When it rains...

The kids and I went to the fire station to take Uncle Danny some lime juice for a salad he was making.

Afterwards we stopped by the shopping center...

...specifically Taco Bell.

 

I'm a sucker for wet pavement. Can you tell?

Questions

I was washing dishes and Little K was eating breakfast. She asked me to come to her because she wanted to see me while she talked to me.  I walked over and she said, "What's my question?"  I said, "I don't know. It's your question."  She became quite agitated.  I said, "It's okay, you can ask me when you remember."  She cried, "But I can't remember still."  Suddenly her face lit up and she said, "I remembered my question!  It's something I don't know!"  And that was it. End of conversation.

My Scrabble Strategy

I grew up in a family of Scrabble players...well...my extended family. When I was a teenager, I expressed some interest in trying to play and Dad said, "You need to memorize the two and three letter words first." You think I'm kidding? Grandma handed me a photocopy with lists of words for me to learn.  Needless to say, I did not start playing Scrabble when I was a teenager.

About a year ago I started playing Scrabulous on Facebook. At first I would call Dad up on the phone and say, "I have XYZ letters and I really think they should make a word". ("XYZ letters" hahahaha That makes me laugh. But I digress.) Later I started double checking myself on wineverygame.com. After I would finish my play, I would check my letters to see if I could have gotten a bingo. Usually I can tell when my letters ought to be able to make something, and the frustrating thing is that more times than not, sure enough, they WOULD have spelled a bingo. I don't get so annoyed when it's a word I don't know but I do beat myself up when it's a word I do know - or worse - an easy word.  So I don't check very often anymore.  Every once in a while, when I KNOW there has to be a word and I can't see it, I might go check afterwards.  But I'm really too lazy to be bothered - plus it's kinda depressing.

Facebook Scrabble works well for me because it won't accept words that aren't legit - which does happen to me on occasion. If fact, just the other day I was shocked by a word that ought to exist but apparently doesn't!! :) And I have to admit that I'm forever "trying" words in the dictionary. I've gotten pretty good at assembling words into likely patterns and I frequently stumble onto words I didn't know - I'm sure the purists would be aghast. Today I saw that my letters spelled "STRAWED" so what the heck, I gave it a try and sure enough - I got the bingo. (Sorry Hil.)

When I'm looking for a bingo, I almost always start with the end of the word. I look for common endings and then switch around the other letters in front of that.  The nice thing is then you really only need to find a four or five letter word to go in front of ING or ED or IER or whatever it might be. Frequently after having spent a while working with ER at the end of a word, I remember that RE can also be the start of a word. *hehe*

What's amazing to me is how much easier it has gotten to spot bingoes. Now my big frustration is that I'll find the bingo in my rack but then there's no place to put it on the board. Sometimes I'll have really great letters and can find several bingoes, but no still no place to put any them. That kills me.

So anyway, I'm going to pass along the tricks that I learned from my dad. I think there are different strategies but Dad is always going for the bingo. He figures that if you get a few bingoes, you're likely to win the game. So primarily I try to play that way too. I'm not too worried about putting high value letters in primo places (though it's nice, don't get me wrong). If I get an X or a Z or a Q or a J - I always try to get rid of it right away because it's hard to get bingoes with those letters and that's my ultimate plan. I think Dad told me his favorite letters are SEITR and the blank, of course. So I started trying to hang on to those, whenever possible. Later on I read online that the best letters for a bingo are considered to RETAIN + blank because you can get a TON of words out of that. And it's so handy to remember, right?! Of course I'll always hang on to an S too because they're great for placing bingoes.

I know there are other schools of thought out there but there you go...that's mine. Dad told me that Grandma hangs on to UI until the Q gets played. And maybe you should listen to Grandma because right now she's kicking my butt 329 to 164.

(I figured I'd better blur out the tiles on my rack so she doesn't use that info against me.)

Overheard at Breakfast

Annika, "Kardynn, I know you might not remember this but how come you didn't turn upside down in Mommy's tummy?"
Kardynn, "Because it hurt my arm."

Valentines

Earlier today my sweet friend called me up and asked if I had plans.  She said that she was going to doll me up for Valentines Day.  She was going to sexy-ify me for the evening.  Cool.  So she did - she came over and prettied me up.  My favorite quotable was when she said something to the effect of "Heather, just try to be girlie."  *haha*  It's true. I'm so not a girlie-girl.  I have three daughters and I'm still a huge tomboy.  Yikes!  Anyway, she made my hair all pretty and put make up on me and then rushed out the door for a date with her own hubby.



And then I checked my phone and there was a text from the hubby, "I'm going to Hunters game. I tried to call you like 5 times :-( anyway, I'll c you tonight."

Story of my life.

Now We Are Thirty-Six

My dad loves writing poetry.  And he's good at it too!  I have a blog where I attempt to accumulate his poetry, although this is a very small fraction of the stuff he's written.  One of the special things he does is writes us a poem every year for our birthday.  I'm not sure when that started but perhaps it was this book that spurred that tradition.  I got this book when I was a little girl.  It's one of my very treasured possessions. 

The title poem is in the back.

As you can see the final verse has been scratched out. For a few years it was tradition that my dad would come up with a new little verse to mark the passing birthdays.  The back cover has another verse penned out from when I turned nine.

That's the back story for this year's very special birthday poem.  (Because today just happens to be my birthday.)


Heather, On Motherhood (subtitled, Many the Poo)

When I was 31, I wondered what I'd done.
When I was 32, I barely knew what to do.
When I was 33, I had no time for me.
When I was 34, I had one baby more.
When I was 35, I just tried to survive.
But now I am 36, I'm as clever as clever.
I think I'll be 36 now for ever and ever.

And because I'm super douper lucky, I got a second poem:

Ramshackle Heart

You inhabit every corner of
This ramshackle heart of mine,
Walls without clocks and doors without locks
And love wrapping round like a vine.

For the doors are simply memories
And the windows but a view
Of moments of grace that are holding in place
This heart you can see right through.

And often a door falls open,
And another door, and then...
There's my little girl at five years old;
There's my little girl at ten.

There's my little baby all grown up
With babies of her own
And wondering to herself, no doubt,
At how much they have grown.

And though you may not hear from me,
My heart has heard from you...
This ramshackle heart would have fallen apart
If those messages didn't come through.

A door, a door, another door,
There is no foretelling when,
And there you are, and there you are,
Yes, and there you are again.

Coming Up for Air

This summer I had a scary experience in the ocean.  I had been on the shore supervising the kids while the guys played around on boogie boards in the water.  There was a hurricane headed our way and that meant big waves for the guys to play in. When they finally came back, I asked Dwight to watch the kids while I went for a quick swim.  My father-in-law went out with me.

Before I knew it, I was in over my head - quite literally.  The water was very turbulent and I felt like I was getting pulled all different directions.  I got a little separated from my father-in-law. He was only about ten feet away but I could not get back to him. He could touch but I couldn't, so the undertow was having its way with me. Eventually I drifted to a spot where I was able to touch between waves. But I was quite tired by this point.  I was trying to dive under the waves but they were coming in so fast and so violently that I barely had time to recoup between them.  One of the waves pulled my swim skirt down to my knees.  Several times I swallowed water.

I got scared.

There was a deeper channel between me and the shore and I questioned whether or not I could make it across. I was nervous to leave the relative safety of the little sand bar where I could touch between waves.  I thought the lifeguard was watching me and I considered flailing my arms to get his attention...but I didn't. Maybe I was embarrassed.  Maybe I was proud.  I think mainly I just didn't really believe I was in trouble. I thought I would be okay and that I could make it back.  But I was scared. I looked for my husband on the shore.  I tried shouting his name but of course he couldn't hear me.  I quietly said, "help."

The happy ending to that story is that around that same time I decided to just swim to the freakin' shore. And I was fine. I don't know why I thought that would be a problem. When I reached the beach, I collapsed on the sand. The lifeguard came by to see if I was okay because he had in fact been watching me.

-----

Tonight I sat quietly in my room with a million frustrated thoughts running through my head.  I had a miserable day. I drove to the gym and realized I never dropped my daughter off at preschool. I considered just taking her to the gym with me but instead I turned around and dropped her off at school. As I was walking out of there, I realized that I still had her coat in my hand, which meant yet another U-Turn. When I went back to pick her up, I opened my car door and the wind blew it out of my hand and slammed it into the car next to mine...and left a surprisingly large ding in that car.  I tracked down the owner.  Later my daughter crawled under my desk and crashed my computer. It took me about an hour and a half to get it back online. My kids made one huge mess and one large mess.  I messed up the soup I made for supper. Blah, blah, blah.  You get the idea.

So like I said, I was feeling frustrated and sitting in my room wallowing in it a little.  And I whispered the words, "Help".  That suddenly took me back to that other day when I was in the ocean and fighting to keep my head above water.  I had an epiphany. What is it about me that I can't let people know when I need help? Why do I let myself get in over my head?

It feels very cliche to mention yet again how hard it is to be a mother but goshdarnit, this parenting business is tough. And I wasn't prepared for what a poor job I would do of it, either.  Or maybe it's more accurate to say that I'm not living up the expectations I had created for myself.

My husband always accuses me of being whiny when I force him to read these posts.  I'm sure he'll say that again when I make him read this one.  So I'll own it. You're right. I'm being whiny. I'm not ready to stop wallowing in it just yet. But maybe tomorrow the waters will be calm. And you know what, most days I do realize that I'm darn lucky to be swimming in this ocean. But yeah, today the water was rough and that's okay. Sometimes the water gets rough.

Things Are Not Always What They Seem...

A few months ago my five year-old started getting into food. We've tried various tactics to get her to stop, with moderate success. She's mostly stopped doing it but every now and again we see that she's slipped into old habits. Just last night I discovered a tupperware of pretzel treats at the foot of her bed, under the sheets. We had a talk with her and explained that we don't want her getting into food because she could get into something dangerous - something that she shouldn't be eating. Unbeknownst to us, she'd already learned a lesson about things that look like food but aren't food.

This morning I found an empty wrapper in her room and the subsequent investigation lead me to a trashcan, where I found this:


Not-so-yummy soap, originally uploaded by hezro.

Apparently she thought it was a chocolate bar.

Cleaning Solution

A few years ago I bought some cleaning solution from a door-to-door salesman. The guy peddled his wares and showed how this wonderful solution could turn your tennis shoes white again, could get the green mildew off your patio, could clean your carpets.  And it was non-toxic - totally safe to use around kids. You could spray it on your hands and no worries. So I bought some. And then I'm embarassed to admit that it sat for years under my kitchen sink...taking up precious real estate.  But recently I hauled it out and decided to use  up the darn stuff.  And here's the thing.  It sits on my counter taunting me.  Because I kid you not, every time I see it, I can't help but recall The Emperor's New Clothes.  I have to wonder, did all those things come clean because of this wonder solution or did they come clean because he used a little elbow grease?  I'm thinking it was the latter.  And in the meantime I intend to get my money's worth from my cleaning solution...which I guess means I have a lot of elbow grease in my future.