The Sock Anomaly

Everyone knows the washer and dryer eat perfectly innocent, unsuspecting socks. White, black, pink, red, green ones, they have no preference. The anomaly occurs when I get fed up with the basket full of mismatched socks and decide that these poor lonely items are never going to find their mate again and toss them out. This is inevitably the time the washer and dryer then chose to give back to the community and return some of the mismatches. Is this part of some plot to make housework the first step to insanity? I think the washer and dryer is in cahoots with the dishwasher that leaves the film on all my glassware. It doesn't help that my daughter is going through a phase of wearing mismatched socks on purpose. Hey, this could work to my advantage I could just throw all the mismatched socks in her drawer and let her deal with it.

Distraction Much!

I drag myself out of bed and make sure the kids are up. Tommie is up but Michael is not, I gently shake him and say "Time to get up for school". I get his clothes ready and lay them on his bed. "Come on" I urge. Going back into my bedroom I begin to throw on my gym clothes. "Now, where is that pink tank" I begin to fold clothes from the laundry basket on the floor. "Ah there it is" the match to the sock I am wearing on my left foot. The phone rings, could I please pick up an additional kid at the bus stop today? I am back down the hall, topless of course "Did Michael get out of bed yet? Michael get up!" Back to my room, while putting up my hair, "oh yeah, pink tank" and I pull it out of the half full laundry basket. "Whew! I haven't even gotten downstairs yet!" And so it goes...I wonder if housewives in the 1950's were able to complete a task... get the kids breakfast, dressed and out the door for school, folding laundry, doing the dishes and such without being distracted by a dozen other things. I wonder if I am completely mistaken in assuming that 50 or 60 years ago, things were much simpler.

Self Sufficiency

We are but a mere a week or so away from starting our latest project. A garden. Yes, another thing to add to the daily task list. And it has been quite the investment due to the fact that we have started by flooring the selected area with a chicken wire and a gopher proof railroad tie base, next we are going to cement 4 X 4 posts and and surround it with a 9 foot deer proof fence. Fort Knox would be jealous!

Q & A

Tonight while Michael was putting away the clean silverware from the dishwasher he asked me a very important question. "Mom, are these places behind our knees called leg pits?" This is one of the many life altering questions that whiz through his mind at any given time. He gets very angry with me when I chuckle. But he has it wrong, I don't laugh because I think he is funny, I think it's incredibly amazing how complex his mind works. I only wish I wrote down everything he asks, I will have to work on that.

Gas...not Flatulence but Propane

Our lovely home is powered by electricity and propane. This was great 9 years ago when we moved in, it was about $.74 a gallon. It made it considerably less than natural gas. Kind of a nah, nah nah thing. However, over the years that has changed. When gas hit close to $4.00 a gallon, propane was around $2.25. Ouch! We bought propane May 30, 2008 for $2.24 a gallon, just under $2,100.00 for a tank. Yeah, ouch again! As everyone knows gas dropped quite a few months ago, quite drastically. So if anyone fancies themselves a gas expert and can tell me why propane, that has a history of being significantly lower than car gas, for as long as I know anyway, is now the same price as car gas please tell me! Can you tell I'm setting up for another one of life's little quirks? Our propane guy who is absolutely fabulous and always on top of our usage has called twice to sell us gas but being the stubborn person that I am, have refused due to the price. So Saturday, I thought, you know I'd better check our gas. I went out and lifted the lid...well needless to say my chin hit the ground when I saw the needle buried at...zero. I called my guy and he couldn't get us gas until Tuesday! Last week when temps were toasty this wouldn't be much of a problem, just quick showers and no cooking, but it wasn't toasty and Tom being just as stubborn as I am refused to hook up a reserve tank for fear he would mess up the line. By Sunday, the heater was off to the house, by Monday it was everyone in the shower together you have five minutes to clean up, by Monday night we did homework huddled around a space heater, by Tuesday morning it was 57 degrees in the house. And guess what? The price went down 20 cents over the weekend! Ha ha ha, no pain no gain!

Article 5.1 Weather in Utah

Well I haven't been around for a while but it's 1 am and I'm back :) I had a bad week a couple of weeks ago and in between fits of emotion I just really didn't have anything to say or I just couldn't put into words. I prefer to keep this skimming along the lighter side of life, mostly stuff I can be sarcastic about and make jolly fun of. Let's face it I'm strung up tighter than an undersized pair of pantyhose and I've got to cut holes in those suckers to loosen them up! So today's topic is...well I don't know, could be a number of things...like, how about the beautiful, light, airy blanket of fresh snow I found on my deck this morning. What a tease, I actually got a sunburn last week from sitting on my front porch and now I'm listening to the honeycomb size snowflakes blow against my windows. In case you don't know honeycomb is big, big, BIG, BIG! You'd think I'd be used to this by now, it happens every year but I'm not. I bitch every year, but then I've heard women aren't happy unless they have something to bitch about. So I guess I am really happy!

Why?

So, Saturday morning, my son got up and sauntered over to his Dad's side of the bed and asked him to turn on cartoons for him. Sometimes it's hard to drag yourself out of bed on Saturday morning, so I got up. Michael was waiting patiently on the couch like a little angel. I turned on his cartoons for him and went in to check on laundry. Michael said "I want Dad to turn on the cartoons". I guess his button pushing abilities far supersede mine. Seriously, he turned off the TV and went upstairs to drag Tom out of bed, and I said "why?" just before I confined him to his room for a half an hour.