A good rain storm

we did have a good rain storm yesterday.

The kind that waits until I get out of the car to pick up Eminoodle and then pours like a flood while I run into the building from my far-distant parking place, then lets up when I'm safely inside.

The kind that necessitates umbrella twirling, leaping and jumping, and a change of clothes at the end.

Buzz: thrilled to hold an umbrella and learn to twirl it:

Three twirling umbrellas:

One leaping lady:

Standing under the porch drip:

All in all, the good kind of rain storm.

In other news? Pond water + homemade growth brew + several days incubation time = a really stinky kitchen. On the agenda today? View the potions and toss the stuff!

I got stuff to say, but ...

it's really late!

I'm up so late!

why? WHY?

I had to do the newsletter for our small church (think adult sunday school class)

I had a half a page to fill at the end

I surfed up a comic and an old ad from the early 1900's.

I always wonder if others are amused by my space filling or irritated. No one has ever complained. But maybe they're all just frowning and wondering?

Oh, I did the hair thing again today. Tried to do a better job. But not so much with the striping. It's not worse, just not better. I think I need an assistant. I did two colors, because the rest of my hair was getting pretty shiny silver again. So now it's a "light" brown (which, really, is pretty dark. Today. until it starts fading) and a "light" reddish brown. The colors aren't too similar, I just did a bad job placing the stripes. I probably look like I have an orange blob on my head.

So anyway, I have some fairly deep stuff I'm thinking about and wanted to blog about.

I'm not sure when, though, because tomorrow we're leaving for a short trip and I'll need to pack. And stuff.

but I didn't want to leave you without ANY post.

Cause I know how you look forward to my rambles.

Or at least, I know how I pretend that you look forward to my rambles.

:-D

Buzzupdate

That has a nice ring to it, buzzupdate, doesn't it?

I didn't update on Buzz earlier because I was waiting for the end of the story.

Here it is:

Nursemaid's Elbow.

I'm kicking myself for initially thinking that, then second guessing. Nursemaid's elbow goes back into place easiest if it's treated fairly quickly. But because he wasn't quite presenting the classic symptoms, I decided it was something else, and to wait it out ...

now I know. I hope. It's funny how things you are familiar with can look a little different - just enough different - each time to keep you wondering.

But it wouldn't pop back in with the maneuver last night. All 3 of my nursemaid's elbow experiences are that my children's don't click back in right away. Hrm.

Doc wanted to call his brother, who is an orthopedic specialist or something like that. His brother is the one who fixed Eminoodle's Nursemaid's Elbow many years ago when hers wouldn't pop back in, either. But Doc Bro wasn't around last night, and it was late, and there wasn't much else to do ... so he sent us home and promised to call in the morning.

Once nice thing about Nursemaid's Elbow is that, when the arm is held in it's safe position and isn't moved, it doesn't hurt, at least after the initial while.

So he slept well but it still was out of place this morning, he woke whimpering with wide eyes, scared to move his arm. He played well, one handed, this morning. Classic Nursemaid's elbow. Doc and I made plans to meet with the brother-doc at 1 pm. Brother-Doc felt the "click" that it went back in.

Buzz was feeling better within the hour, and has been fine, since.

I wonder if they would teach me the maneuver?

Thanks for asking about and praying for Buzz, we appreciate it!

La-La-La-La La La ... La La La-La-La-La Lockers ... here we go

Here's a little photo-song of the locker installation. Um, if I got that Haircut 100 song in your head, shake it out, quick, 'cause the photo-song is a different song.

HUGE amounts of thanks to my friend Karen for taking all the pictures (as well as helping clean up dinner, because, after I helped get people settled in with heaps of pizza, Buzz and I took off for the doctor, and I missed the whole thing!!!)

Huge huge enthusiastic thanks, too, to Joe and Joe and their wives, for not ONLY helping with the physical labor, but also simply the enthusiasm and willingness to tackle a job that The Grand Lunar and I had pre-discouraged ourselves on. It's amazing how easy work can seem when good friends help you through it!

Here's the wall, waiting for the lockers. I was pleased to have gotten the area all ready, even the baseboard pried off, by locker time.

Make sure to sing along to the Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weenie-Yellow-Polka-Dot-Bikini song:

from the garage to the walkway:

from the walkway to the door:

from the door through the doorframe:

now they're sideways on the floor:

from their end they lay them flat now:

then they turn them all around:

that looks good, move it back now:

take a break and stand around:

find the studs, measure caref'ly:

now you've got them in their place!

stand around and admire:

There's a smile on this mom's face!

*you see there's a few details to wrap up, like the fact they need the left side endcap cut and painted and screwed into place. Which hopefully will put that bent top piece back in place. But I think we can do it! The children are excited. I'm excited. Wooo!

It's Locker Day!

I have the greatest friends.

I finally quit procrastinating and emailed about the lockers. Two friends responded almost immediately and said "lets do it TONIGHT!"

So I'll order pizza for dinner for all of us and for our GREAT friends, and have iliacat make some brownies or something, and we'll get it done!

here's one last look at the lockers before, to give you that "man, they need to get OUT of there" feeling that I have every day.

In other news, Gark has an assignment in his schooly stuff to look at some pond water under a microscope. Which he was quite interested in. So we hauled out The Grand Lunar's Sister's Old Microscope, and dusted off the Old Digital Microscope, and even borrowed Moogies Old Microscope hoping for a glimpse of a paramecium or amoeba.

So far we've seen dead blobs of pond weed, and we've seen some scooting around tiny dots.

So far we've only been able to get a good focus at 100x on one old microscope, and the 200X on the digital works great but we haven't seen any little swimmies. the old microscopes have the potential of 300x, 400x, and I think even 600x if we can get the lenses cleaned off and the light source adjusted right.

But in the meantime, I surfed around and found that you can increase the number of little creatures in your pond water (usually you're lucky to see 1 or 2 in a drop, from what I read) by incubating them in happy pond goo. You can make your own growth mediums by boiling water and adding timothy hay (I substituted alfalfa, hope that's close enough) or some wheat grains (good thing I have them sitting around not being ground) or rice grains, or a little egg yolk, or dried milk, or yeast! So I boiled a bunch of water and made up 6 jars for each of the different solutions, and then we'll add pond water to make two solutions per jar, after the jars sit and percolate for awhile. Some you incubate immediately, some you wait. Apparently different little critters grow best in different cultures.

Soooo .... for your viewing pleasure: Pond Culture E1, with it's parent collections of Pond Water 1 (from near the surface) and Pond Water 2 (from near the bottom). E1 (and it's friend, E2) is the dried milk 'host' culture, and was the only one to be incubated immediately after mixing.

by the end of the weekend I'll have 12 jars of pond scum cultures, and hopefully some reports (and perhaps a digital picture or two) of the creatures we'll hopefully see. I hope.

In other-other news, little Buzz, who appears to be my accident-prone child, hurt his wrist today. He's asked to have ice on it and has sat still watching videos, crying when he tries to move it. For the moment we're taking a wait and see approach, since his last two injuries resolved themselves after a little rest and relaxation and babying. But if you could pray for wisdom for us and healing for him, I'd feel better. There's no swelling or discoloring, but his protecting it has lasted more than one video ...

When the Peeps Need Pix

After I teased you the other day with references to undisplayed pix, I got some requests to see them.

So, lest I disappoint you, my beloved blog peeps, here's some pix!

First up: The Hwimmin' Huit SuperHeroes, and then a Bad Guy in his Huit:

Yes, that's Buzz's bad guy face in the second picture. See how serious bad guys are? And see how he's wearing his Huit (Suit, minus that difficult to pronounce S) over his clothes. I guess I didn't get one with the boots, too.

Although I DID get this picture of him exercising in his boots:

In addition to proper exercise attire, you will note also the presence of proper exercise motivation, and proper exercise nutrition. No wonder I haven't done so well with the regular exercise. I rarely eat Star Wars action figures for breakfast, much less exert my efforts to squash stuffed frogs.

Now no one REALLY said they wanted to see my tote heap, but here it is, nonetheless, in it's before glory. There is no after glory. Yet.

In other news, some of you may be quietly wondering if I killed all those plants I planted this spring, but know me well enough to be afraid to ask. There's good and bad news on that front. A good handful of the plants did not survive this very dry summer, despite my best efforts to water and care for them. I haven't acted on the replacement guarantee yet because I'm not quite sure which of the what-ones died, I'll have to look at my order. Since most of the flowering plants did not bloom, even if they survived, I'm not sure which is which anymore. I never did draw that garden map.

But more than half DID survive, and I'm hopeful we'll see some blooms next year. One of my hardy hibiscus was gracious enough to even flourish and bloom, despite some little caterpillar really really lovin' on his leaves, and the other hibiscus planted out front was gracious enough to live, if not bloom. And my dark butterfly bush has also done well, not only not-dying, but blooming! These two are on my flickr pix if you want to see them bigger ...

So, there you go, pix-loving peeps. And, once more, my apologies to my dial-up friends.

Nothing to say but that's okay

Should one limit their blogging to when they have something to say?

I, for one, think not.

It's Tuesday now. I don't have anything exciting to say from the weekend.

I did take some pictures the other day when I hauled out all the totes for the Great Seasonal Clothing Swap.

For any of you who don't live in states with *seasons* or own a herd of children, the gist of the Swap is that when it goes from hot to cold we have to put away most of the t-shirts and shorts, and drag out the sweats and long sleeved shirts.

Why put away *most* ?? Ha ha ha! because in Michigan the transition time is not one of steadily declining temps from summer into fall where, at one point, you can say "ahh, we have moved from summer to fall and will not need our summer clothes." Indeed, we instead oscillate back and forth insanely, where one day might be high 80's and the next day in the 40's. And back and forth again. And again. And again. Necessitating a fairly long season of having a little bit of everything out.

Which drags the Great Seasonal Clothing Swap out in a frustrating manner if you'd prefer your totes of clothing to live in, say, the basement, attic, or back closet rather than the living room, where you have space to sort and pile and open and close totes.

So I did take a picture of the stacks and stacks of totes. Why not just one tote per child? Because their sizes are always in transition and some things must necessarily sit, tidily (or not so much) toted for several years. There is a big difference between recently-outgrown size 10 jeans and a small 6 year old, for example. And the in between child, unfortunately for the clothing, is of the opposite gender.

And of course there is also the totes of "I believe this will still fit next summer" and all of that. It adds up to a lot of totes.

But you don't really want to see the heaps of totes, do you? They're not really very interesting pictures. Although, I guess I will say the pictures of little boys in their floatie swimming suits - especially those worn as helmets - were amusing. Buzz went through a day or two of insisting on wearing the floatie suit over his clothes, with cowboy boots, too. Crazy boy.

Anyway, today I hope to wrap up the tote job to the point of stacking them back in the closet, where they are much more difficult to access but at least not trying to pass for living room decor, nor tempting anyone to scale them.

My, that's a lot of words for having nothing to say!

Shhh Probably not supposed to tell you

Do you ever do those online surveys that are supposed to be top secret?

Well shhhh. Don't tell anyone I'm telling you this.

I have one today that wants me to record all my conversations.

Not the actual words (phew!) but count the number of conversations by category, and note if I mention any specific products.

Skimming over the list, it makes me wonder:

Do people in the real world have conversations about this stuff? And I'm just living under a rock?

Does mumbling, "need more coffee" to myself count as a discussion on beverages?

Does "Honey, go toast some waffles" count as a conversation about frozen food?

Does "Time to get dressed. Where's your other sock?" count as a conversation about clothing and apparel?

The Grand Lunar says a conversation would be two-way. So if the child wanders off, supposedly to do what I said, is that not a conversation?

Anyway, so far, my "conversations" are not very impressive. And perhaps not even conversations. Perhaps on a regular day I don't converse. Perhaps I just give orders and mumble to myself.

Oh, wait, do you think blogging about it counts as a conversation? Only if you reply?

Okay, now eat this email. It never happened. You're sworn to secrecy.

What, I haven't written?

I thought I'd written.

Sorry about that.

This blogging in my head ought to stop.

I had a busy day yesterday. On top of having the children rotating through their schoolwork, we had some cleaning up to do, where we'd gotten behind, before we had friends come over.

I was trying to figure out whether having gained a vision/understanding of a cleanable, clutter-free, organized house has helped or not. Sometimes it seems like having gained that goal makes things harder, because my ability to reach the goal has not grown proportionally with the goal. So now I have this goal, this burning hope, out there, but when I work real hard I don't get as far as I dream.

It used to be that my goals were so low that just getting things somewhat tidied up seemed good enough. I think. Didn't it?

But now as I'm tidying up I see the clutter, or the piles of things that were put on the shelf because they didn't have a 'real home', or a convenient home, and I wish they were clean and organized and easy to put away. And when I am able to get the clutter put away, or tidied, then I see the crayon on the windowsill, or the splotch of who knows what on the wall, and wish I regularly got to cleaning those things up.

Much less decorating. Not fancy, mind you, just ... coordinated. If I could paint and arrange things so they looked purposeful and somewhat stylish... wouldn't that be nice!

Anyway, we spent the first half of the day scurrying around to reach the 'company clean' level which is never as high as I hope it will be. But in the end, we have a cleaner base from which to work on our zone jobs and hopefully we can not only maintain but make progress. I intend (in my head, anyway) to spend some time tackling some of my organizational nightmare areas, to declutter and logically (?!) organize, so that we CAN easily put things where they go.

This morning when one of the children came down, they commented how nice it looks to look into the living room and see it so clean, with only one throw pillow on the floor. It's nice that they see it, too.

Now to ... somehow ... keep up with it.

The second half of the day was playing with friends, playing with Moogie, choir registration for my two girls and a long parent meeting that taxed my attention. Then hurrying home for dinner (which was, at least, in the crock pot ready to go, yay!) and cleaning up after dinner. Which, really, took us almost to bedtime.

The other tiring part of the day was trying not to compare. Realizing that my busy day is many people's norm. I've realized how much more industrious most of my friends are. Organized, diligent, and industrious. I used to think perhaps I had some clever traits that were different but equally valuable, but I'm not so sure anymore. The ability to talk up a storm? To cook without a recipe? I just don't know if those measure up.

Not that we're supposed to measure up like that.

But sometimes it's hard not to.

OH, but tot totally change the subject: I DID take some pix of the hair so you could see me, since you asked so nicely. But I haven't looked at them yet. If they're okay pix I'll post one. If not, you'll have to wait until next time I play with it. I was thinking of getting another color, maybe a dark brown. And then I could do some stripes of red, some of brown. I could feasibly also do a stripe or two in the back (very gray) area of a light golden brown ... maybe. LOL.

maybe I'll look at those pix now. Stay tuned ....

(later ... really ...)

Okay, because you asked, and only because you asked, here's one pic. Excuse the shiny green glare on my glasses. You can't actually see the streaks here. Because the hair around my face is less gray, and the streaks were a little smaller, they're more subtle. But now you can see me, which is what you asked for, right?

Funny hair story. My mom came over yesterday and she left her hair down and wet. Supposedly to show me that it doesn't look good when left down and natural.

But it looked awesome. My mom has the hair I want. It's waist length, auburn, not much gray (less than I have, by far!) and has grown fairly evenly to that length. When she leaves it down to dry (which she never does!) it dries fantastic ringlets. I was going to take a picture, but she quick squarshed out the curls and put it in a ponytail. So you'll just have to take my word for it. My mom has the long thick awesome auburn ringlets I always dreamed of.

Oh well.

The Dingo Ate Your Bloggie?

well shoot.

I had written you a very nice (and, of course, long and rambly) blog entry.

And then I previewed it, and it was excellent.

And then ... apparently ... I wandered away without saving and publishing. Yeah, because I'm new to this blogging thing. Uh huh.

so then I was 'reading' on the couch, and in my 'half'-asleep state my son asked if he could quit things and I said "yeah, sure, quit it all" and he said "it's asking if I want to save it" and - having done nothing that needed saving - I said, "no, I don't need it."

And, with that, your lovely reading material was gone.

And now I must recreate it, only half as clever as the first time. And, possibly, twice as rambly.

It was about my hair. Yeah, yeah, that again. I know. But if you had something better to do, you wouldn't be reading HERE anyway, right? So I shall proceed to ramble about my hair. It's okay if you wander off, seeing as I've already spent a long time explaining why I'm rewriting this less witty than before. I'm sure I'll still be here rambling when you get back.

And so.

remember when I said I was going to go gray naturally, and chopped off all the old henna, and just had gray hair?

and then I said I'd never dye it again.

and then I freaked out and thought maybe I would.

and then I came to my senses and decided I wouldn't.

and then ... well, we'll just say I didn't stay at my senses...

So I did that silly glaze I mentioned. (I won't surf for old entries unless you really want me to ... you don't really want links to them, do you?) Anyway, the glaze did little. Nearly nothing. The kind of nothing that you squint in the mirror and think maybe it's working because you really want it to work. Wishful thinking. After a few weeks of using it as directed (apply in shower, rinse out) I threw caution to the wind and started applying it more like a leave-in. Which was only slightly more color-glazing than the wishful thinking.

So then I tried a temporary "washes out in 6 washings" dye. I liked that. Only, if you color it once a week and it fades in between, your hair is always changing from dyed to gray and back again ...

So then I tried a temporary "washes out in up to 6 weeks" dye.

I think I liked that. Except the first day it seemed very startling and I was afraid it looked all fakey-dyed. You know, like Mrs. FnoGum in 8th grade English (whose hair would one day be solid maroon one day, solid brick red the next month). The children all asked, "Did you dye your hair?!" the day I died it. And at the park all my real life friends were strangely silent. Either because it was such a good job that they didn't notice, which seems unlikely since they already knew about my gray-bewailment, and judging by the children's reactions. So I figure it must have looked like a really horrible job that they were politely biting their tongues not to mention. Karen, Betsy, you were at Emerson that day, what did you think?

Aaaanyway, after a day or two that softened up a little and I've been pleased with that, and how it's slowly fading, no sharp dye-ends-here line.

So it's been not quite 4 weeks, I think, since then. Or is it not quite five? And I was looking at the little boxes of the striping-highlighting kids - you know, the ones that make the bold chunks of highlighting? Only it doesn't make sense to highlight half-gray hair, for one thing, and I don't want to do anything permanent, for another.

So instead I had this funky idea. I'd make cinnamon streaks.

I bought a box of the same stuff I'd used before, a warm medium/light auburn color called cinnamon something. I mixed just a little of it, in a measuring cup, and tried my best to apply it into chunky streaks at the part. Which is harder than it looks, especially the behind your head part.

Then, when I was all done, I couldn't find where I'd parted it, and so even though I tried to offset the chunky cinnamon streaks, I couldn't get it to look that way when done, it was like I kept parting down the middle of them. Hrm.

But anyway, I kind of like it. Especially if I did again with a little more practice. It was fun.

Wanna see?

Okay here's the top from the front:

And the top from the back, with my head tipped up:

What do you think?

Does that count as a mid-life crisis?

Locker Unveiling ... on the floor ...

Well, the lockers aren't done.

But they're beautiful to me.

Lying there, so pretty, on the garage floor.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. You need the whole story, right?

So way back in April I saw these at the church yard sale. Propped against a church wall, surrounded by other people's junk, in all their coral-orange glory.

And I wanted them.

For my dining room.

To go here:

because that shoe area never looks as nice as in the picture above. The coats are barfing off the hooks, shoes spewing under the table ... lockers would contain the mess and give each child their own spot!

Of course, knowing me and orange, you know I couldn't leave them orange.

And so, after several rough drafts in PhotoShop, I came up with this:

And so I tried (badly) to paint the insides yellow, after sanding and wiping and spraying the rusty spots.

Here they are on my garage floor, with the insides (badly) painted and the handles painted green then taped off.

And then, a while later, with the doors painted and then taped over and the green edges painted:

And then, today, for the grand unveiling, which was very exciting for me.

They're not perfect, but I like them.

Now to find some big strong men to help The Grand Lunar move them in and install them.

I'll need to plan when so that, that day, I can remove the old coat hooks, coats, and shoe cubbies to make room.

I'm so excited!

Dunes are hard work, too ...

We're back from the dunes!

Welcome to the too-many-pictures!-so-sorry-dialup-friends recap of the trip:

After a later-than-planned start and a 3 hour drive, we started with lunch at the foot of the dune climb:

And then changed into swimming suits and started up the dune climb hill, carrying water and towels. Halfway up the dune climb the children take their first rest-and-pose stop:

From the bottom you can't see the top. You see what looks like it might be the top. At what looked like the top, from the bottom, you could see part of the "Lake Michigan Hike" sign. When we got to that sign, this is what stretched before us:

Over and over again we would climb a tall dune hoping to see Lake Michigan beyond, only see another dune-valley and slow, hot climb ahead of us. This is looking back towards the start, before we could see Lake Michigan ahead.

Finally we crested a rise and saw Lake Michigan far in the distance. Several dune hills in the distance, it turned out.

After not quite two hours of walking, climbing, resting, and appreciating our now-nearly-empty water bottles, we reached the beach and began to play. We were a little disappointed to find that the beach is very rocky with round, smooth, slimy, medium sized rocks that were very difficult to walk on. There was a sandbar, but getting past the rocks to the sandbar was a chore. But the water was cold and refreshing after the very hot walk, and we didn't mind the slimy algae cloudiness. Too much. We swam and waded and collected rocks and built sand castles and played in the waves.

And then, finally, facing a long hot walk back, we started back. We made better time on the way back, maybe because we just wanted to be done with the hiking. Did I mention how much work hiking in sand is?!

We celebrated the return with rolls and runs down the main hill:

and at last we were back to the car. By now it was nearly 7 pm and we hadn't eaten since lunch, so we quickly piled in and headed off. But then we decided, since we'd paid the park fee, to swing through the 7 mile scenic drive. After all, how long could it take?

Of course, we arrived there just before sunset ...
and were glad we stayed for it ...

I realize I'm already picture heavy, so if you'd like to see the rest, the following thumbnails link to my flickr pictures of the dunes at sunset.

After sitting through the sunset and watching the pink fade from the sky, we finally headed home. We got home a few minutes before midnight, tired, sandy, and glad we'd gone.

Socks are not so hard ...

Knitting socks is easier than spray painting lockers.

I'm almost done painting the lockers. I may or may not do one more coat of green on the 'background' part. Then I need to make arrangements to somehow get them IN the house. Which will require entreating some big, strong, willing men to assist the Grand Lunar. The outside spray paint portions have gone on much better than the awkward inside. They won't be perfect, but they will be, I believe, good enough.

But enough about the lockers. Let me show you the socks!

It took me all summer, but only because I didn't work on them much, until recently.

I learned:

1.) how do do the kitchener rib in the round, incorrectly (the sock on the left)
2.) how to do the kitchener rib in the round, correctly (I think! the sock on the right)
3.) that they don't match when you do one wrong and one right and don't frog the correct one to match the incorrectly previously done sock
4.) that I don't like the kitchener rib stitch
5.) that I prefer ribbed socks to the bloated look of unribbed gussets.
6.) kids don't mind bloated gussets or mismatched cuffs.

In other news ~

Today I'm taking the big kids all the way up to the Sleeping Bear Dunes.

Pray for us to stay awake, alert, and healthy!

Pictures tomorrow! Maybe. Tomorrow starts school.