Monday morning

 

Happy Monday morning to all!
This is what Gus likes to do these days, ride his bike, even if it's just around the laundry room. It's so hard to get ready for work when I see Gus like this. I just want to run along and enjoy the day!

Planting and waiting

 

 

 

 

Sunday is our day to - relax I want to say - but really it is our day to furiously make up for all the shortcomings of a busy week. So today Jacob made me a raised bed and I planted my precious heirloom cukes and zucchinis along with some Swiss chard, spinach and marigolds. Check out my other gardening projects. A strawberry plant my Mom planted two years ago that is going wild with berries, my 10 heirloom tomatoes settling in to soak up the sun and my hanging tomato plant (something I saw in a tiny add in the back of a magazine and decided to try myself instead of paying for a "special" hanging pot...so far it is trying hard to grow upward, we'll see how it works out.

I'm ready to harvest now. No promises on watering, weeding and pest care.

My two guys

 

 

So very proud of both of them.
One now is properly labeled when entering burning houses.
The other is close to reading - at least he is trying to teach himself.
Me, I'm just working away, having very little time to keep up and blog.

A breezy Sunday walk

 

 

Sunday's fast becoming my favorite day of the week, as work has us all whirling by each other in various formations like demented tops during most of the week. Between to-dos, schedules, chores and naps, we have been doing a good job managing to get it all done in a more or less organized fashion - though my floors could be clearner and the pantry stocked better, but by this Saturday we hadn't spent very many consecutive hours as three in one room in a while.

Anyways this morning we awoke to a beautiful, freshly-scrubbed sunny Sunday morning (after it stormed all night) and decided to go for a leisurely walk through our sleepy town (which observes Sunday morning with closed shops) and let Gus give his walk-bike its fartest ride yet.

He fared well, riding most of the way and occasionally getting the hang of it - the concept of sitting while walking puzzles him at times. The cool breeze blew petals around us like a ticker tape parade and the sun kept us cozy while we sauntered on empty sidewalks through lovely Brevard.

A blessed Sunday.

So big!

 

 

Gus is inching up...almost 35 inches last time I got a chance with the measuring tape. Huge feet (Kensch die Schue, Mami?) and all legs and arms. I carried him into the library in my Ergo carrier this morning, the first time in several months, and I noticed that his feet are hitting me in the back of the knees now...not much longer before he looks me straight in the eye.

A simple delight

 

It's 1 p.m. and I haven't showered yet...

..but I've emptied out Gus' piggy bank, rolled a gazillion (well, no it wasn't a gazillion but it sure felt like one)pennies and dimes and a few quarters into tubes, brought them to the bank and deposited them into my son's savings account. He is rich by my standards. He was very happy to take back possession of his beloved piggy with a few Swiss coins rattling around in it.
...and I've also bought out the grocery store (again, not really, but viscerally so) and battled the old cranky bagger man who doesn't like my very-Swiss, very-stylish reusable shopping bags and victoriously schlepped my loot back to the car with Gus somewhere in the tangle of it all...
...not to mention, I managed not to forget to get gas. I only fill this car up every six weeks or so, so remembering it is a chore.
...and finally I fed a cranky child and had a one-sided lunch conversation with my preoccupied husband (fire studies are filling his head to capacity) then tucked my very sleepy, yet very uncooperative son into bed for a nice mid-day nap...

Then I remembered that in all of it I forgot to eat.
So I'm seizing the chance to eat what I really want to eat.
A Tomato-mayo sandwich. Simple, savory and delicious. Bread, mayo, tomato slices and salt...with a side of sweet peppermint ice tea (no ice for me) and the newspaper.

Bliss. Baby. Bliss

40

 

Today I'm 40 for the third day and this is my favorite moment of the day. A small bucket, a large, gangly and grimy toddler in it with some soap and suds - clean up from "yard work" before nap time.

My actual birthday was quite underwhelmingly dull. Woke up with a cold, worked, had a quiet evening with Gus while Jacob was at school. A few phone calls, a couple of cards, I lacked the energy to even fake enthusiasm.
I'm not sad or grumpy, and I can't claim to be surprised...it's been a long time coming. Still the finality of the arrival of a new decade - one that traditionally marks middle-age - has me grasping for words and thoughts.
Sure, 40 is the new 30, and I'm one fit 40-year-old, and bla bla bla...still it's a milestone to be reckoned with and even a short pause in the greeting card aisle a few weeks ago (to buy other - younger - people birthday cards - left me depressed because 40 is where the greeting card industry begins to leave off the exclamation marks (Finally! You're 25!!!) and replaces it with lame-cheery jokes about bowel movements and exaggerations about volume of birthday candles.

Here are my thoughts on being 40.
- Even my most recent, slow trail half-marathon (1:57:36) still beats my first half-marathon run at the tender age of 32 by about 12 minutes (of course, I could still smoke 10 cigarettes in a single sitting back then, too).
- Yes, my highlights are natural, shiny, shimmery even...and I don't intend to ever have someone charge me an arm and a leg to put a hundred little foil pieces in my hair and make me look like a deranged astronaut before rinsing it all out and declaring it - over distincly toxic smelling fumes - "very natural".
- I got longer, deeper lines on my face and freckles that are banding together to form blotches, but I have all my teeth and I no longer worry about what eyeshadow could possibly turn me into a supermodel.
- I am way smarter than I was at 30. Way, way, way.
- I'm married to a better man than I was at 30. The best man for me.
- I have a style. It's my own. And I stand by it.
- I'm wittier than I was at 20 or 30 and I intend to be wittier even when I'm 50. By 60 I hope to sprinkle some wisdom in there with all the wittiness.
- I'm a mother now. A Christian and a wife to a good man. I didn't squander my 30s.
- I take all the compliments I can get. I don't fish for them. I like to think I work for them and I accept them as a job well done.
- I will make my 40s my change-is-good-for-me years, as a creature of habit, it takes effort for me to accept changes (as in aging) so I might as well celebrate how intentional changes can bring about new contentment.
- I'm certain my 40s will hold many new discoveries and lessons for me. I vow to be open to all of them - on most days.

Yeah, Happy Birthday to me.