Today's Good Beginning

I have no explanation, but this is what I saw this morning 

when I went to get in the truck:

I took it as a good sign!

60 cents just waiting for me (and garage sales this weekend!)

Inright, Outright, Upright, Downright

I've taken a break from walking the dogs in the morning.  My runners knee was acting up again, and I know from past experience, being dragged by three dogs does not help my knee at all.  Once it felt better, my lazy started acting up too, and the lure of a cup of coffee and a good book was too hard to resist.

But I woke up this morning, determined to walk the dogs.  I'm doing it.  Knee felt good, lazy was pushed the the background, and I harnessed my beasts and told myself to just walk a mile.  That's it.  Just one measly mile.

At the half mile mark, I wished I didn't have a time constraint, that this wasn't a work morning and I didn't have to be anywhere by 8, because I wished to keep walking, past the one mile goal and on down the trail.

I'd forgotten what walking in the early morning brings to me.  It's not just about exercise, it's about peace.  There is nothing else going on, hardly any cars or people, I can hear the birds and watch the sun start to unfurl.  Almost home, I started singing an old Sunday school song in my head (not out loud, because the morning was too peaceful for that kind of racket)......

I'm inright, outright, upright, downright, happy all the time......

I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been happy this last week or so.  It's the end of summer, end of vacation, end of my favorite season.  It's the start of school, my son a senior, my daughter in drivers ed, and I've been on kind of a bummer trip.

This morning, I feel renewed.  Walking: it's not just good for your cardiovascular system....it's good for your soul!

A Tale Of Lost Sons

My daughter suggested that lost wasn't the right word to describe the situation, but I said what else would you call it when you go upstairs in the morning to tell something to your sleeping son and he isn't there, none of the boys are there, and the car is still in the driveway and he isn't answering texts or phone calls and you have no idea where he is.

Lost.

Or misplaced.

Because after a 20 minute (slight) freak out where I went back upstairs and turned on all the lights to make sure I wasn't missing him under a lump of covers and went outside and looked in the car in case he is like his dad and sometimes falls asleep late at night in the seconds after he turns off the car before he opens the car door and left a message for him to call me because this wasn't cool at all, after all of that, I took a deep breath and thought where on earth could 4 teenage boys be at 7:30 in the morning on a day they can all sleep in?

If they aren't sleeping upstairs, where else could they be sleeping?

And just like that I remembered they had told me the night before that they were going to camp out in the trailer.  I knocked on the trailer door and heard sleepy mumbling.

Whew.  Not lost.  Just forgot where he was.

I told him to ignore all 7 texts, 3 missed calls, and one voicemail.  Every Mom gets to have a freak out or two, and this was one of mine!

I Get Knocked Down

Today, as I struggle to get ready for work, feeling weak and tired and not a little bit sick, that song from the 90's keeps running through my head....but only two lines of it because that is all I know....

I get knocked down,
But I get up again.

Sometime in the early hours between Sunday and Monday, I got hit with a terrible fever.  Chills, aches, the whole nine yards.  I might have even talked some nonsense, asking my husband to not tell my Mom I was sick because she would take my covers.  Which, to my husband, made no sense at all, but to me, it made perfect sense.  My childhood high fevers were spent shivering without covers and sometimes even a cold bath to get the fever down.

Today I feel better.  No fever, just the general feeling of having been run over by a convoy of semi trucks.  As I make myself presentable for work and plan dinner for tonight and try to remember the kid's schedule of the day, I'm just trying to get myself back up again.

I get knocked down,
But I get up again.

Nothing a triple shot mocha won't help, I'm sure!

Breath, Dogpatch Style

For days I have sat at our computer desk and smelled an odd smell.  Not good, but not terrible.  Not findable either.

Today I was in the kitchen, and pulled the beater out of the cupboard and smelled that odd smell again.  Only more potent.  

I immediately flashed to the vent that is in the wall, connecting my cupboard and my computer desk in a smell, sound, and sight way, and thought, oh this is not going to be good.

I called my husband out to investigate (because it was that bad) and he got down to sniff the cupboard.  His determination?

It smells like hillbilly breath.

Not sure when he became that acquainted with a hillbilly, but he insisted that is exactly what the smell was.

But he cleaned out the cupboard of it's onions and potatoes (some, I'm ashamed to say were in liquid form) and he threw them away outside and I stood in the kitchen kind of gasping for fresh air.  

My husband has always said we aren't too far removed from hillbillies, and based on the taste that lingers in the back of my throat and my nose, I'm guessing if someone were to have an unfortunate encounter with me, they'd smell hillbilly breath.

It's not me, I swear.  It's the cupboard.

Sunshine Smiles

Take my kids, dogs, and hubby
Take my wine, coffee, and money
But don't take my sunshine

Give me hot rays a'raining
Give me grass dry and browning
Only let me have my sunshine

Take my damp Spring, Fall and Winter
Take my warmish days that hinter
And leave me my sunshine

Give me bright warmth for basking
Give me garden jobs for tasking
So I can revel in my sunshine

For the sunshine grows some glory
That my soul craves so surely
Summer days so sweetly charming
I can't stop myself from smiling


This post inspired by prompt #3 at Mama's Losin' It!

44 Down

44 Down
Four letters
Clue:
Opposed to,
Dogpatch style

Li'l Abner
I love you
I know all about
Sadie Hawkins Day
Yokumberry tonic
Stupefyin' Jones
Dogpatch, USA
And the answer to 44 down!

My childhood filled with movie musicals
Has paid off big time...