Routine truly makes me feel crazy. After a few solid months of solid routine, I start to feel dead inside. When I found out school was cancelled on Friday, a spark lit inside of me.
No school? On a ROUTINE school day?
Incidentally, my husband didn’t have to work, so I called in and we decided we’d drive into the city and hike a mountain! or something.
But then the wind blew and the May hail came, so we settled on some leisurely shopping and eating out at one of my favorite spots, Pita Jungle.
Outside the weather was cloudy and rainy, and it made us feel cozy and warm to be inside with each other.
Eating, coloring, fighting… you know, regular family fun!
We bought up close to 2,000 pounds of groceries and bulkified our cupboards for the next maybe three days… you know what I mean. If you have little kids, you know what I mean.
While in town, Danny called his mom and found out she’d be in the area and invited her to stay the night so we could sneak in a little mother’s day festivities with her. I haven’t been feeling well -my body without a gall bladder truly hates it when I do stupid things like eat food. My mother-in-law is one of those treasures of beings who doesn’t care if my house looks like I’ve been under the weather all week.
We made her some eggplant parm and ate it by candlelight. The kids love eating anything by candlelight.
She stopped by Saturday afternoon after we’d spent the morning at a fundraiser for first responders. The kids were in heaven with all of their “Jr. Firefighter” stickers. They even got to sit in a medic helicopter!
Riding in the car with them, I turned the radio down to listen to them visit.
“Trent, when I get home I’m going to clean before Grammy gets to our house and then work on my bucket list,” Lacy said.
“What’s THAT?”
“It’s a list of things to do before you die… you know, and then you kick it over after you die.”
“What?” He wasn’t convinced.
“It’s a LIST of THINGS,” she spaced out and emphasized her words for the slow of understanding, “that you DO before you DIE. And when you DIE, you KICK IT OVER because you’re dead and can’t DO THE THINGS anymore.”
“How can you kick it if you’re dead?” he asked.
“It’s a cool thing that happens,” she shrugged.
“But you’re DEAD.”
“Well, it’s this cool thing that happens,” she repeated, “You die and it just… falls over.”
At this point, Lacy sighed in frustration and finished the conversation with, “Mom can explain it to you later.”
Ha!
I stopped on the way home from the fundraiser to wish MY Granny a Happy Mother’s Day. I love Granny.
My kids were happy to see their Grammy when we got home -the kids won’t clean for me, but if they’re cleaning for GRAMMY… they were all over it! They wanted to surprise her with a fancy candle lit dinner, and it turned out really cute.
We went to bed late, Alice still refuses to sleep. Her motto is something like, “Mom can sleep when her bucket falls over.”
I woke up in the middle of the night in the recliner. I didn’t even remember falling asleep. Alice was draped across my stomach. I picked us up and took us to my bed and was woken a few hours later by the sound of Lacy puking in the bathroom.
Poor kiddo. I took care of her, gave her a bath, pulled her hair back… all the things moms do when their kid is sick.
“I wanted to make you breakfast,” she said, sadly. Leave it to Lacy to still be thinking about other people when she’s pushing dehydration.
Danny made breakfast for me and his mom, asking for minimal amounts of help, and Trenton and I went to church.
My brother, JC, taught the Relief Society lesson. The youth took over teaching classes so all of the women could attend Relief Society. It was really nice to sit and listen and take notes without pulling the baby off of the curtains or pulling the older two apart.
JC’s curiosity has always been insatiable. He has a vast database of truth stored up in his head, and he draws from it frequently. As a kid, he was called on to catch animals, kill snakes and any other unsavory task our aunt and grandmothers weren’t in the mood to face.
He’s trapped porcupines, crows and every kind of lizard that Northern Arizona has to offer. If ever I have a question, I call him up and he has something of an answer. He’s always got his hands on something.
His lesson covered honey bees (which he owns and continually gains new info about), It’s a Wonderful Life, and President Lincoln.
He talked about what he likes to call, “The George Bailey Experiment.”
He asked what life would look like if President Lincoln’s mother had never been born, and at that minute I realized I once saved my mom’s life when she choked on some food… and therefore we are EVEN.
You give me life, and I’ll save yours -that’s my motto.
He said a Queen Bee makes a hive. If she has a calm nature, the hive is calm. If there is no Queen Bee, it’s obvious because the entire hive is lazy.
He talked about the little amount a bee gives in their lifetime but the HUGE difference it makes to the world.
I’d felt prompted to look up info on bees myself a year ago and was touched by the exact amounts of honey ONE bee makes in their lifetime -it’s really something to study. They fly so little and make hardly anything at all, you’d think they’d just give up at the thought. But IF THEY DID, the entire course of life would be altered.
Case in point: what would our nation look like if Lincoln’s mother had never been?
I came home feeling a little less stifled by routine -partially because I’d had a nice reprieve from it and partially because I was touched by the reminder of how life-giving my simple acts are.
I baked up two more Eggplant Parms and headed to Grandma’s to feed her and my Mom… and I felt supremely lucky to have surrounded myself in ONE weekend with both grandmothers, my mom AND my mother-in-law. I recognize that not everyone is able to do that, and I feel the blessedness of it deeply.
I went for a walk with my son -just my son. We talked about important things like Iron Man. We went to our secret spot at the end of Dad’s farm and said two prayers together. He leaned his head against me and we threw rocks in a small puddle.
“When you throw a pebble in a puddle, what happens?” I asked.
“Circle things go out and out…” he motioned with his hands.
“That’s how lies work,” I said.
“WHAT?”
I think Trent is suspicious that his mother and sister are CRAZY.
“When you tell a lie, it feels small but it isn’t. It goes out and out and you can’t take it back.” Then I told a fake story about a fake kid named Leroy who broke a store window and lied about it.
I MIGHT have told that story because he’d just lied to me about his hair suddenly being drenched.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Sweat,” he locked eyes with me, trying to see if I’d see through him.
“Seriously, what happened?”
“I got wet,” vagueness is the primary tool for The Pants on Fire Purveyor.
“HOW?”
“I don’t reNEMBER.”
“SON…”
“From a bowl that I filled up from the sink.”
Okay, this is STILL VAGUE.
But on our walk home after we’d had a talk about ripples, he finally let it out.
“I filled up a bowl and threw my lucky charm in so I could make a wish.”
“Makes sense,” I said… “But how did your HAIR end up wet?”
“Oh. Cuz I dunked it.”
Of course ya did.
We walked home with our dog and picked up a bunch of nature-y things to entertain our sick sister with: thorns, alfalfa, weed buds, fox tails…
Once at home, I played some chess with Iron Man.
We delivered our nature finds to Lacy.
And then before Trent could beat in me in chess again, Alice threw everything overboard and insisted on painting my nails.
We streamed Anne of Green Gables on youtube to finish out the night. Trent hated it. Lacy loved it. Alice ate two bowls of cold cereal.
And in the end, routine became doable again.
Happy Mother’s Day to every woman who ever played a part in the creation of a human being: teachers, neighbors, aunts, cousins, mothers, grandmothers and everyone inbetween.
My favorite gift was a pillow I snagged at World Market. I wrote about it on my Story Lady Blog facebook page, but I’ll repost it here for posterity.
A few weeks ago, my kids were discussing astronomy.
Trent: How far away is the moon?
Me: Oh, it’s very far away.
Trent: Is from here to the moon the farthest you can get away from here?
Me: What do you think?
Trent: I think so because it’s really, really far.
Lacy: I think so. And since it is the farthest, that means I love you from here all the way to the moon.”
When I saw this pillow at #worldmarket on Saturday, it became mine immediately. 
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