And today I assembled two nightstands with nothing but my bare hands, a phillips head screwdriver, a set of incomprehensible directions and my wits.

Do you know how expensive nightstands are?  More expensive than you’d think.  The only nightstands I’ve owned have either been cardboard (true story) or thrift store castoffs.

For the past twelve years, four Rubbermaid tubs have served as master bedroom nightstands.  A stack of two deep tubs were just the right height . . . and sure, sometimes the lamps fell over because the plastic surface wasn’t exactly level.  Still.  This haphazard solution solved two problems:

1)  We had no nightstands.
2)  We had no suitable storage area for out of season (or out of size, who are we kidding?) clothing.

But enough.  It’s one thing to live with pretend furniture for twelve years, but it’s an entirely different thing to create a bedroom space that makes strangers walking through your house want to own that bedroom space.  (Please?  Don’t you want to own my house?)

So, I surfed over to Amazon, found suitable nightstands and bought two.

The boxes arrived this afternoon, so armed with my phillips screwdriver, I  began assembling.  The nightstand came in fifteen separate pieces.  And the kids complain you’ll never use geometry again after high school!

I only put two parts on backwards but no one will ever know if you don’t tell. So don’t tell.

And now, my bed is nestled between two actual nightstands.  Total cost?  $113.98.  Take that, Pottery Barn!

p.s.  Hey, wait!  Is that screwdriver a phillips head screwdriver?  Because that’s the picture that I found when I Googled “phillips head screwdriver” . . .

Signed,
Unfamiliar with correct terminology, apparently

p.p.s.  I thought I was right about the screwdriver . . . apparently I’m smarter than Google.

Last night, one of my teenagers went to a friend’s house to watch movies.  My 12-year old went trick-or-treating with a gang of his friends (supervised by one of the other moms).  My other teenager stayed home to pass out candy.

And I took my 8-year old daughter-dressed-as-a-bumblebee trick-or-treating.

We went with her best buddy from down the street and his parents . . . and as the kids raced up each sidewalk to ring the doorbell, I remembered the first time we trick-0r-treated in our neighborhood.

My teenagers were only five years old.  My 12-year old was a baby in a stroller.  I dressed the twins in costumes I made myself: a cowboy (with a horse made from a cardboard box) and an Indian.  I used to be crafty and creative, you know.  I dressed baby Zach as a cowboy, too, with a neckerchief and a cowboy hat.

My sister brought her little ones and we walked the streets just as dusk fell.

The boys and their four-year old cousin fought over who got to ring the doorbell at each house.

We barely made it around the circle before they were complaining that their buckets were too heavy and their feet hurt.

And there I was last night, escorting my trick-or-treater, my unexpected daughter, a child I hadn’t even dreamed of twelve years ago.  Same me, same street, entirely different child.

I reminded myself that this was the last time we’d trick-or-treat in our neighborhood.

Who knew trick-or-treating would feel so much like saying goodbye in so many ways?

Another week sped by.  Tomorrow my son heads off to a football game but I won’t be able to attend it since I’ll be at soccer with my daughter.  She has only three games left in the season.  (And all the parents rejoice!)

My husband’s been in California for three weeks now and it’s just the weirdest thing ever to be separated from him.  We’ve never been apart this long in the twenty-three years we’ve been married.  At least I am extremely busy.  Less time for introverted wallowing.  This weekend I intend to get the items in the storage room completely packed up or given away.

A day or two ago, I heard the noise of motors in the front of my house, so I went to the living room window to investigate.  It turned out that a crew was working on my neighbor’s lawn across the street.  As I stood there, a little distracted, I happened to look down at the boxwood hedge outside.

A bird lay on its side.  If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that it simply stopped, fell over sideways and slept, but of course, it was dead.

I saw a smear of feathers on the window.

Poor bird dove head first into my picture window and died.

I would sum this up with a moral about the fragility of life, but that’s not really how the story went.  The story went like this:

Oh no.  How sad.  Poor bird.

I should dispose of that.

Huh.  I wish my husband would dispose of that.

How long has that dead bird been there anyway?

I have to take care of that myself.  If only it weren’t raining.

And I have slippers on.

I better get back to work.

Maybe no one will notice.

Hey, wait.  Do raccoons eat dead birds?

I should move that dead bird before my daughter sees it.

Hey, wait, that would be a good lesson about death in a very detached way.  We didn’t know the bird’s name, after all.

Okay, I’m pretending I didn’t see the dead bird.

Back to work.

When I returned tonight from driving my son to football practice, my daughter informed me that there was a dead bird outside.  “Adam used a tissue and threw it away,” she told me.

Well.  And that was that.

See what happens when you just pretend you didn’t see something?  Someone else takes care of things!

Lesson learned.

At dusk, I left my daughter in the care of her grandma at the soccer field and headed back home to pick up two of my other kids.  I turned off by the library.  As I passed the bus stop, I noticed a boy standing near a boy on the ground.  The boy on the ground was curled over his knees, forehead on the ground, apparently crying.

As I drove by, I wondered what had happened to the crying boy.  Had he fallen?  The other boy just stood there.  After I passed, I glanced in my rear-view mirror and that’s when I saw the standing boy begin to kick the boy on the ground.

I knew in a flash that the standing boy had been waiting for cars to pass so he could resume kicking the boy on the ground.

I was outraged.

I turned into an apartment parking lot and drove back to the bus stop.  I pulled my car over next to the boys and rolled down my window.

“What is going on here?” I demanded.

Both boys were standing now and just looked at me.

I pulled my car keys out and marched around my van to stand between the boys.

“What are you doing?” I said again to the bigger boy.  He appeared to be about ten years old.  He stood mute.

“I saw you kick him.  That is not cool!  You do not kick other people!”

The younger boy–probably five years old–stood on the other side of me.  He stared with wide eyes.  His cheeks were blotchy from crying.

“You!”  I pointed to him.  “You go home!”  He immediately started running toward the apartment complex behind the bus stop.

I turned back to the kicking boy.  “What is wrong with you?  You do not kick people!”

Finally, he spoke.  “He’s not even supposed to be out here!  And my mom isn’t home!”

“Is he your brother?”

“No, he’s my cousin.”

“You don’t KICK him!  That is not all right.”

“We, he threw a shoe at me.”

I rolled my eyes.  “Are you kidding me?  And you kicked him?  It’s not okay to kick people!”

He began to move away from me.  As he reached the parking lot, I yelled, “Do not kick people!  If the police were here, you’d be in big trouble!”

By that time he was running toward the apartments where his young cousin had disappeared.

I realized with a horrible jolt that I had perhaps just made things worse.  Now the smaller cousin would be in the apartment, in private, with his cousin who had been viciously kicking him.

I ran for my van and wheeled into the parking lot but it was too late.  The boys had both disappeared.

And I am left to wonder.  Did I do the right thing?

I’m having a bad week.  I have PMS.  I gave up Diet Coke.  My mild cold is turning into a horrible cold.  It’s half-days of school.  My house fell into disarray somehow.  If I turn my back for one second, everything springs from its rightful home and throws itself to the floor.

I mean, how else can you explain the clutter on the floor throughout my living room, kitchen and family rooms?  I do not throw things on the floor myself, so it’s mystifying.  Well, it would be mystifying except that I know the kids are to blame.  For instance, this afternoon my bored 8-year old daughter resorted to running laps through the living room and kitchen . . . she propped the Costco-sized package of paper towels in the doorway so she could hurdle them.

So, that explains eight paper towel rolls scattered everywhere.

I am to blame for the enormous containers of food on the counters and kitchen table.  I didn’t have time to put the Costco food away after returning home today.  It would never occur to the kids to put anything away.  I have failed as a mother.

I can’t believe how much continual effort it takes to keep the tide that is my children from continually depositing debris everywhere upon the shore that is my house.  I need a clone of myself who can devote herself to being a housekeeper since I clearly am overwhelmed.

And with that, I’m gathering up the pile of snotty tissues by my keyboard and throwing them in the full trashcan and going to bed.

Tomorrow is another day.  I hope.

While waiting for dinner to cook (Tater Tot Casserole, thanks for asking), I headed to my scary storage room to sort and pack.  I had a giant box for donations and a smaller box for books and such. (Well, several smaller boxes and a very stupid roll of packing tape that insisted on clinging to itself instead of staying neat and tidy in the dispenser.  Curse you uncooperative packing tape!)

I spent an unfortunate amount of time literally twirling in a slow circle in the center of the room, wondering exactly where I could find a place to start.  That must be how it feels to dangle off the side of a sheer cliff, trying to grab a craggy rock or something but instead just flailing and panicking.  No progress.  Just a flurry of nothing.

Then I began to move things from shelf to shelf and occasionally, I’d tuck something into a box.  I decided to part with some old issues of Martha Stewart Living (such a gorgeous magazine) but kept a few craft books because you never know when I might actually start quilting again.  Or cover a lampshade.  Or play a hymn on the piano.  I gained some momentum, filled up two boxes and continued packing.

The funny thing, though, is when I uncovered a dusty unopened package of floral wire.  I rubbed the dust off of it.  You never know when you might need floral wire, I said to myself.  I moved it to the shelf of Things to Save For No Apparent Reason.

I stopped.  Tilted my head in that universal sign of “huh”?  I picked up the wire, looked at the price tag.  Fifty-nine cents.  I’ve owned it for at least ten years, maybe longer.

I decided to let it go.  Because . . . seriously.

If some day in the near or distant future I find myself in dire need of floral wire, I will trot down to the local floral wire store (also known as Walmart) and purchase a package.

Save me from myself.

Thank you and . . . need any latex paint?  How about a broken computer monitor?

I have a cold.  I didn’t realize it until last night when I finally sat down for the first time.  My day went something like this:

Soccer game, 8:30 a.m.  (I’d gotten to sleep at about 1 a.m.)
Returned home at 10:20 a.m.  Made sure that son got off to his football game.
Cleaned up the kitchen.
Packed a few boxes.
Delivered boxes to storage unit, went to lunch with 8-year old, dropped stuff off at Value Village.
Drove across town to other Value Village to browse.
Picked up Papa Murphy’s pizza for dinner.
Dragged out fall decorations.  Cleaned, decorated with help from 8-year old.

That doesn’t sound like much, but it was after six when I stretched out on my bed with a book and realized that my nose felt a lot more like a cold than an allergy.  And then I cuddled up with a tissue box and a book.

I hate that.  Who needs a cold?  Not me.  At least it’s a mild one.

We slept in today–well, by “we” I mean “me.”  My daughter woke up at five with a bad dream and then came in every so often to wake me just after I’d drifted back to sleep.

At last I crawled out of bed and made my way to kitchen where I cleaned it up and then mopped.  I fed the kids lunch, then decided that today would be the day that I’d clean out my boys’ room.  They had some old furniture and clothes I wanted to get rid of.

That project lasted almost three hours but I’d been successful and dropped off three pieces of furniture at the thrift store.

My daughter had begged me all weekend to make The Pioneer Woman’s cinnamon rolls (my linky thing won’t work  but you can find them here: http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/breads/pioneer-womans-cinnamon-rolls/).  I just got The Pioneer Woman Cooks and Grace saw the photograph of cinnamon rolls.  Anyway, so I set about making them, only I didn’t have milk.  I had buttermilk.  And I don’t have maple extract.  So I used vanilla.

They were delicious.

They finished baking while I was trying to watch “The Amazing Race.”

And then when the show ended, I worked for four hours.

The upcoming week is half-days at school.  It’s conference time once again, also known as that time when I spend my entire afternoon shift feeling annoyed by my children, which is sad, but true.  Have you ever tried to work while four children are in your vicinity?  I dare you to try.

Tomorrow, though, I don’t work in the afternoon, so we plan to go to the pumpkin patch.  We love to go there . . . and, of course, I say to myself, “This is the last time we’ll go to the pumpkin patch.”  We’ve gone twelve years in a row.

Memories . . . light the corners of my mind . . . misty water-colored memories . . . of the way we were.

Several times recently, I’ve seen someone on television who is about my age and they look old.  (And by ‘someone’, I mean a real person, like that lady on the Dr. Oz show . . . not a fake person like Teri Hatcher or any of those “Housewives” with botox foreheads.)

And I think I’ve lost touch with reality because I don’t think I look old like those people I’ve seen who are my age.  But I probably do.

Awhile back, I was fretting while putting on makeup, worrying about the under-eye circles that have plagued me since I was a teenager.  What would people think when they met me?  Then I realized that people would not expect me to be twenty, considering I’ve been married for twenty-three years to a man who is almost fifty . . . and he has gray hair.  So, it’s okay to have saggy eyelids, I guess, considering I’m married to a guy with male pattern baldness.  (And I think he’s adorable.) It’s okay to look forty-five.

It’s still strange.

I’m kind of looking forward to being really old and wrinkled.  I think there will be so much less pressure to look cute then.  Of course, then I will wonder why I didn’t totally relish having the face of a forty-five year old.

Pass the eye cream.

SATURDAY
1)  Slept through husband’s departure for sunny southern California. (What?  We said goodbye the night before.)
2)  Drove to “away” soccer game and brought snacks (homemade brownies) and watched the game from under an enormous umbrella.  Daughter made 3 goals!
3)  Packed up all the board games we never play.  Two giant boxes worth!  Moved books, rearranged cupboards, added stuff to bag destined for thrift store.
4)  Delivered a teenage boy to his neighborhood, dropped off boxes at storage unit, picked up pizza from Papa Murphy’s.
5)  Visited with my mother while we ate pizza.  She said, “Where are those chairs from the living room?”  “I took them to Value Village.”  Alas, she loved those chairs, she wanted those chairs!  I had no idea.
6)  Collapsed and watched television until falling asleep.

SUNDAY
1)  Skipped church.
2)  Cleaned out fridge.  Threw away pickles only husband likes.  Cleaned and chopped romaine lettuce.  Made Rice Crispy Treats.
3)  Went to Value Village where the nice man in the furniture area sold me back the chairs for the low, low price of $14.99 for both (one was priced $14.99 and the other was $19.99).  He thought I should talk to the manager but I declined because it felt too shady to me.  What’s to stop anyone from saying they donated something the day before and now wanted it back?   The original price for both chairs (and footstool) would have been $35, but with my discount card and the understanding employee giving me a special deal, I only paid $10.  Which still seems funny to me.
4)  Attended  a party celebrating the life of a soldier friend of ours who died on September 14, 2009, in Afghanistan.  He was killed by a bomb.  The party was such an amazing celebration of his life.
5)  Stopped by my mom’s house to deliver the chairs.  Picked up two of her chairs she was replacing with my chairs.   You should have seen the guy at Value Village today when I dropped off her two very similar chairs.  He recognized me, obviously, and must think I’m a lunatic.
6)  Watched “The Amazing Race.”
7)  Worked until 1 a.m.

The end.

My husband came home from Texas today.  Tomorrow he is loading up all his clothes, shoes and personal effects so he can leave us early Saturday morning.

My house is in disarray because of the sorting, purging, organizing and packing that I’ve been doing.

We’re out of bread and milk.

I accidentally packed the book I wanted to read next.  (The Book Thief, recommended by Joshilyn Jackson!)  I finished Joshilyn Jackon’s Backseat Saints.  Fun and well-written book.

My daughter really really wants me to make caramel apples tomorrow.  And I should.  I wonder if I have the wooden sticks necessary?

My fingernails are nubs again.

I forgot to wash all my husband’s dirty clothes tonight.  Guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow?

Why don’t the kids ever put the ketchup back in the fridge?

My daughter also wants me to decorate for Halloween.  Maybe I’ll get that stuff out tomorrow.

Although going back to bed after taking her to school is also tempting.

All the details of life are an easy way to distract me from thinking about how long I’ll be separated from my husband.  We’ll see each other here and there, of course.  So, there’s that.

The kids and I will be moving in about 258 days.  Not that anyone’s counting.