The Lodge

Originally uploaded by Mel 128

All that luggage? Two of us brought all that for our forty-eight hour scrapbooking adventure.

Autumn in the mountains

How amazing was this view?

I was obsessed with taking close-up photos of these berries.

A few weekends ago, I went to Mt. Baker for the weekend. This is the view from the lodge.

I wrote a post last night but I just realized that it has vanished.  What’s up with that?  Granted, it wasn’t the most fantastic post, nor was it controversial (I just cannot bring myself to enter the political fray), nor did I cry or laugh while typing it.  However, it was a post and it’s gone.  I can’t understand that.

So, today is the first day of our week of half-days.  (It’s Parent-Teacher conference week.)  Because of half-days, my kindergartener does not have school at all.  One day down, four to go.  (I miss having my mornings 6-year-old free.  If that makes me a bad mom, so be it.)

We had a super busy weekend.  I told you all about it in the missing post.  I don’t want to talk about it now.  It seems so last weekend.

Also, big news:  I finished reading Freddy & Fredericka and have begun a second reading of The Secret Life of Bees in anticipation of seeing the movie.  After that, I’m going to reread The Road in anticipation of seeing that movie next month.

And, what else?

Today it rained hard.

Today my hamstrings are sore as a result of yard work yesterday.

Today I worked for eight hours.

Today I washed and dried one load of laundry.

Today I did not exercise.

OH MY GOODNESS, I am so boring.  I’ve got a big bowl of nothing here.  Anybody have anything interesting to say?

The toilets are clean. The refrigerator contains a gallon and a half of milk. (The boys drank half a gallon already.) The dishes were scrubbed and I washed two loads of laundry.

Here are the errands I ran this morning:

1) Dropped off little kids at school.

2) Returned to school with forgotten library book.

3) Dropped off overdue video games.

4) Bought bagels at bagel store.

5) Cashed check at bank.

6) Shopped at Target, primarily for birthday gift for party on Saturday.

7) Picked up daughter from bus stop. Realized I’d forgotten my coupon organizer (I’m a nerd) at Target.

8) Returned to Target and claimed organizer. (Can’t believe it was there!)

9) Shopped at grocery store.

10) Home just in the nick of time.

That adventure took four hours, possibly because I ran into road construction about four times and at Target the cashier thought I should have received a gift card for five bucks because I purchased five cases of pop. (I’d only picked out four, but retrieved a fifth when she told me about the gift card.) Then, the gift card did not emerge, so she walked me over to customer service where the employee spent ten or fifteen minutes trying to figure out the problem. The problem was that it was the promotion LAST WEEK. And then, of course, I had to backtrack and get the coupons I’d forgotten.

And we have milk.

Somewhere between dawn and dark yesterday, the heavy weight of sadness settled over me. And today, despite the delight of accompanying my baby girl on her first field trip (to the Pumpkin Patch!), I felt depressed over nothing.

When the whole world goes gray with emotional storm clouds, I survey my interior. Why do I feel like this? What’s happened? And I came up with nothing today. Just the weariness from my weekend festivities (I loved getting my photos scrapbooked, but being with people constantly wears me out since I am introverted at heart) and fatigue in anticipation of the impending weekend: football game with my son in the morning, birthday party with my daughter in the afternoon, fundraising dinner with my husband at night. And maybe hormones are to blame for my mood?

The laundry is piled up and we are out of milk and the toilet upstairs is disgusting.

I’m already sorry that I am not sleeping right now because I will be so exhausted in the morning. But what can be done about that when I work until midnight? And then BOOM, it’s suddenly almost 1:00 a.m. and I am still awake.

Oh, and the video games were due at midnight tonight. I must return them in the morning. After that, I will buy milk.

Being a responsible adult is overrated. However, I cannot seem to break my lease with adulthood. I’m stuck with it until I transition from being responsible into being eccentric, if I’m lucky. (And then, I will pay back my kids by leaving my balled-up socks on their living room floors and a sticky trail of chocolate milk droplets across their kitchen floors.)

I spent the weekend in 2004. My twins were 10, then 11. My baby boy was 5, almost 6. My baby girl was picking her nose or biting a finger while she waited to turn 2.

No, it wasn’t time travel. I spent the weekend scrapbooking pictures from four years ago. I attended the same retreat at Mt. Baker last year, too, and amazingly enough, the rain stopped and the clouds parted to reveal blue skies just in time for our arrival. I will have pictures to post just as soon as I unpack my camera doo-dads. But suffice to say, I had a great time going away for the weekends with friends and working on my neglected project.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my husband held down the fort. He took our daughter with him to our 10-year old’s football game Saturday morning. Today, he took them to an indoor play area, complete with laser tag, miniature golf and arcade. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, he rounded up all four kids and took them to the Pumpkin Patch where apparently it’s now possible to launch corn.

The best part? He took pictures with his iPhone. I will be scrapbooking those photos in 2012, at this rate.

Speaking of the world ending . . . I paid $2.99 a gallon for gasoline today! Who’d have guessed that this would seem like a bargain?

My television set is dead. Unrepairable. While I was at Wal-Mart today buying a dust-pan, I wandered by the televisions to see how much money I would have to produce to be able to watch television in comfort and style again. (The small t.v. in the living room is so far from me that I cannot read the closed captioning on it . . . so sad, right? Especially when you think of orphans in Third World countries who have no shoes?)

But, really, the question is what happened to my dust-pan? Isn’t a dust-pan one of those items you acquire when you move into your first home and then you never buy another one? Well, you’d think. But my kids borrowed my kitchen broom and dust-pan to . . . sweep the back yard? And the dust-pan was never seen again. It ran away with the dish and spoon. (“And the dish ran away with the spoon.” Come on, I’m channeling nursery rhymes now.)

Now I own a dust-pan. And a random assortment of stuff that I didn’t realize how much I needed until I saw it–like spray starch for ironing, color safe bleach (which I use to get out stains, even old grease stains, I kid you not! I am Martha Stewart, almost), Oreo cookies (for school lunches), and, oh, who knows what else. I did not buy a television, though, because I could not find quite enough quarters under the couch. Or in the washing machine.

I’m going out of town for three days, leaving Friday morning. I am diligently working on laundry while reminding myself several times a day to remember to bring my underpants on the trip. On last year’s trip, I totally forgot. Now, tell me why I have space in my brain devoted to remembering that I forgot to pack underpants on that trip to Mt. Baker to scrapbook? Couldn’t that brain space be relegated to something more important? Like. . . oh, remembering to pack underpants?

It’s 12:32 a.m., though the kitchen clock reads 12:38 a.m. I’m afraid to fix that clock because I am so used to it running five minutes fast. I have no idea why it started to rush ahead. We’re in no hurry here. Well, I’m in no hurry.

At this time of night, the house is finally quiet. The teenagers may be murmuring in their room, but I can’t hear them. My husband snores are just a distant rumble. The two littlest people in our family have been sleeping for hours.

I wish I didn’t have to go to bed. I could accomplish so much in these dark hours, if only my body didn’t require rest. Here is my list of things that will not get accomplished tonight because I have to sleep:

1) The kitchen cupboard containing the plastic-ware, including Rubbermaid containers and far too many empty Cool-Whip containers, will remain a jumble. And I will be annoyed next time I cannot find a lid to match a plastic box.

2) The dishes in the sink will remain unwashed. I am soaking the Crock-Pot and just didn’t have time to tend to it before I started work at 8 p.m.

3) The laundry will remain dirty and stinky. I am going out of town for the weekend and need to get it all washed before I go. Tomorrow. It will just have to wait until then.

4) The Mark Helprin novel I am reading will not be finished. But finally I’ve read more than half of it. I’m on the downhill slide. I started reading this book at the pool during the summer. Ridiculous.

And that’s just for starters. I cannot even list all the mini-projects and household chores that haunt me. I am shoring up the sandcastle of my household while the tide of . . . what? children? life? . . . well, the tide wrecks my progress.

I need twenty-four extra hours, a parenthetical break in life so I can tidy up before we go rushing headlong into tomorrow.