Here is a little photo from the archives. The twins escaped with a bag liner from a cereal box to a special hide out behind the chair in the girls’ room. Ah, the good old days! They never make messes now!
Sometimes I wonder what it is that we have been doing that keeps us from popping in and blogging? But then again, sometimes at the end of a single day I cannot remember what I did. I am pretty sure that this is the nature of repetitive work. You do it every day, or at least so often that you forget to notice that you are doing it at all.
This is why I would like to have a security camera in the house. A little something to play back at the end of the day in super-fast motion to see how many times the living room got blitzed, and how many times it got picked up. I might pause the tape around 3:00 and say, “Look what I did, Honey! It looks pretty good!”
I am also sure that the dinner-time rush (also known as the witching hour) would be funny to watch in fast motion too. Last night while I was making dinner, there was some sort of a major button spill in the kitchen. Also a lot of coloring. Someone playing in the sink. Blaire mostly being held, or if not, trying to eat buttons. The dishwasher being unloaded by free-range helpers.
However, a security camera would also show me the things that I would like to forget, like stepping on a four-inch SLUG in bare feet in the kitchen on my way to pour my morning coffee. For reals. It came in, half mangled, on the shoe of the garbage-putter-outer. Not what this early morning mother was expecting. You just don’t go into your kitchen looking for that kind of experience. Munched up cheerios? Sure. Sticky spots? Of course. Slugs? I ask you. Really? Doesn’t that seem to be taking it too far?
The other day I was walking down the hall when I was passed by one of my excellent three-year-olds (pictured above), running full speed with a box of kleenex held high above her head. I smiled at her, she yelled (not to me) “TISSUE FIGHT!!!!!” and that was that. I kept on walking down the hall for a few seconds until my mind instant- replayed that one for me, and I pulled around to intervene. This could have very easily turned into a clean-up later that befuddled me. Who was scrunching up kleenexes and putting them everywhere? But the kids – they would know that I practically blessed that endeavor! “Mom won’t mind! She smiled about it!”
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Barefoot slug-stepping is a two-stars-in-your-crown act of martyrdom.
The house we just moved out of had such a rotten floor in the bathroom that legions of slugs would come up through cracks in the walls and floor in the middle of the night. Even my 2 boys thought it was disgusting. Thankfully, they also liked pulling them off the walls and dropping them down the shower drain.
And one other thing…if you’re ever around Pasadena again there’s a wonderful used Christian bookstore called Archives just a mile or so from the Huntington Library.
Whoops! That last comment was meant for another post…
I love Chloe’s Luke expression.
Bare feet and slugs are a very, very bad combination!! I would have difficulty recovering from that!
Lizzie, I keep passing out your book any chance I get. People are refreshed and helped by it. One called it a “precious little book” after reading it for the second time. It is – and easy for a busy young mother to read during scanty breaks.
And my condolences on the slug.
GROSS! What a start to your day.
Oh, just wanted to let you know that I am SOOOOO taking advantage of the BOGO Free book sale! Can’t wait to pass on your wisdom to my other mommy friends.
Blessings!
Okay, I can totally relate to the slug thing. My lovely morning experience wasn’t with slugs however, but with 7″ earth worms that managed to slither in under our door’s dilapidated weather stripping. Let’s just say that it’s pretty dark at 6 am, and I was so not expecting to feel those little lovelies squirming between my toes. But , oh, what stories those experiences make! 🙂
Brittany, Archives was the first place I took my big brother. He has been there a couple of times.
I have stepped on small slugs barefoot and have no desire to know what the experience is like magnified by size and coffee-deficiency-weakness.
The second year we were married, my husband and I lived in a basement apartment. When it rained the water would gush down the hill and under our front door, bringing legions of worms with it. Our bedroom was in the front of that apartment. Imagine our surprise shortly after moving in upon stepping on all those worms first thing in the morning after the first stormy night. After that we wised up and LOOKED before stepping. We cleaned up many more worms during that year. One slug is equal to lots of worms!
True slug story from years ago:
We were living in California at the time, and giant slugs seemed to make it under the back door almost every night, crawl around, and be back out by the morning. (We could see the slime trails.) So, on the way to nursing one of the babies in the night, I had the practice of jumping over the “slug run” so I wouldn’t step on one.
Well, one night, a slug must have been more adventurous than usual, so my customary slug-avoidance leap landed me squarely on top of a huge one, and it squished between my toes. It was the middle of the night, of course, so I had to be quiet in my horror and disgust.
Not sure I have recovered yet (it has been 22 years).
By the way, we learned after that to leave a salt barrier by the back door (we hadn’t wanted to use poison because of the babies). It worked well!
Yeah…we’re the salt of the earth and all that, but let’s leave the slug killing to the NaCl!
Oh, sick! Once I stepped on a snail in the dark, but it was at least outside. It made me run very very fast to get far far away from it.
But I mostly identified with the smile at something one of my kids is yelling and then 15 seconds later realizing what they had actually just said / asked. I’m starting to feel like half of the day is like that.
I feel for you with the slugs. When we lived in NC, I would REGULARLY step into the kitchen to find slugs on the floor or on the wall until we had our door replaced. It was DEE-SKUSTING. I would actually dream night after night about giant slugs attacking me while cooking or making their way into my bedroom at night to crawl on me while I slept. That was the WORST. I’m so glad that little chapter is over. 🙂