Ding Dong the Mouse is Dead, Mini Imelda and More!

A couple days ago, our cat Maui caught a mouse.  Unfortunately for us (and luckily for the mouse) he apparently experienced performance anxiety when all the family were there.  In his shock he dropped said mouse  in front of us and it escaped down a crack in the dining room floor.  I am not particularly squeamish about mice.  But it IS why we have a cat and Maui received  a stern talking to about his dereliction of duties.  Today, Mousie met his Maker.  The littles had to parade upstairs and view the body.  Very funny actually.

Then, readers may remember the less than stellar results I had buying Lissa shoes this weekend. A friend at church said that if I knew her size I could order from Zappos.com and just return any that did not fit well.  Made sense and I am really all about shop from home if you can.  One only needs to take 3 or 4 kids shopping at once to know why the internet is my friend. LOL  At any rate, sometime this weekend I actually had time to place an order for 4 pairs of shoes. One pair were sneaks that had velcro.  Tie shoes are all ready becoming a royal P.I.A. for Lissa and it will only get worse as the weather improves.  So I extravagently threw those in and then picked 3 pair of dress shoes.  Note to self:  For this to work the styles you offer to your child have to be sort of similar.  Or  you have to have a child who would wear anything and has no real style preference.  Do NOT buy one pair of glittery pink shoes, one smooth lilac patent leather shoes and one pair of brown suede.  At least don't do that and think anything but the brown suede are going back.  Mini Imelda, aka Lissa is in serious shoe love.  It is ridiculous and I am usually all about practical.  But I also know that she also hardly ever finds ONE pair of shoes that she both loves and that fits.  To hit the mother lode has just rocked her world. So for this one time, we are letting extravagence rule.

Then tonight Fiona called. She sounds so good.  She talked about how she is wanting to know more about her first mother, and her biological family.  Her cousin N is able to fill in a lot of those gaps for her and I am glad.  I said that I knew it could be hard not to know things about your family.  I don't know a lot about my dad's side of the family and I do not know where my father lives--only that he married three times and is now living with another woman. We had this really mature conversation about how families can separate and lose contact for many kinds of reasons and how hard it can feel when you don't know stuff.  I never realized till I adopted, that my father's choice to cut me from his life would ultimately prove so beneficial in my parenting.  If I had a real dad, I wouldn't have an inkling of what my kids feel.

  Jane also said that she and Fiona have decided to slow things down in their interactions with cousin N.  Cousin N lives much closer to the Great School than we do and I suspect that a flurry of visits have been perhaps more than Fional could process easily. Even if she WANTS it, it doesn't mean she is emotionally ready for it.  I am pleased that Jane is there to see that and that she found a way to help Fiona see this in a way that does not seem to be causing her any internal conflict.

Snowy Migraines

Yesterday I woke to snow and a migraine.  Actually the migraine woke me up at 5:30 a.m. and as I crept downstairs to try and get aspirin Elisabeth woke up and bombed into my bed.  I tried to convince her to go back to sleep. Yup, sure that was going to happen!  LOL  I took my meds and lay back down.  Waited for the pain to abate a bit and listened to Lissa and KC (who she had promptly wakened) whisper to each other and play with his stuffed moose.  Clearly small things in life amuse me; I adore listening to the two of them converse.  I can't remember the details now; they are lost in the fog of migraine pain, but I remember that they were cute.

At 6:30 they were starving so I got up and did breakfasts for everyone, made tea and toast for myself and tottered back to bed.  I left the door open so I could hear everyone.  Breakfast chatter is much louder than the sweet whispers of early morning, but that way I would know if anyone was being killed.  Kirsty had not yet awakened.  She got up around 8 and by 9:30 my head was enough better that I could function.

I got up and puttered around the house, Kirsty decided to go to a big box store and shop, and the kids noticed that it had snowed the night before.  Not the big snow which was forecast.  Dire blizzard warnings had been all over the news for us but we got maybe 4 inches.  Fluffy Christmas snow.  This is the time of year i like snow.  I am done with it by January 1.  Then I am ready for seed catalogs and spring.

The kids wanted to go outside and play so I bundled everyone up and took them out sliding.  I didn't so much slide as haul kids and sleds up the little hill in our back yard but we had fun.  Lissa is getting into it this year.  The first time it snowed she would only stay out 5 minutes.  She was out nearly 30 with the boys and I.

Went in the house when she got cold and figured I would start their lunch.  Found 3 frantic messages on the service from K who was at the aforementioned store and the car (my beloved 98 Metro) would not start.  The funny part of this is that she had not taken the cell phone with her (remember we are now a cell phone family) and she was borrowing the cell of a "nice man" in the parking lot.  Which is what i have always said we could do if we had a problem.  LOL  In her last message to me she said that she had gotten ahold of our boss and he was sending someone to jump the car and she would be back soon.  And she was.  I have no idea what was wrong with the car though as it had started fine when she left and it started fine this a.m.  It is elderly but usually reliable.

I spent the afternoon watching football with one eye and working valiently on catching up the kids scrapbooks with the other.  I have Lissa's all done and this a.m. finished Rob's.  Now I just have KC to do tonight.  I try to make sure the pages include little things that we do too.  Not just the big things, like birthdays and feast days.  Those are there as well, but a small trip to the blacksmith expo was also featured, time at our community garden plot, the time a child's class lit the chalice at church, etc.  I want them to look back and see a myriad of experiences and memories.  Lissa is drawn to looking at her book now; so it is really a rewarding task.  Just time consuming and time is always a scarce commodity.

By evening, the migraine was fully done--something of a worlds record and they are usually 2 to 3 day events, and by my count it was 2 months to the day (weird huh?) since my last full blown one.

Soothing Sunday

I enjoy entertaining.  I have also come to realize that I also enjoy when it is done. Because I am done.  d.o.n.e. with my mom's little digs about my children and my relationship wtih them.  Done with the kids being a bit ramped up because it has been a virtually nonstop stream of people to entertain and be entertained by.

Though technically I could have bailed on church today; there was no Religious Ed program for Rob's group today though there was for KC.  However the speaker was speaking on Islam and about how true Islam has nothing to do with terrorism and wars and such.  It was well worth hearing and I am glad I went.  The speaker converted to Al Islam in the 70's and he positively exuded peacefulness and was a fascinating speaker.  As someone who truly worried for my eldest son when he walked downtown after 9/11 I greatly enjoyed hearing him.

But part of my reason for leaving was that if I left with the tribe, I knew my mom would be inspired to return home.  And she did.  (evil chuckle)

After church I took Chet shopping for Lissa's birthday gift and Yule gift.  KC gave me instructions to get Lissa something princess like from him for her birthday.  I did (a princess wand) and I survived taking Chet to Toys R Us.  Truly I deserve an award! Chet in a store is something you have to see, have to experience, to understand what I mean.

He is essentially instantly over stimulated.  He is in my space and the space of every other shopper in the store.  He is loud.  He is trying to push past old ladies pushing shopping carts.  It resembles a bit unleashing Attila the hun and his hordes on the shopping world.  Not that I love shopping, but I don't want to leave prone bodies in our wake! 

Chet wanted to get Lissa a doll that helps with dressing skills. The toy store didn't  have it.  They recommended trying Wa*mart.  Uh huh.  that was so not going to happen.  If Chet was over the top at Toys R us.  Imagine what it was going to be like in a bigger venue.  So I convinced him that a paint set for one holiday, and a magna doodle for the other would work well.  And we left.  Shoppers amazingly enough, were still standing!