As I Sit Here Sipping Sugar-Free Hot Cocoa, This is What I Think About

Know what's funny?

Last year, (as in six weeks ago), when a nearly entire pan of brownies would vanish on a  Sunday evening, everybody would blame me.

I would even blame me.  I admit, I got my fair share. And  I always carried such guilt for eating so many brownies, and not saving more for my precious darlings to eat the next day.

Now, this year, thanks to this dumb no treats kick Alisa and I have going,  I eat NO brownies, on Sunday or any other day. 

And the pan STILL looks like this at the end of the night.

So who is eating  all  MY brownies, if I am no longer eating them?

And why did I ever feel guilty? Obviously, nobody around here needs my help in emptying out a pan of brownies.

P.S.

As per my previous post, I did indeed discover what was going on with Duncan and Olivia while I was at work the other day.  And I am now a trusted keeper of the secret, sworn to never divulge it to another living soul.  But I will tell you some things I learned about those two:  Olivia is trustworthy, loyal, and true to her word.   And Duncan is the purest in heart you will ever encounter.   They just don't come any better than him. And that is the end of my story.

Remember What

While  Duncan is at  home during the day, enjoying what is hopefully his last remaining weeks of  being an unemployed burden on society, and Olivia is at home enjoying what is definitely her last week as  an off-track burden on the family, the two of them have been spending some quality hours at home alone together.  Since they are both prone to laying around in their pajamas eating ice cream, and they both enjoy watching the same lame TV shows, most of the time they get along pretty well.

Today though, I left them a list of chores to do. They were supposed to clean up the kitchen together, and fold socks together, and read some books together.  I called them around lunch time to see how things were going.  Duncan answered the phone, and I quizzed him on how the chores were coming.   Then I asked to talk to Olivia.  As he passed off the phone to her, I heard him say, "Olivia, Mom wants to talk to you.  Oh, and remember..." then the phone went all muffled for a moment, as if he were covering the mouth piece.  Then I heard Olivia say "okay".

 Remember?  Remember what? This sounded suspicious.  I just knew they were up to something.  Unfortunately,  the eyes in the back of my head were useless from twenty miles away.  But my mom radar had stepped up into high gear.   What was she supposed to remember, and why could I not hear?  What were they up to?  So when she got on the phone, I drilled her.   Surely, my superior Mom manipulation tactics could break an eight year old.   "So what are you supposed to remember?'  I asked her right off.

"What?"  Oh. Um .....Nothing."  Guilty silence. So  I went  the usual rounds. Were the chores done? Did everything go okay?  Had they eaten something? Were they having a good time?  What was that Duncan meant about remembering?  What did he say? What are you not telling me?

She was a rock.  I got nothing out of her.  Nothing but denial and lies.  Whose kid is she anyway? So I got Duncan back on the phone,  Duncan, my honest, forthright and guileless Duncan.  I quizzed him again. "What is up, Duncan? What did you tell Olivia to remember?"

"Oh," he says, "Well, I was just..... uh......I was just...... uh.....telling her to oh.........you know...........uh, I was reminding her to.............well,..............to remember to always, uh.........be nice."

Duncan is a bad liar.

But that is as far as I got.  Right at that moment, things went nuts at work, and I had to go.  All afternoon, I wondered what it could be that those two criminal cohorts were not telling me.

When I got home,  the chores were pretty much done, except that Olivia had misread the directions on the chore list that said to unload the dishwasher.  She thought it had said unload dresser, and so she had dumped all her clothes out of her dresser and on to my bed.  That was kind of a big job, and she did great.  I don't think she missed a single item of clothing.  Not sure what she was thinking the whole time, but hey, she worked hard.

After we finished cleaning off my bed, and, despite my unrelenting questioning, neither of them would tell me what  it was she was supposed to remember.  Duncan is insisting that he was just reminding her to be nice, because, as he said, sometimes she yells at Audrey.  And Olivia is absolutely mum.  And I KNOW there is something up.   Something completely innocent, like they probably had brownies for breakfast, or they skipped out on her reading.  But still, I must know.

And I am not giving up.  I am after all, the Chief  Interrogator of this family, and it is a position I do not take lightly.  One of them will break, if I only apply the right amount of pressure, in just the right spot. Or perhaps it's time to learn the finer points of water boarding. 

Brave New World

During one of those  ever more frequent "when are we getting a dog" conversations that have started to occur around here,  I made the point to the kids that for the first time in about, oh 24 years,  I am not emotionally invested in anybody whose poop I have to clean up.   That is really my only big objection to getting another dog.  I just love my poop-free life too much right now to give it up.  I really like walking around in my backyard at night without worrying about where I am stepping.

Freedom from poop is maybe one of the benefits of middle age.  In your old age, you can't really guarantee that you will be free of dealing with it.  But once the kids grow up, everybody should have the option of a few years free of cleaning up other people's messes.  My kids still make plenty of other kinds of messes for me to clean up, but I guess those are slowly diminishing too. I don't have to clean up too much spilled milk anymore, and we don't have too many legos scattered in the hallway.  Olivia is insisting that she is old enough to stay home by herself now,  Duncan is dealing with the joys of job hunting, and Will is shaving, driving  and towering over all of us now.    It is a strange new reality, to have no more butts to wipe.  And if I have my way, we will have no dog poop to clean up either, at least for a few more years.

A Birthday Recap and After

  No matter how old you get, you have to have a shot of yourself on your birthday with your candles all aglow, right?  Even if they are haphazardly stuck into a pecan pie.  When we took Will into the doctor the other day, he measured in at 6 feet 2 inches, and I have a feeling he may still have an inch or two to go. So, at the age of sixteen, Will has officially claimed the title of my littlest boy AND my biggest boy.  It's a good thing his brothers aren't the jealous types.

Looking at him in that picture, I can tell he doesn't feel good.  I think we may need to have a birthday do-over.  He is supposed to be ordained a priest in church tomorrow, if he is feeling up to it, He is feeling better, but coughing more.  We might have to postpone everything one more week.

 And this is what I did today, complete this time with before and after shots:

B.G. -(before grout, just in case you couldn't tell)

 A.G. (after grout)

Being a tile setter's daughter, I am a little obsessed with this project, and a little insanely proud of myself for doing this.  So proud that I have decided to tile the OTHER end of the room as well!  We are going to do about 12 feet at the entrance of the room to give us space to put up a table and have dinners down there and do art projects and other messy stuff.   That is a project for next weekend perhaps.  I am also a little more appreciative and proud  of all the work my dad did over the years to support his family.  Doing a little one time tile job in your basement is fun.  He did tile every day,  for probably close to 50 years, which was not as much fun.  I wish I knew how many square feet of tile he has installed in his lifetime. Miles and miles and miles I am sure.  Enough to give us all a great life.  Thanks Dad, for all that hard work all those years!

Please, Only One Crisis at a Time

Poor Will was sick on his sixteenth birthday,  AND he had to go to school.  We went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner that night, and he got pecan pie and Boston Cream pie, but he didn't feel up to much celebrating.   I took some pictures, I'll have to dig them up later.  And the worst part is,  he has been sick ever since.

So sick that he finally got me out of work early today.  He went to school today-it's end of the term, and he felt like he couldn't miss any  more days- and just got sicker and sicker as the day went on.  He spent the last half of the day in the sick room.  I wish he would have called me earlier.  I had no idea he was so bad off.  Mom guilt-ouch-, but as soon as I got the word,  I headed out of work and got him to the instacare.  Diagnosis:FLU.  One of the two kids in our family to get a flu shot, and he STILL gets the flu. What's up with that?

Any how,  we got back from the doctor about 6:30.  I was getting potentially life-changing text messages coming in.  The kitchen smelled like a campfire, which I found out later was from Duncan using the microwave as a timer, only on cook instead of time. Will felt awful and only wanted to go to bed, but he was worried about all the school  assignments he was now not going to be able to make up tomorrow, and how bad his grades were.  Dinner was nowhere in sight. So I simultaneously hopped on line to look at his grades and email his teachers to beg for mercy while starting some grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.    Just then, Olivia appeared in the kitchen to tell me the toilet was clogged. The sandwiches were burning,  there  was a ton of laundry calling my name, Olivia needed help with her homework, AND she still had reading to do, and I had to make a run to the store for some things for Will.  Duncan has been playing non-stop video games nearly all day every day because there is no one around to tell him to stop.  Audrey just kind of cheerfully goes about doing her thing, being a goofball, and helping out where she can, but I think she is getting ignored too.  I left a pile of things at work that I will have to find time to do tomorrow,  and the house is sinking under the lack of attention we pay to it these days.

Am I sinking or swimming here?  Most days, it's hard to tell.

A Sledding Party, A Birthday and a Will's Eye View of Home Improvement

The end of December Brian and his girlfriend Quyen came to visit for a few days.  Brian's goals for his trip were three:  eat at In-N-Out Burger, which they don't have in Chicago, eat the best pizza in Salt Lake, and go sledding.

We accomplished all three.

In-n-Out was easy.  We stopped there on the way home from getting them from the airport.

For the pizza, we went to The Pie.  It's debatable if The Pie is the best pizza in Salt Lake, but it's the most famous.  And it was pretty tasty too.  Of course it doesn't compare to Chicago Pizza, but, hey we aren't imitators.  We have our own style of pizza out here in the wild wild west.

For his last wish, we headed up one Sunday afternoon to Big Cottonwood canyon for what turned out to be  a small series of unfortunate events, with a few sled runs in between.

First off, the hills were treacherous, not from being too steep, but from some dumbhead digging big jumps all over the place.  Not fun little bumps, but more like huge caverns that you had to be going pretty fast to even get out of, and then it would send you flying and crashing the rest of the way down.

This picture was taken right before Audrey sacrificed herself for her little sister.  They slid right into some trees and Audrey turned the sled and bailed off and crashed and saved Olivia from sure hysteria.  Her second run down, Audrey hit the bumps, went flying, and cracked her tailbone.  So she was out after that.

And then, we had epic equipement failures.  The only sleds we had were the blow up kind, and we popped all four of them  So that pretty much put a dent in the fun.

Which was probably okay, because we had started out pretty late, and it was freezing cold, and starting to get dark.  And we got some GREAT pictures, so it was all worth it in the end.

I love how you can see Quyen peeking over Brian's shoulder.  It was her first experience sledding and she was a great sport.  We love Quyen.  Sweetest girl ever.

And then, on January 9, Duncan turned the big 19.  And here is what I love about Duncan:  The morning of his birthday, he was up at six a.m. with the rest of us,  and as excited to open his birthday breakfast presents as he was when he was nine years old.  And he made sure to get up early so that everybody could be there to get in on breakfast on his special day. 

Later on, we went to In-n-Out (again) and met up with Mitch for dinner.  Then it was home for cake and ice cream and more presents.  He said he got everything he wanted this year.

I really love all these kids.

And then, today, my folks came over for more birthday stuff, and to help us put some tile in the family room downstairs.  Yes, you read that right- work on the family room has resumed once again, after a year long hiatus and many many delays.   Will had the camera while we were working, and this is what he documented:

The Before Shot.

What Duncan did:

What Olivia did:

A compelling shot of a bucked of water.

The pros, down on our hands and knees:

Another professional:

What Hokey did:

Just look at that form:

And the true professional, who saved the day once again:

And the finished project:




Oh. Well, apparently Will lost interest before we were finished.  And I still have to grout it, so really, it isn't finished yet.  But it's still exciting!!!  Home improvement brings me great joy.