Trendy Highbrow

Sometimes kids do crazy things with no logical explanation. Usually, those moments are good for a laugh though and Friday's surprise was no exception. I took Trevor to work in the morning and noticed something funny about Tyler when I returned. He had band-aids over his eyebrows.
"Tyler, what happened to your eyebrows?" I asked.
"Nothing. I just have a little cut," he replied.
Not content with that explanation, I promptly removed the band-aids and discovered that his eyebrows were missing.
"Tyler, what happened to your eyebrows!?! Did Trevor shave them off?" Yes, I immediately assumed that Trevor had pulled a prank and left for work pretending innocence. He is terribly offended that I jumped to this conclusion, because as it turns out, Tyler shaved his eyebrows off himself.When I asked Tyler why he shaved his eyebrows, he told me that he thought they were too bushy and was trying to take off just a little bit of the hair, not all of it. Apparently, someone told him he had a uni-brow and he was afraid of being laughed at. So it was with great trepidation that he went to church yesterday with his older siblings chuckling behind his back. To his credit, Tyler bravely walked into church expecting hecklers and to his delight, realized that no one noticed (or if they did, they were too polite to ask). Trevor offered to shave his head to make everything match, but Tyler declined and is still excited to start school on Wednesday. Whew! I'm glad he's learned to laugh about it. He's now quite sure that he's going to be the coolest kid in his class. I told him that there wasn't a doubt in my mind.

Mercury Rising

Never, ever, will I again complain about summers here not feeling summery enough. After that misguided post where I said that it didn't feel like summer here, the thermometer blazed up from 75 to 95 degrees within 24 hours. It's been hot ever since. Now to be fair, it does cool off every evening. But every morning, the mercury in our porch thermometer rises with the sun and the days are LONG here at this latitude. Ah, well. Here's hoping that summer lasts until October so we can get the roof on our house before winter hits.
In home construction news. I got all the sub-contractor bids to the bank last week and have just three little documents to submit tomorrow and then we should be good to close the construction loan. YAY! It's been a LOT of work to gather all the information they wanted, but at this point, I've picked out and priced most of the items that will go in the house, so I have a very clear mental picture of what it should all look like in the end. Yes, I do love the cape cod style. However, since this house is being planned for the way we live, it will have a main floor laundry, a fireplace, a covered front porch, double sink bathrooms, and nine foot ceilings. It won't have the cool mansard roof garage, because I didn't want to sink a lot of extra money for custom framing and roofing, so use your imagination to picture a regular gabled roof like the main part of the house with one dormer window. But it should look much the same otherwise with white siding, grey roof, and green shutters. Lindsey thinks I'm lacking creativity with the color scheme. I countered that it's a classic look and I'm not into fads. She can paint her house purple with aqua trim if she wants to, but not me. Now that the planning stage is ending, I'm getting excited to start. I have the excavator and foundation contractors all lined up and will call the well digger this week. Yehaw! Let the fun begin!

Fly Away

You know all those times you've just wanted to escape your life and fly away? Okay, maybe I'm the only one whose ever felt that way - but I doubt it. I seem to have one of those days several times a year. All the pressure of juggling everything will just build up and suddenly, I can't take it anymore. I've learned that a good cry, a good book, or 'girls time' with a friend usually solves the problem and once I go to sleep, I wake up ready to face everything just fine. But never in my married life have I had the chance to actually escape my life for a bit and just leave. Until last week.

At my husband's insistence, I went to Nicole's wedding and for the first time in sixteen years, traveled alone. It was rather strange, but cool too. No one demanded anything of me, no one screamed my name, and I had next to no responsibilities. I forgot how easy it was to be single and have no one to worry about except myself. And yes, I had a blast. Nicole's wedding was so much fun. Unencumbered as a was, I helped out wherever I could and enjoyed visiting with friends and family and taking advantage of the wonderful hospitality of my parents-in-law.

Two days into my little trip, however, I began to feel something (or somebodies) missing. The quiet soon became too quiet. Everything Nicole's nieces and nephews did reminded me of my children. I latched myself onto whatever group of people seemed friendliest because I didn't have a certain place to be or people to be with. I realized that I really missed Jeff's company (and the bed felt way too empty). So after staying up until 4 am talking with my sister to avoid the empty bed for as long as possible, I grabbed a few hours sleep and boarded the plane to go home. It was on the way home that I realized how much I missed my family. I haven't really been away from them often enough to miss them, and now I think that sometimes a mom has to get away before she can appreciate how the pieces of her life fit together. After a wonderful dose of perspective, I was very glad to arrive home without mishap and embrace the wiggling, energetic, noisy bodies that make my life so full right now and fall into Jeff's arms knowing that I belong there.

But now that I've been given wings and found that coming home is as much fun as leaving. Who knows where I might fly?

August Already?

What happened to summer? Not that I'm complaining exactly. After all, August means that my darling children will soon be back in school instead of trashing the house all day long. But what happened to the last two months? It seems like I blinked and they're gone. Is there some time contraction theory that explains this? I remember summers that stretched on and on. Of course, I was a kid then, but somehow, I had it in my head that I would get so much done this summer and I haven't. Or maybe it's just that it hasn't felt like summer here. We've only used our air conditioner twice. The days rarely hit above eighty and the nights are cool. Now I love this temperature arrangement, so like I said, I'm really not complaining, but it doesn't seem very summery. And there are things I love about summer. But as I think of those things, I realize that maybe the reason it hasn't seemed like summer is because I haven't experienced many of my favorite parts of the season this year. Aha! There's my problem. So for me, an ideal summer requires the following:
1. Less demanding schedule (Okay, so that didn't happen this year).
2. Ripe home grown tomatoes (Ours are still green).
3. Relaxing at the pool (I'm not polar bear enough for this summer's temps).
4. Grilled dinner eaten outside with watermelon (No idea why we didn't manage this one).
5. Reading lots of books, just for fun (Technical editing, manuscripts, and blueprints don't count).
6. Hanging out with friends (What friends? Oh yeah, they mostly took off for the summer or live out of state).
7. Fun vacation (We did get this one in).
8. Frequent date nights (Haven't managed a date since June).
9. Good movies (Did any good movies even come out this summer? The last one I saw at the theater was Prince Caspian in May).
10. Bouquets of flowers from my garden (Sniff, I'm sure the new owners of my house in Ohio are loving all the flowers I planted).