Love & a Steady Hand

It's not easy being green

Your Inner Color is Green

Your Personality: You are a high acheiver who is very competitive. You're bound to reach your goals, no matter how lofty. You in Love: Picky with high standards, it's hard to find your match. You need someone as driven as you are! Your Career: You need a high profile, challenging career to satisfy you. Consider finance, sales, or running your own company.

Matthew is Five

I don't have ADHD, look a kitty!

I get distracted easily. Had you noticed?

Remember last week or so, when I said I didn't know what to do with myself now that I'm home? Well, I found something. I decided to start stripping the cabinets in the kitchen. And it's a gigantic mess. And I'm exhausted -- physically really, and I've just gotten to the parts that are hard to reach and it's just too hard. I wanna do something else.

Like stain the deck.

Easter Photos

Here's what Mom and the kids did while we were on Spring Break:

And this: [Isn't my mom's kitchen beautiful? She did the paintwork herself!]

and this:

There are no pictures of what I did on spring break, because it would be silly to take three days worth of pictures of somebody sleeping on the sofa. But I was in heaven. I love to sleep!

Here is Easter Sunday:

Poppy seems confused about who should be hunting for eggs...

To be fair, I should tell you that he was coerced (although not by me) into posing for this picture. The sound of all the cameras clicking at once was deafening!

Here they are being cute and normal again. They clean up good, don't they? And smiling, despite the fact that it was going home day. Sigh.

It was a very nice visit. Not nearly long enough of course, but still lots of fun.

Spring Got Over Itself

and now it's freezing here. I hate this weather. I was READY for spring. Now I am in the dumps again trying to figure out what to do with myself. Grrrrrr!

I am still out here

Whew, I was sick. I am just about back to normal now -- had a gallbladder attack last night, which sucked, and my voice is still scratchy, but otherwise I feel good.

Spring has finally arrived here in Ohio. Yesterday the kids and I planted our rose bushes. Mara chose a red rose bush -- I think it's an American Beauty Rose -- and Matthew picked yellow. His looks better than hers right now, but I'm hoping hers will perk up now that it's in the ground.

Tim got to use the exciting new power mower that I bought for him last week. For the past five or six years we've been using a reel mower -- you know the kind that you push that has no power to it. We were mostly happy with it (well, I was) because it didn't have gassy fumes and it didn't shoot things out at a million miles an hour, so you could mow with the kids in the yard and not have to worry. But it was no good with sticks. Even a twig would jam the reels up and dull the blades hopelessly, so the giant maple tree in our backyard was causing undue frustrations. I got the blade sharpening kit and that helped some, but then last summer the handle broke and it was going to cost as much to get a new handle shipped as it would to just buy a new mower. I taped it, I tried bolting it, and those things worked until the fall, but this spring I decided it was time to move on.

I feel bad about it. I really liked that we were so green. I liked being able to mow without worrying about whether something would fly out from under the mower and whack the kids. I even liked the little whirring sound the reels made as they swished through the grass.

But, Tim really did not enjoy mowing with the reel mower. I think he used to like it, and I know he liked that it didn't send out fumes and stuff. But this neighborhood is just too Stepford-y for a reel mower. Everyone keeps their grass (and everything else) just a little too neat for us. Everyone here edges their sidewalks every single time they mow. They sweep the sidewalks (or mostly use blowers to blow the grass away) and their flowerbeds are all mulched regularly. So keeping up was difficult with the reel mower. Tim felt that he had to mow the front yard two or three times to make sure he had all the grass cut evenly -- I'm not sure why he had to do that, I never did, but whatever -- and it was just such a frustrating experience for him every single time. This year I decided that unless I was going to take over the responsibility for mowing, we really needed a better solution. So last week I bought a second-hand gas mower. And Tim is happier, which makes it all worthwhile I guess. The grass certainly looks lovely...

[Deb, call me. I'm sorry I missed our phone date. I was semi-comatose.]