Oh … bother, as Winnie the Pooh might say.

I’m at the part of the project where I’m bored.  I’m just bored.  There is nothing more boring than white primer and white ceiling paint and cutting it all in in excruciating detail.  Bored.

Bored.

Bored.

And the children are crabby.  I’m offering them to the highest bidder.  They are sitting in the next room crabbing at one another and calling each other the.

most.

vile names.

When they are not whining and crabbing at me.  They are supposed to be doing their school work.  One of them will not be allowed to go to her beloved hockey practice this evening if she does make substantial headway on her missed schoolwork from yesterday (she was illin’).  The other one has proclaimed that he is now “hall monitor.”  I’m not certain what he is monitoring.  Perhaps the flies which have taken over the house.  In any case, if you’d like them … come and get them.  They are making me crazy … and since I’m already bored, this is not a good combination.

Here’s what the livingroom looked like this morning … and it won’t look much different tomorrow.  White.  Blech.  I want to lay down the color.  I am impatient and stiff-necked.  Like an Israelite.

I seem to have become popular lately.

With spambots. It’s quite an honor. Not.

So I’ve done some tweaking of my spam-o-lator. I hope it doesn’t affect of you, my adoring fans ;-). If it does, please let me know. I’ll retweak.

I’m going to back to painting and my usual role … meanest-mommy-in-the-world. I’m making my children do their school work … when they have a cold. What a horrible mother. I’m teaching them how to persevere and other nasty chores.

We made progress this weekend on the livingroom.  BlazingEwe came to help.  She likes the process of prepping and painting and we make good partners for this.  We’ve done this several times before and have developed a rhythm.  We’ve also developed a box of supplies that we share so that we don’t have to keep purchasing the same things over and over again.

Here’s what the room looked like this morning:

You can see our box of supplies in left side of this photo.  And our fabulous mural in the background.

By the end of the day today we had washed all the walls and baseboards, spackled all the holes, dings and dents, sanded all the spackle, wiped off the dust and taped the whole room.  The room is ready to paint.  Including the ceiling.

I think the rule of thumb is that prep work takes twice as long as painting.  We’ve spent approximately 20 hours in prep work.  Should I include the time it took to clean and rearrange the furniture? I’ll start by priming the walls and painting the ceiling tomorrow.

We have a new rhythm to our life now.

Hockey.

LightBoy has now joined a team. His team has the traditional o’dark thirty practice on a weekend morning. So this morning saw LightHusband and I up before dawn, traipsing to the rink to watch LightBoy at his first official hockey practice. Today was evaluations. They herded all the Squirts together and put them through their paces. This was to make sure that the talent, and the need, is evenly spread out throughout all three teams. I’m happy to say that while LightBoy towered above all the other children in height, he was dead center in terms of talent and ability. He was also very polite and listened well. It was fun watching all the kids in the rink. I saw something I never saw before. I saw a boy a skate with an imaginary sawhorse between his legs. It was quite a feat, but he accomplished it. With grace.

Then the whole lot of them had to skate backwards. That was priceless. For some, their feet went faster than their legs. For others, their legs moved faster than their feet. Still others it was their bodies which were out of sync with the whole process. But in any case, it was comical all around.

This is LightBoy taking instruction from one of the coaches:

We got home at 7:30 in the morning.

I took a nap.

We then began the process of preparing the livingroom for painting.  It was a mess.  I had LightHusband take some before photos.  Here are one or two.  Just so you know what we’re working with.  Tomorrow I’ll post a photo of what we did today.  Today we cleaned up the room, and moved all the furniture into the middle of the room.  We took everything off the walls, and vacuumed.  Tomorrow I’m going to wash the walls, tape and spackle the holes.  We’ll be ready to paint on Monday.

We missed our deadline.  But I’ll have photos to show my counselor that we’ve made some serious progress.  It will be finished this week.  Our goal is to have the entire downstairs and our bedroom painted by Thanksgiving.  LightHusband’s family is coming for Thanksgiving.  But hey, with every weekend day being 4 days instead of 2 because of this new hockey rhythm we might just accomplish this goal.

Dang!

I am bummed. A favorite theory of mine just got busted. I have this theory. It has proved itself on anecdotal evidence over time. But the scientists in Great Britain have disproved it. A former friend of mine once told me I was not keeping proper records. It is now likely that he was correct.

My theory is that in a family where there are two or more boys, the younger boys will be taller than the older boys. I am wrong. It was on the BBC this morning. No, the headline does not say, “Sonja is wrong,” for those of you wishing it were so. It says, “Older Siblings Stunt Growth.” And it’s kind of interesting. The study authors suggest that the smaller families we are all now having are promoting somewhat larger adults.

I have to keep reminding myself to breath. There just doesn’t seem to be time to do that. I’m running, running, running and getting nowhere fast.

A recap of the last three days.

Tuesday. Wake up at 4:30, pack the last few things. Shower. Get in the car and sit for 10 hours. Arrive at home at 3:30. Check the house … the house doesn’t look nearly as clean as I thought I’d left it. But it is … I’m just slightly neurotic. Unpack all the dirty clothes and sort into hampers with the LightChildren. Get back into the car with hockey gear. Go to hockey practice. Re-connect with team and parents. Make certain discoveries about a dinner of crow that I must eat. Return home for twenty minutes. Run out to another meeting til about 10:15. Second meeting a complete waste of time.

While en route to second meeting (this meeting is at Curves and is part of a non-diet guided eating program I am participating in), I see a very large and obese woman driving in a car near me. She is eating something scrumptious. I immediately become jealous and angry with her. What is WRONG with me? Now I’m jealous of large, overweight women?? Because they can eat whatever they want without dire consequences. I, on the other hand, suffer bags of hot nails when I eat scrumptious things. There is no justice. Not that I actually **want** to blow up like a blimp, but … you know … I also want some ice cream. I am having to face my inner demons of emotional eating. They are legion. When you really do only eat to live and can no longer use food as a tool to assuage every other emotion you have … well … then you have to actually feel the other emotions. It can get dicey. Let’s just also say that these last several days have been those particular days when a woman has *lots* of extra emotions to feel and leave it at that.

Wednesday. Wake up at 6 a.m. and wonder what on God’s green earth is wrong with me that I’m up so early. But I’m going to run with it. Make a “to do” list. It looks do-able. Start on the “to-do” list. Get side-tracked by breakfast. Get sidetracked again by attempting to locate cereal which was mis-packed from trip home. Continue this downward spiral. Eventually end up writing e-mail, making phone calls and then eating breakfast by 10 a.m. Remember that meal of crow? Yes. That too, was eaten on this fine morning.

Leave at 1 p.m. Take LightBoy to Latin class. Go to my counseling session. It was a good session. Several epiphanies were illuminated and I felt lighter. Return to pick up LightBoy and do some block design with BlazingEwe and another friend. This turned into some supportive counseling for all three of us. Return home. Turn around and take LightGirl to another session of hockey practice. Home by 9:30.

Today. Up at 6 again. Screw the to do list. It just highlights my shortcomings. Take LightGirl to her follow up orthopedist appointment. She has been released to full play. No goalie yet. She has to be able to drop and get up without using her stick for support (about another 4 to 6 weeks). Come home. Fight with the printer to print ONE page. Lose the fight. Go to Staples for school supplies and to laminate a couple of things. Fight with LightBoy over booksock. Win the fight. He pouts. Return home for lunch. Leave again for my annual physical. My doctor is very concerned that I have not been recuperating from my little bout with pancreatitis very well. She says I need to see the gastroenterologist … like … tomorrow. Not next month. So. I am. Return and spend time with Blazing Ewe. Go to grocery store. Have dinner. Fight with LightBoy over spinach salad. Win again. He doesn’t pout.

One interesting thing happened while I waited for my doctor’s appointment. There was a young boy about LightGirl’s age also in the waiting room. He had on a very nice pair of sneakers. He also had a cell phone. All of a sudden, I noticed he took off one of his shoes and put it on a chair. He stood up, backed away from the chair and took a photo of his shoe with the cell phone. Now … I don’t know about any of you … but I am dying to know why he took that photo. There just has to be a good story there.

Tomorrow, I go back to the doctors … the gastro’s at 8:15 a.m.

I just want to get into the school room and clean it up. I need to plan next week. I want to get some organizing done so we can get this show on the road. It’s just killing me. Maybe tomorrow afternoon.

It’s just been a killer re-entry … that’s all I can say.

We’re packing up and clearing out today.

We leave for home bright and early tomorrow morning.  We have to get back in time for hockey practice in the evening.

I’m not the biggest fan of packing.  I’m always sort of conflicted.  In the words of the Clash song …

“Should I stay or should I go now?”  Of course we must go.  But I always want to stay.

UPDATED Sept. 3 to include photos from the slightly famous LightHusband.

Today was a momentous day in our family.

It was the 106th anniversary of my grandmother’s birthday. She’s been dead for seven years, but I still mark it.

Nooooo … that wasn’t it.

Today we took LightGirl to a local tiny airfield and she rode in a glider. She had a fabulous time. This was an early fourteenth birthday gift from her own grandmother, LightMom. Her cousin who just turned fourteen also had a glider ride to mark her fourteenth birthday. So to mark their coming of age and their great-grandmother’s birthday they flew up in the air with remarkable ease. They loved it.

We had a marvelous time watching and the weather couldn’t have been better.

There was something coming-of-agey about the whole event that I didn’t really anticipate. The glider is towed up into the air by tow-plane. Once the plane and glider are at a certain height and place (the two pilots know what the right place is) the tow-plane releases the glider and the glider then rides the thermals for a while.

I thought about that as LightGirl walked away with the glider pilot and nonchalantly got in. The tow plane and glider lifted off and she was gone for a while.

That’s what college will be like. We’ll take her away to be under the tutelage of other older adults. They’ll tow her around for a while. Sometimes she’ll be in direct contact and they’ll be towing her. Sometimes she’ll be on her own. But she’ll be gone for a while. Then she’ll come home. Pretty soon the periods of time that she’s gone will grow longer and longer and then she’ll be gone and on her own. She won’t need that tow rope anymore. She won’t need an older pilot helping her either. She’ll be ready to fly all by herself.

It’s not too much longer now. I hope I’m ready.

I am scattered today.  My mind is skittering around and trying to process several things all at once.

One of the things that I’ve been sorting through and want to do some more reading about (if I can find it) is a theory I’m beginning to nourish about the differences between the Celtic Church and the Roman church during the 500s and 600s and just why was Pelagius declared a heretic?  I wonder if it had a lot more to do with who he represented than what he thought.  But I’m still thinking and reading and need to organize my thoughts before I can do any serious writing about it.

We had dinner with some friends up here last night.  It was funny (weird), but I’ve known about these people all my life.  Just now we’re becoming friends.  Another person dropped in towards the end of the evening.  I’ve also known of him my whole life.  But not known him.  They all knew and hung out with each other all summer every summer.  Their families summered here.  I just came to visit my aunt for a few days here and there each summer.  Sometimes I’d spend a week.  We had a conversation last night about the gangs they ran with.  To them those gangs had been all inclusive.  To me, I could never find an opening.  LateComer declared “Oh, if we’d known you were here, you’d have been part of us.”  None of them remember me; they remember my youngest brother.  But I remember them.  Which leaves me wondering … am I really that withdrawn?

I remember the first time I took the MBTI and got the Introverted result.  I thought it was wrong.  But now I as I look back over my life and remember all the times I’ve tried so hard to be outgoing and failed.  Or gotten it wrong.  I remember being shoved out, off the porch to “go find the kids, they’re all over the place.”  But I just could not do that.  I wouldn’t know what to say when I got there.

So I’m trying to put all that together.  It felt like a sucker punch.  It wasn’t meant that way.  LateComer was trying to make me feel belatedly included.  But … the reality hit hard.

I’m continuing to recuperate, but not as quickly as I’d like.  So thoughts like this … “What if I have pancreatic cancer?” keep springing into my head.  I have to say them out loud so that LightHusband can help me push them away with the reality of this takes a long time to recuperate from.  But I have a strong imagination, it likes to win.

My cousin and her children came to visit yesterday.  It was fun, but too short.  Next year, we’ll gather here again for a longer day.  I will feel better and be able to do more.

The next big battle to fight with LightGirl is getting her into some decent clothes for Thanksgiving dinner in November.  I’ve got 84 days.  We’ve invited LightHusband’s parents, siblings and their families for the holiday.  So far it looks as though everyone will come and they’re all excited about it.  My 11 year old niece exclaimed, “I’ll go if I have to drive myself!”  And it’s an 11 hour drive for her … But this side of the family dresses for holiday dinners.  So.  LightGirl will need something appropriate.  Not made of tissue paper.  Not looking like a ‘ho from the ‘hood.  In other words, nothing from any of the local or on-line shops for girls her age.  I will have to make it.  Not a big deal for me.  But it will take some … (how shall I say this?) … negotiating.  So … let the games begin.

As I may have mentioned here before, my family gathered together this weekend. We usually do this once a year. We try anyway. It almost didn’t happen this year because of sundry different events in all of our lives. It wouldn’t have been the end of the universe, but we would have been sad. We don’t make a huge deal of this gathering, but we do attempt it. It’s important to each of “us kids,” for different reasons I suspect. But important nonetheless.

My brothers amaze me. Both of them and in different ways. My youngest brother was such a goof growing up that I never really could imagine him as an adult. But he’s an amazing adult … yet he’s never quite lost his sense of wonder and silliness that make him so much fun to be around. He’s the one who simply decided he wanted to learn to sail. So he took the little sunfish out into a 12 mile an hour wind and made the boat go. It went backwards at first … for quite a ways. Then he made it go forwards for a long ways. Then he got it turned around and came back … after he tipped over a few times. But he did it. I’ve wanted to sail my whole life, but I doubt I’ll ever have that kind of courage. He never sits still … and when he does, he falls asleep. Just like he did when he was a kid. He runs a tent rental and party goods company in western Massachusetts. But he’s not content with that. He’s also building temporary structures all over the country. Oh … and he’s making new structures for the Red Cross to use instead of tents for the next hurricane season. They are like small houses and they’re beautiful. So much better than tents and can be stored in cargo crates like they put on 18 wheelers to be trucked to where-ever at a moments notice.

My other brother already lived one life as a vice president for a blood products and testing company. He made enough money to take a year off and travel around the world. When he came back he got married and now he’s running and building the jam company that my parents started. Oh … yeah … and he’s refinishing a house while raising his family. This involved taking off the roof of the house to add another floor to it. Literally … raising the roof!

Now both of my brothers could not do what they do without the help of their wonderful wives. They are both married to strong women who support and push them to greater things than they could do on their own. You know … the sum is greater than the parts, yadda, yadda … They are fortunate to have married well. I am fortunate to have gained sisters-in-law who fit into our family so well. I am fortunate too because we have such a grand and diverse group of nieces and nephews.

Here’s a picture from my favorite time this weekend … it was after dinner on Saturday night when LightMom, LightGirl, my oldest niece and I all did the dishes together. I washed, the girls dried, and LightMom did the organizing of dirty dishes … she kept the goods flowing. We had some great conversation … some of it was light, some heavy. But it was all good. The girls whined at first, but then we got to talking and they pitched in.

We had a really great time and the dishes flew. The time did too. LightMom observed, when all was said and done, “You know, one of the worst inventions has been the dishwasher. It took away the talking time.” I agreed with her. There is something about sharing a task that allows people the freedom to talk in ways that they don’t otherwise do. In particular, I treasured that evening because my niece isn’t always terribly open. But she was with a dish towel in her hand. In that room with her grandmother and her aunt and her cousin … and a task to perform, she felt safe enough to talk a little about the things that were on her mind. They weren’t terribly big or important … but the fact that she finally opened the door a crack was a treasure to me. It reminded me of the value of working together and doing small things together.

Those are the things that build a relationship and give it a foundation. Some how it’s not the fun, but the work that brings us together and keeps us there. I wonder why that is?