Photo a Day: How You Feel Today

Today, I feel tired...

...just like my cat.

It's been a fairly busy few days.

I cut, packaged, and froze 80 pounds of chicken.

I had an eye appointment, and my doctor said everything is looking good from my surgery.

I sight-read some piano music for a musical number in our ward on Sunday. A few girls that were planning to sing couldn't make it, so the pianist had to step in to sing. She brought the music to my house 15 minutes before church started, I played through it once, and then played in sacrament meeting.

I also taught the gospel doctrine lesson (that's my current calling; I teach once a month), and had helped Jakob prepare his talk in primary as well.

I cleaned at my dad's office.

I had a short piano recital for some of my students. Jakob did great, I messed up a little (but I hadn't practiced all that much-I decided last minute to play at the recital). I decided to take May off of teaching, which is probably a good thing, because Pete just started working Wednesday through Saturday for 12-hour days. 48 hours of work, plus 8 hours of commuting time. He's a good man, that one.

I did my visiting teaching. Yay!

I went grocery shopping.

I'm totally caught up on laundry.

Pete and I watched "First Knight". "The law will judge YUH!"

I made cornbread for our ward's chili cook-off, which won a little award. Here's the recipe, from my kids' preschool teacher, Miss Karla:

Cornbread

1 cup butter melted

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

2 1/2 cups buttermilk

1/2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. baking powder

1 cup cornmeal

3 cups flour

1 tsp. salt

Mix butter, sugar, and eggs. Add buttermilk and stir.

Stir dry ingredients together and add to liquids. Stir just until moistened.

Pour into greased 9"x13" pan and bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

And, I fed the missionaries last night. They ate SOOOO much food! I don't know what I'm going to do when my boys are that age, and eating me out of house and home. Note to self: quantity, not quality.

Today, I've done pretty much nothing. Even moms need days off every once in a while, right?

Lazy, According to Jakob

Jakob has a really skewed sense of what lazy is.  Well, maybe it's a skewed sense of what we as adults-that is, his parents, do.

He told his gym teacher one day that he was being lazy at his class, "just like my dad".  Yeah, I think that getting up at 5 a.m. four days a week to go to work, and getting home at 6:30 at night is being TOTALLY lazy. 

Then last night Jake wanted more dinner, so he asked me for some.  I was like, "You can get some more by yourself."  And he gave me this look like, what?  I have to serve myself?  As he was dishing up, he muttered, "I wish I could stay home and do nothing like Mom does."

That made me laugh.  I replied, "Jake, do you want to hear what I did today?  It definitely wasn't "nothing"."

He looked at me with "impress me" in his eyes.  I began.

"First, I got up, so I could get you up, made you a lunch, and got some breakfast for you.  I got you out the door so you could catch the bus and get to school on time.

"Then I got breakfast for the other three kids, and got myself ready for the day.  I started some laundry, and folded three other loads from yesterday's laundry, and put it all away.  Later in the day, I folded two more loads and put that away as well.

"I cleaned out the fridge, and dumped the old food.  I rinsed dishes, loaded the dishwasher, and after it was done running I put all the dishes away.

"I took out the garbage, which includes getting garbage from 6 cans, and also changing out the cat litter box.  After the garbage man came, I brought the garbage can back in.

"I finished writing down the music for one of our roadshow songs. (Meaning, I had to come up with accompaniment for one of the songs, so it's like I was composing a bit.  I did about 2/3s of it yesterday.  And this was not an easy task for me.) 

"I swept the kitchen floor so my students wouldn't get grossed out looking at it.  I also cleaned some pee off the bathroom floor.  (Totally gross, I know, but that's how it is with three little boys who don't have the greatest aim.)

"I got lunch for myself and three kids, and listened to a tantrum from Ivy (for about 30 seconds, then I sent her to her room) because she didn't want what I got for her for lunch.  I got Brock ready and out the door for his school. 

"I taught four piano lessons today.

"I did have a slight break, because usually on Tuesdays I go and help in Brock's kindergarten class, but today they were doing something special so his teacher told me not to come.  Instead, I finished the craft pages you kids had started earlier in the week.  (It's mosaics with little sticky foam squares.  Like paint-by-number but with squares.  It was fun, and because it's for 6-year-olds, about at my crafting level.  This owl one is one that Jakob did on Saturday; it's one of the small ones.  I did three big ones.)

"During piano lessons, Troy, Brock, and Ivy came in from playing outside, COVERED in mud.  I had to strip Ivy down, and then sent her downstairs to wait to get cleaned up until after I was done teaching.  That means another load of laundry, with three coats in it that I had cleaned only a week before, bringing my washed loads total for the day to three, and my folded loads for the day to six.  (And then she fell asleep, with mud on her face and in her hair.  I'm the best mom ever!)

"I also checked your homework, listened to you read, made four beds, including yours, and made dinner.  I also answered your questions you had while practicing piano.

"In a half hour, I get to go over to the church, and play a musical number for a lady that's singing at New Beginnings.  (I don't know if I mentioned on here that I got released from Young Women's.  Being at New Beginnings last night made me really miss my calling and those girls.)  I also get to come home and get everyone ready for bed, and do more dishes from dinner.

"So, if you want to switch me for the day, my "nothing" for your day of schoolwork, I'd be happy to, any day of the week."

Silence, with eyes very wide, from Jakob's side of the table.  Maybe he'll rethink his definition of lazy.

The Norm

I ran my washer and dryer nonstop from 9:30 p.m. Sunday night until 3 a.m. Monday morning.
Then I had it going nonstop from 9:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. yesterday.
This morning, I still had two loads to run.
(I really, really wish I was exaggerating about the sheer amount of fabric running through my machines. I should have counted the loads, but that would have been depressing.)

And now, I only have 5 or 6 loads waiting for me to fold. Which is actually how much laundry I end up having when we aren't sick.

Yep. That looks about right.

Thoughts

Jakob's jaw is getting bigger, I think, because he's starting to get a gap on the side between his teeth. It probably doesn't help that his front tooth is loose, either. It's kind of Hillbilly-ish.

I took the last of the medicine for my rash on Saturday. This medicine has steroids in it. And seriously? How can anyone in their right mind want to do to their body voluntarily what has just happened to mine? I have the fishbowl head feeling, where I'm just standing there and then all of a sudden I feel like I'm tipping over backwards, yet I know that my body isn't actually moving. I absolutely crash during the day because I'm so tired, but at night when it's time for bed I lie there awake. And then when I do sleep, it's crazy dreams and tossing and turning. And then I'm all shaky, like too much caffeine or something. I don't get why any of that would be ideal, just to get bigger muscles or whatever. Yeah, I'm really hoping all of the side effects go away in the next little bit.

We took the training wheel off Jake's bike. I say wheel, singular, because the other had fallen off before. And I say Jake's bike, even though it was Brock's bike for his birthday. My kids are kind of...transient when it comes to what belongs to whom. After we took the other wheel off, Jakob started yelling and pedalling as fast as he could up and down the street. "Yeah! This is awesome! Woo-hoo!" a la Leonardo DiCaprio on Titanic ("I'm king of the world!")

I'm trying a new motto: cease to be idle. It's kind of working.

I can't decide which animal Brock is most like. He's like a squirrel, where he hoards away toys in his bed. He's a night owl, for sure.

I've also come to face the reality of laundry every day. Back in the good ol' days of two kids, I could put it off and just do once a week. Now if I wait just once a week, my kids run out of clothes and the pile is almost as tall as I am. This week I realized that I have to do at least a load a day. *sigh* I wonder when a good age is to have your kids start the machines etc. by themselves...

I can't find Ivy's toothbrush. It's probably in our massive mess of toys. Not that I can really perform the actual act of brushing with her. Eating toothpaste is kind of like brushing with toothpaste, right?

We buzzed the boys' hair the other night. Troy looks bald because his hair is getting lighter and his skin is getting darker.

Memo, our killer cat, has brought us many treats in the last couple of days, including two birds. I'm very impressed with her hunting skills. My gag reflex while scooping up said dead birds is very impressed as well.

I love to eat out. If I could, I would eat out once a day. But I would make sure it could get delivered to me. More restaurants should have delivery.

I hope that cat food is an appropriate snack food for little mischievous girls.

I wish that brownies would magically make themselves, like a neverending supply. But they would also change themselves to be different kinds of brownies. Maybe I've been reading too much Harry Potter...nah.