*FINISH! I bellow at my slow-eating daughter.

I am! she retorts indignantly. I’m chewing my cud!

*Lunch for four kids: 3 giant cooked potatoes, sliced and fried, with ketchup, a minuscule amount of corn (perhaps 18 kernels per kid), a little pile of green beans, 1 quart of applesauce, 1 roast beef sandwich, divided 4 ways, and leftover tomato soup divided 2 ways and drunk out of a mug.

*I look down in the field and see my little boy squatting in the orchard. Not till he stands up do I see the handsaw in his hands. I scream and holler wildly.

But they’re dead, he insists.

No they’re not! I yell.

They’re green inside, he pleasantly informs me.

Yes! I know! I say.

I was just cutting them up like Grandaddy and Papa did, he explains.

So this year, our fruit trees (just one apple, I think) (I hope) got twice-pruned.

*The kids are asleep and my husband and I are sitting in the living room, he on the chair, me on the sofa, going over our budget yet again. (An eraser is very helpful tool in getting the numbers to add up.) We’ll do it again tonight, and then the next night and the next. See, we’re taking a Dave Ramsey class and we’re learning a whole bunch of useful stuff. Like get rid of credit cards (I think it’s happening), and spend all your money on paper before you spend a penny, and name every single penny because otherwise it will float away. I wish I had learned all this 20 years ago. That my kids will know this—the ins and outs of managing money—by the time they leave our house is a small consolation.

*My tummy is angry at you, Mama, my little girl grumps. It’s hungry.

*It’s midmorning and I sneak two slivers of flourless chocolate cake ‘cause my breakfast oatmeal just wasn’t exciting enough. The cake is actually pretty good when it’s heated up and drowned in whipped cream.

*I’m getting more creative with money. I like to wrap it around my waist. Like so, it gives a whole new meaning to the term “money belt.”

Or around my wrist, thickly.

Or I can drape it loosely around my neck…

Or not so loosely, choker fashion.

(With this chain, the analogies are never ending.)

*I’m sitting on the sofa while my oldest son drills away on the piano. I knit and call out instructions. He works extra hard when I stay with him the whole time, egging him on every minute. Bonus: my scarf will soon be done.

*Some friends take all four of the kids to a basketball game. Each ticket can be redeemed for an ice cream cone at the local (wonderful) ice cream shop, so when in town for my dance class, I get the ice cream in cups to go and take it home for our dessert. But one of the children has to forgo, due to some name-calling earlier in the day. The theatrical sobbing is deafening, but once the ordeal is over, I’m glad I stuck it out. And I’m pretty sure that child will have a better behaved tongue (for a few weeks, at least).

*I am in my belly dance class. The instructor is teaching us how to do inner hip circles while walking forwards and backwards. In other words, our hips are making a circle parallel to the ground while our legs move up and down. I have to shut my eyes and chant to myself to stay balanced and in rhythm. It’s crazy-hard, and I know I must look ridiculous, but I don’t care. It’s fun.

*When I’m in town, I bump into a friend—ouch! (ha, ha)—who encourages me to come to a local sporting event. I can’t tonight, I say, I need to be with the children. A little later in the conversation, my evening plans come up again, but this time I elaborate: we have some reading to do. Oh, school work, she replies knowingly. No, I correct, just reading for fun. And then I wonder, do other people not prioritize fun reading?

I love our book-filled evenings. For awhile there I was reading everything—first a bunch of chapters from Little House and then a sizeable hunk of reading to the older two (from Little Women and now Jane Eyre). Thing was, my voice was giving out (I read for 1-2 hours throughout the day, as well), so now I join the kids on the sofa, my knitting in hand, while my husband reads the Little House books. Then I do part two of the evening reading. My throat is grateful for the change.

*Commentors are complimentary about my Sunday skirt, and I am flattered, so I post a full(er) body shot of me in my duds.

*We host a potluck dinner for my Sunday school class and one of the members brings a 24-ounce box of smoked salmon just for us. The kids are beside themselves with glee. Cutting into the foil, the next evening, is a Special Family Occasion. I fork bits into birdy mouths and they squawk for more (all but the youngest daughter who spits hers in the trash, silly girl). I make a cream cheese-salmon mixture to go on buttered sourdough toasts, but the kids prefer to eat it straight up. Fearing all 24 ounces will get gobbled up in one sitting, I squirrel a portion away in the fridge. I have my sights on a salmon-cucumber-dill-sour cream pasta salad.

This same time, years previous: odd ends, creamed chicken with cheese biscuits, cleaning up bad attitudes, tortilla pie

I have had no new recipes for you lately. For this, I am sorry. I have tried a few recipes, but they’ve been mediocre to miserable. There was this flourless chocolate cake which turned out dry and crumbly, and this red popcorn which turned out dry and crumbly. (Julie! Julie! Wherefore art thou, my Julie of the stellar ribs and tangy sour cream ice cream? I miss you!)

I made a lemon pasta, too. It was good, fine and tasty, but it was just what it was, a lemon pasta. Nothing earth shattering, so I’m not going to bother you with the details (mostly just cream and lemon, for the curious).

The Baby Nickel turned five. He informs everyone of his new age, and I overheard him announce that now that he’s five, the other kids can kick him and it doesn’t hurt anymore.

He iced his own cake, a banana cake with caramel frosting and some chocolate butter cream to decorate it with (all his choices, not mine). The decorating tube was too bulky for him to wield efficiently, so he resorted to his good old phalanges.

Of course, they had to get licked clean every few seconds. So basically, it was a spit-icing cake.

Yes, you may gag. It was totally disgusting. But you know what? It was his birthday and I never let him play with food with such complete and utter abandonment and he had a blast, germs be damned. (But rest assured, nobody outside of our immediate family got served any of the birthday cake.)

The kids built a block tower and then I let them take my camera upstairs and photograph it, unsupervised.

Trusting them with my camera is what I call “living on the edge.”

A phantom mouse has been living in our kitchen stove. Every night we’d hear it scritch-scratching and I’d whip off my slipper and tip-toe over to stand by the stove, slipper-wielding arm raised high, and though the mouse would scritch and scratch, he never poked his head up. But then one night when my sister-in-law was babysitting the kids, she actually saw the mouse, so we knew it was for real.

And occasionally, the stove still reeked of mouse urine whenever I’d bake.

One evening (when I was at my belly dance class), my husband finally had enough. He yanked the oven out from the wall and proceeded to take it apart. This was no small feat as the oven was welded together in all the wrong places. At one point, he started banging on the stove and yelling at the phantom mouse to get out of there NOW. The kids joined in. The noise was deafening.

The mouse never did show itself, and eventually my kitchen was littered with stove parts—the oven box sitting on the floor, the turd-riddled insulation carefully carried outside and stomped upon (nothing crunched). It was a mess.

I left the house again (a knitting lesson, this time) and when I came home, the stove was back in place, plus it had been mightily improved with a thorough scrub-down, new burner liners, and a working oven light.

But today, while working some math problems with my son, I thought I heard a faint scritch-scritch-scratching…

A couple weeks ago when the oldest two kids were not at home, I let the youngest two trash my kitchen.

They cooked up a feast with ice cubes, butter, leaves, dirt, and salt and pepper.

They used all the shoes in the back hall to make a fort out of the kitchen table.

The measures I’ll take to squeak in a little writing time…

This same time, years previous: foods I never told you about, part two

My aunt tells the story of a woman who went all day wearing two different shoes and didn’t notice it till right before her evening’s speaking engagement. At that point all she could do was laugh merrily and point out the mismatch so that everyone could join in the joke.

That story stuck with me, partly because it’s so incredibly preposterous (what sort of woman could wear two different shoes and never even know it? wouldn’t she feel a difference? could a person truly be so absentminded? so careless?), and partly because it speaks to my skirt-tucked-into-panties, run-in-stockings, zipper-down-holy crap! fear of not being completely put together whenever I venture out into public. So every time I think of that addled woman clomping around in her two different shoes for a whole entire day, I chuckle. That poor dear, tsk, tsk.

Well.

Well…

Yesterday I went to church wearing two different boots, one black, the other brown, and I didn’t even notice my mistake until Sunday school, after the hour-and-a-half-long church service in which I sat in the very front row.

I repeat: I WENT TO CHURCH WEARING TWO DIFFERENT BOOTS AND I SAT IN THE VERY FRONT ROW (to boot).

It wasn’t like I was wearing pants or a long skirt, either, oh no no no. My knee-length poofy skirt stopped a few good inches above the boot tops so my boots, in all their mismatched glory, were 100 percent visible.

And I had no idea. I never even noticed they felt different (which they do—the brown ones are more comfortable than the black).

(This extreme cluelessness brings to mind the bizarre tales of full-term pregnant women pooping out a baby in the toilet and then claiming they had no idea. I always wrote those women off. But now, after yesterday’s mishap, I’m not so sure…)

It wasn’t till Sunday school that I discovered my mistake. Getting ready to seat myself, I happened to glance down at my feet, and— I froze. I sucked air. I let loose a series of half-whimpers, half-shrieks, “I don’t believe—! I’m—! Two different—!”

I giggled manically.

“I might cry,” I squeaked. “Or maybe I’ll laugh?”

“They say people only look at other people from the thigh up,” one kind soul offered. Another woman untucked her feet from under her chair to double check her shoes. (They matched.) Everyone smiled and chuckled, but then the discussion turned to other things (clearly, they did not comprehend the enormity of the situation), and I was left sitting there in my two different boots, attempting to exude a sense of calm.

However, it’s pretty darn near impossible to pretend you posses any semblance of equanimity when you’re wearing two different boots.

So every now and then when a huge smile threatened to split my face, I’d duck my head and shake it ruefully from side to side, all my insides—my very veins—jiggling with an overwhelming attack of the giggles.

It wasn’t until we were in the car and half-way home that I pointed out my miss-booted feet to my husband and kids. They howled, and John struggled to keep the car on the road and study my feet at the same time. I hoisted them up on the dashboard to make it easier for him.

Mom and Dad had arrived at our house for lunch before we got home, so, “Shhh,” I told the kids. “Don’t say anything and let’s see if Grandmommy notices.” (I knew Dad wouldn’t. He’s notorious for not noticing haircuts, gaudy earrings, and painted fingernails.)

I sashayed into the house, brown heel-black heel clicking on the tile floor, and hugged Dad and Mom. “You like my outfit?” I asked Mom. She admired my skirt, one she had scavenged for me from a thrift store, and turned back to the table where she was assembling platters of meats and cheeses for our sandwich feast. The kids and I exchanged glances. Mom smiled away, oblivious. And then my younger daughter piped up, “Did you see her boots?”

Mom turned around again and looked. She double-taked. She gaped. And then, and then! The gut-wrenching, foot-stomping laughter completely overtook. We roared and wailed, sobbing with hilarity, ricocheting off door frames and tables, hanging on to each other, rocking and shaking, our shoulders hunched, breathless, eyes brimfilled up with tears.

Of all people, I knew my mom—a woman who leaves the chicken out of the chicken noodle soup, who sits on her glasses and smashes them flat, who boils kettles of water dry—I knew she would get the humor. I was not disappointed.

So now my aunt’s story has been replaced with a new one, the story of one crazy-addled woman who wore two different, knee-high boots to church one Sunday. The poor dear, tsk, tsk.

The end.

This same time, years previous: a meaty lesson, foods I’ve never told you about, physics lesson (it’s horrifically windy again today—what is it with this time of year?), slow thinking