"D" Words

Done, but determined: feeling especially wiped out, but just want to do something for me right now and really want to get a blog in as it helps me clear my head and vent.

Direct: Even though we have been married almost 8 years, I am finally learning to be better about being direct with A.J. about my feelings rather than avoiding things or using one of my all time classic lines “I’m fine.”, “It’s fine.”, “Nevermind, we’ll talk about it later.”  So this morning when I was trying to actually shower before taking Jimmy to school and A.J. called and I couldn’t quite make it to the phone, I rushed to get out and throw a towel around me and call him back expecting it to be some emergency or something.  Nope, he just wanted to tell me in an annoyed tone that Josie was late again, as if it was my fault.  This did not help my morning at all as I was running around to get all three boys fed and out the door and make sure Jimmy had something blue to take in to show and tell for blue day as well as a “blue” picture for his class collage and to make sure he had on some article of blue clothing.  And why did I have to do this all this morning?  Because my four year old son refused to do his homework last night.  High school should be great!  But I am getting way off topic.  The point here is that after my brief, but annoying phone call from my husband and my mad dash to drop Jimmy at preschool, I emailed A.J. to get things off my chest and I actually behaved like a grown up and used all sorts of “I feel” statements or “when you do this, even though you don’t mean such and such, I take it such and such way”.  I even curbed my sarcasm- well maybe I did slide one sarcastic sentence in. 

Discovery:  So being that we live in Northern Virginia and really close to Dulles Airport, the big buzz this morning was of course, the Space Shuttle Discovery.  I hadn’t really given it much thought, but then my mother-in-law came over to watch Sawyer and Bart so I could go to the eye doctor and she was all sorts of excited to get a glimpse of the shuttle.  She was so excited to get out in the yard so as not to miss her chance that she almost forgot to take the baby with her.  Just kidding…sort of.  We had the news on before I was leaving and then it got me a bit more excited about the history of today and reminded me that being in this area, we are in proximity to so much history.  It also reminded me of when I was a kid and how much I loved the movie “Space Camp”.   I had minimal hopes of getting a real view of the shuttle as it was getting more cloudy as I was leaving for my eleven o’clock appointment.  I also knew that I needed to take the back roads to be on time since Route 28 was supposedly a parking lot of gawkers hoping to see a peek of history.  It was somewhat humorous and also kind of neat to see all these people standing outside of their office buildings or on random street corners, eyes towards the sky in the direction of Dulles.  And then as I was waiting to make a left turn at a fairly large intersection, the shuttle came into view.  I managed to snap a quick pic with my phone, but what I wish I had gotten on film was the idiot in the van who slammed his brakes on as he was making the left turn and swerved onto the median and jumped out to get a look at the shuttle barely avoiding being rear ended by about five cars turning behind him.  It was sort of surreal driving on to the doctor’s office with the shuttle in my rearview mirror.  It was also a bit bizarre because there were no other planes in the sky and so many people outside just looking up.  I guess we really are all kids at heart.

Don’t: A word that most parents can tell you is way overused in their house.  At least in mine, it is used over nine hundred ninety nine times a day and it is usually followed up by one of my children’s names.  Many times it is said just as something is happening in hopes of a major catastrophe being avoided.  When said catastrophe ultimately occurs, I move on to another one of my overused “D” words and it isn’t “Darn” though it should be as I am constantly reminded when one of my little darlings repeats it.  Went straight to a major “darn” moment when I found out that Jimmy had used his “cream”- cortisone- to clean our toilet today.  Found this out about five minutes after the fact when I saw a strange film on top of the toilet water.  Upon further investigation, Jimmy explained his new cleaning method. 

Darn Dog quit digging in the dirt!: Moxie has a fondness for digging around and behind our azalea bushes and our hydrangeas.  This afternoon, I had all the kids out back attempting to tire them out with sunshine and every single one of our outdoor toys.  I had left the baby in his bouncy seat for a few minutes while I walked over to where Josie was on our swing set.  Came back to find poor Bart covered in a ton of loose dirt that the d*** dog had kicked up in her quest to dig to the center of the earth.  I screamed at Moxie who leaped away and sprung for the other side of the yard after kicking one last bit of dirt onto Bart.  In addition to the baby being covered, there was a large pile of dirt flung all over the patio.  Jimmy had fun “helping” sweep it up while I shook the baby off. 

Done for the night!