Busy as a bee, er, Blue Mud Dauber?
Why is it that summer is so much crazier, busier, and downright exhausting than the school year? We home school, they are with me all the time anyway so I know that’s not it. I can’t seem to recall everything that is going on that makes my head swirl with all the busy-ness, but I don’t have enough time in the day to do what I need to do.
Life is flying by way too fast for me to soak it in and remember it properly. I am thoroughly enjoying myself, but I just can’t remember it enough to really capture it in my head. I am crazy busy working on getting the school notebooks organized so we are ready. I am cleaning closets and getting rid of stuff left and right. We moved our humongous desk into my office so I can have my space back. I’ve been so much more productive since it’s mine again. In the process we moved our wireless connection around and that seem to improved things for everyone. The desktop computer is now in the kitchen instead of the den. So this year when I am working in my office and they are doing school things on it I’ll be closer and can hear them better as my office is the formal living room according to the layout of the house and I am just off the kitchen. In moving the massive 623,498,763,516,414 pound solid oak roll top desk I was reminded how much I need to use my muscles more. Most specifically, my arms. They are better now. I love this desk.
DOINK!
Bairno is really saying a lot of new words now. He adds one or two or fifteen new ones a day now. His newest favorite word is “luss”, which means slush (from Sonic). But today it was “orwan luss” (orange slush). Thank you for Happy Hour on a blistering hot day when errands need to be run. The kind of blistering hot that breaks the three digit heat barrier. The kind of blistering heat that takes your breath away when it’s 101 degrees Fahrenheit.
Bairno has also reached a point, now that he is almost 20 months old, of really bonding with his papa. For 19 months I have not been allowed to leave the room he is in or really go anywhere without him at all as he falls apart if he is not near me. But he’s growing up. I am loving it and having so much fun watching him blossom and grow into his own likes and dislikes and making his opinions about such things very clearly and loudly made known. Lately there have even been a few times that only Papa can make the bobos 1 better, not Mama. The other night he woke up calling, “Papa, Papa”. It almost hurt my feelings. He still wants only me sometimes and I have to admit that I like that. It keeps me grounded, focused when I start to get too busy with the little things that while they need to get done just are not as important as being with my children.
DOINK!
That photograph of the wasp doesn’t do justice to it’s beauty. I have been rather intrigued by these insects lately. For one, I have never seen one before this season and have been taken by their iridescent color and rather large size. For another, with the allergies around here I had to make sure we were not being taken over by some new blue killer wasp. Google is good; I learned it is just a Blue Mud Dauber. I learned many years ago that mud daubers are our friends. I have known for what seems forever that they don’t bite/sting, but what I learned a number of years back is that they like to eat the bugs we do not want around, like the bad spiders (black widows and brown recluse). So I quit knocking down their nests. They are my friends. But the interesting thing about the Blue Mud Dauber is that they are particularly fond of the Black Widow Spider. I have not told my children this little tidbit of information, but lately they have been informing me that they have seen a few of those nasty ladies in our garage and storage room. Now I am thinking of taking them a bit more seriously. With the large number of daubers in our yard I’m intrigued. They fly low to the ground, sometimes crawling around instead of flying. they have flown into me a few times without ever hurting me. It’s kind of like they don’t see me and then there is just this thing in the way there all of a sudden. It does not stop them though, they just change direction and keep flying. So I will too.
DOINK!
The van is still undriveable (did I make that up, poor grammar, I suppose). The new Head Gasket is going to be quite pricey to repair. We did have a wonderful offer from some church members to help with repairing it, but at this point we do not see much use in doing the repair when the A/C does not work. While the A/C does not work, I’m not so spoiled as to refuse to drive a car without a working A/C. But I am spoiled enough NOT to drive a car in the middle of the summer (see heat remark above) whose A/C does not work if the windows (none) of them will open/go down. Unfortunately, the motors are broken and those are expensive as well. We are still one car-ing it for now. I think it will not be long before we are going to need a new vehicle. *Sigh.* Finding one to fit all of us on our budget will be a difficult, rather impossible, task.
DOINK!
More, so much more. Like I said, life is moving way too fast for right now. I love all that is going on around me and there is so much to be happy and joyful about and so much to soak in. I just feel like it’s flying past me and I am missing most of it. I have been so tired lately. I feel like I am trying to swim through molasses.
I am not complaining. I feel really good about life. Confident in what is going on around us. Less stressed than ever before even with the things in life that are breaking and can not be replaced or repaired. Why? Because they are only things. But life is sweet!
Now, I have a sweet baby to go snuggle (and a Tylenol to take because two days with this headache is long enough).
- when you grow up in the south near or in Louisiana you know better than to call them booboos. ↩
Get rid of the black widows first. I was in the concession stand last week cleaning up the track team mess. I picked up a stack of coke crates, saw something move, and dropped them real quick. A black widow the size of a quarter was residing in the bottom crate. Needless to say, I had the Havard guys there toot-sweet.
Glad your having a good summer. Everything here is slow. The children are so bored because I absolutely refuse to go anywhere since our van also has a/c issues. We need a new compressor and radiator. I’m thinking about sending it to Iraq to be used in a car bombing–NOT. Becky spent the better part of this week with a leg propped high. While during some local mission work with Carterville this week she tripped over a hidden gas pipe and required fifteen stiches to close her knee up. She calls it her curse knee. Everyone else is good though. They can’t wait for school to start. YES- my job is done. I have made summer so boring that school looks good.