananas and yogurt and apples. Jonathan will go with us, since he did not go to school. He is coming down with a cold, and is hoarse. He woke up on the wrong side of the day, didn't want to take a shower, didn't want to get dressed...he cried. He stopped when I told him he could stay home. hmm. rrr. But - I am glad to have him here.

Charlotte Claire is turning five years old this week. We have four birthdays here within 17 days. Jonathan turned seven, Sonja turned nine, and Joseph will turn twenty on the sixteenth.

Charlotte Claire loves the, "Tangled" movie. She especially loves Flynn Ryder. She wants the Flynn Ryder doll, but it isn't in Walmart or Target, and is sold out at Toys R Us (or Toys R 3, as Camille calls it). She will be fine whatever she gets, but she is just so sweet and funny, I would love to get her a Flynn.

When I got home yesterday, the house was all cleaned up, thanks to Paul and Mali. Then this morning, it was all straightened again, thank you, Ashley! I washed up a few stray dishes, swept up some more dirt - thank YOU, Rosie, and it is nice in here. There is bedding in the wash, a few clean towels on the couch, but other than that...not much to do. Good thing I have shopping to do! ha, it's not like I couldn't clean the bedrooms or anything.

Mother's Day is rather sad for me. Yesterday I had to remember that it means something for my kids, it isn't all about missing my own mother. I do miss her, but she is still so WITH me. She...

1. Used to call me on a nice day and say, "You should get outside!" ...as if I hadn't thought how nice that would be. As if it would be easy to get out there, with a nursing baby, busy toddler, a two and a half year old, a stubborn four year old, messy house.....

2. She had no tolerance for disrespect. Her kids respected other people's property, and their own property. They sat properly on the furniture, and did not slam around. I am thankful she instilled this in me for my children.

3. She would drop everything and go shopping, or to a park, on an adventure. She loved being spontaneous.

4. She called me every single morning. I usually also called her in the afternoon while I was making dinner.

5. She would come here sometimes to spend the night when my father was driving her crazy (he was bipolar, and when he was in his low time, he often didn't speak to her at all)...but as soon as she got here, she would call him to see how he was doing.

6. My mother was a birthday remember-er. She of course knew the birthdays of all of her forty-something grandchildren, but also all of the kids in our church. She bought things all the time to make sure she had presents for them all.

7. She wasn't a fancy person, the gifts often were in the store bag, or wrapped in the comics. She thought store bought cards were a complete and total waste of money, and if she ever received one, she would read how much it cost on the back, and wonder how anyone could pay so much for a paper card.

8. She thought half a paper towel was good enough for most any job.

9. She gave us the time of day. She gave our friends the time of day. She listened, and she cared.

10. She called me Lady Jane.

11. She used to say, "It's painful to be beautiful" as she tugged through my tangles.

12. She had no tolerance for lying. She would say, "A liar is a thief and a thief is a liar and everyone hates a liar."

12. Her eyesight wasn't so great in her last years, and so many times it would break my heart when I picked her up for a shopping trip and there would be a stain on her nice pretty shirt that she didn't see. She always dressed so neatly and was attracted to pretty pastel colors....so I couldn't say anything.

13. It makes me laugh and cry to remember her last week with us. She was going to die, she knew it, her heart was doing crazy things during dialysis, they couldn't even complete the last session she went to. She always said she wanted to die on her own terms, and not in that dialysis chair. When she checked into the hospice care unit at the hospital, she sat there on the bed and joked, "So THIS is my deathbed." She wasn't in the least bit afraid, she said. But I knew it was so hard for her to say goodbye to all of us. I did not tell my children when they all came to see her that it would be the last time. I didn't want them to remember her they way she got later in the week, but how she was when she first got there....she was actually happy! She was happy because everyone was there with her, and she liked that more than anything in the world. (now my kids say things to me about that last day they saw her, how she hugged them all and said good bye...they said they did not know she REALLY meant goodbye...)

14. I miss her every single day.

15. I love when I have dreams about her that seem real.

16. When I see young and middle aged mothers in the stores with their mothers, I get jealous. Sometimes I want to tell the grown daughters to be nice to their moms, to be thankful for them, not to take one single day with them for granted....

blah, now I have made myself cry.