Oh Lordy it has been awhile since I’ve been on here.  Lots of stuff happenin’, lots of craziness as usual.  Check in with Kelly and then enjoy my 7QTs:

ONE.

Spring has finally sprung, to put that silly little adage to use.  I love to see all the verdant life coming up everywhere.  This year Hubby took some of our scrap metal and made a huuuuuuge garden box that sits now off of our back deck.  We have planted herbs, lettuce, and tomatoes here.  The idea being this will serve as our “kitchen garden” so I don’t have to run all the way across the yard to our larger patch.  (When it comes to gardening, I am lazy.  The easier and closer it is for me to care for and harvest my produce, the better.) We’ve also created a starter “Fairy garden” in the garden box for the kids.  They seem to enjoy it:-)

TWO.

Hubby is always bugging me to take more of an interest in yard maintenance.  It’s not that I don’t want to help, it’s just that I am usually preoccupied with children’s needs and mountains of laundry.  Last week I decided that since Evvie was down for a nap and Spike was enthralled in Netflix, I would take this year’s maiden voyage with the John Deere riding lawnmower.  To help Hubby out and also because the grass was looking a bit on the shaggy side.  Well, toward the end of my grass-cutting adventure, I inadvertently drove into a cleverly-concealed hole just big enough to entirely swallow my right front wheel.  Needless to say, that tractor is heavy.  I managed to push it out of the hole, but I noticed hours later the forearm above my wrist was swelling up with a giant bulge of pain.  I thought I might have a stress fracture or something.  The good news: the urgent care PA said it was just tendonitis.  Also good news: Hubby may be a little less harpy about me helping in the yard since, after all, I did help.  I helped so hard I had to go to the doctor.  And that is hard core.

THREE

My oldest, Junior, just turned 10.  I think I have mentioned previously that he has, to date, been our most difficult child.  He has always been more intense, more destructive, and much more moody than any of our other children (to date…Evvie is showing signs of being the same way, but this could just be a result of being 2…hard to tell….)  After a pretty stressful weekend, Junior came home from school earlier in the week with a massive chip on his shoulder and spare anger for everyone within throwing distance.  After talking with him on the way to his karate class, Hubby determined that Junior feels left out and ….gulp…bullied at school.  Now, Junior tends to be a little melodramatic, often erring on the side of negativity.  Whenever I visit the school or ask his teacher how he’s doing socially, everything seems fine.  Kids sit by him at lunch.  They say hello to him in the halls.  But clearly something is not right if he comes home from school and takes his anger out on everyone so forcefully.  I think one of the hardest thing about being a parent is trying to figure out what the right course of action is when your child is having a hard time.  Sometimes it can take years of trial and error before finally finding a solution that works.  And it is hard to be patient when your child is in emotional pain.  But I guess the way forward is to try some things, perhaps meeting yet again with the school counselor, trying to teach Junior ways to manage his anxiety and anger, maybe seeing a professional therapist.  We’ll keep you posted.

FOUR

3 Months to Europe!  I am getting pretty excited.  This summer up until then is jam-packed with activities, so I am probably going to be mentally and physically wrapped up with those for the first few weeks.  But I feel pretty ready: everything is booked, reserved, and planned.  I gotta figure out the whole cell-phone-in-Europe thing, but that is about the last thing on my to-do list.  Super duper excited!!!!

FIVE

I mentioned above that Hubby has been nagging me more and more about helping him out with the yard-work.  I don’t blame him; we live on 2 acres of a yard we’re still trying to tame into shape after buying the property just under three years ago.  My issue is that if I devote a large amount of time to helping outside the house, the inside things that need to be done DON’T GET DONE.  Home ownership is hard work.  It’s a trade-off in the attention department, too.  What I mean is, when I spend all afternoon weeding the wilderness mess that is my front flower bed, that is time taken away from doing something else equally fun, like scrubbing the bathtub.  So prioritization is a MUST!  In my book, things like tilling the garden for the 57th time rank lower than say, trying to deal with the mountainous pile of laundry that is now in my bedroom.  The tasks around the house are never going to disappear.  Grass will always need to be mowed.  Weeds will always need to be pulled.  Laundry will always need folding.  Butts will always need changing (well, it feels like anyway…#notpottytrainednottrying).  I think Hubby’s and my solution is to sit down together and prioritize the housework, yardwork and maintenance and then do what we can and not stress about the things that don’t get done.

SIX

I am not the best dog owner.  I love my dog, and he gets all of his needs met, but usually at the end of the day if I have one more creature demading anything from me, I can’t take it.  So he gets most of his attention from the kids.  But, sometimes, when you wake up in the morning and step in a large warm puddle of doggy diarrhea, the animal-lover in me does an about-face and I mutter under my breath that I wish I had reconsidered my decision to adopt a shelter dog 13 years ago.  Of course it wasn’t my dog’s fault: he had picked up some sort of stomach bug.  But after spending two full days cleaning up foul-smelling liquid poopie off the carpet (interspersed with human toddler diaper needs) I was through with that s**t.  Is it too much to ask to get a break from poop?  I think I am going to ask for that for Mother’s Day. (note: Winston the dachshund is doing much better, thank you.  The vet gave him some great drugs to get his bowel operating normally again.  Praise be!)

SEVEN

Existential question of the week: Will my van ever be clean?

Have a great week!