Things I will pay others to do for me in the future

Like everyone, I've always had this little wishlist in the back of my mind. Someday, I won't have to do this - I'll pay someone else to do it. Well I felt this very strongly the other night when I bathed the dog. She is very good in the tub, yet I still got soaked, as did my entire bathroom and the hall. And I had to protect my furniture for the next few hours because I have no idea how to get a dog truly dry, and wet dog fur STINKS! So my house reeked like wet dog for the next 24 hours. I never understood why people would pay someone else to bathe their dog. It's an easy enough job, right? Well, now I get it. Someday, when I go out to run errands, I'll first drop the dog at the groomer where she'll get a bath, all of that excess hair brushed out onto someone else's floor, and her nails trimmed by someone else who wants to get bitten repeatedly. When I pick her up, she'll be close enough to dry that I dare take her back to my spotless and pretty-smelling home. What a nice little story, huh? Here's my list of other things I plan to pawn off on poor willing souls in the future:

• Putting up sheetrock, taping, mudding & sanding
• Scraping popcorn ceilings
• Cleaning my toilets (this will be a chore for the kids when they're old enough, before I let the cleaning lady take over the responsibility)
• Scrubbing the bathtub and shower (another kids' chore)
• Cleaning the carpets
• Washing, waxing, & vacuuming the car (another one for the kids, unless it's my cute little convertible Jag - that will need to be professionally detailed)
• Ironing my husband's dress shirts (I'll send his shirts out to be washed, starched, & pressed -this one will happen sooner than most of the items on the list)
• Installing flooring (I should admit that my husband really did this for us, not me, but I don't want him to ever suffer that torture again!)
• Packing up boxes and moving our own belongings
• Washing blinds
• Washing the outsides of my windows
• Dusting, particularly floorboards and hard-to-reach places like the top of the fridge
• And last, but not least, I can't wait to get laser hair removal so that I never have to shave or pluck again!

Now, I can almost guarantee that this is not a complete list. I feel like I'm forgetting a lot, and I know I'll be adding to it in the future. Lots of these things will be delegated to my kids when they have the coordination and skills necessary. As lazy as I sound, I also have a list of things I'll probably never pay someone to do because I'm too darn cheap:

• Snake my toilet (John and I have both had experience with this fun one, but plumbers cost a fortune!)
• Deliver my Chinese food - As nice as it sounds, take-out usually comes with a 15% discount and you don't have to tip the driver.
• Lawn/yard care - Why pay someone when my husband is so good at it? No, seriously, even if John didn't mow, I would, and I enjoy taking care of the flowerbeds and the garden we're about to have (I hope?).
• Vacuum - This is one of my favorite chores. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get out the vacuum.
• Paint my toenails - I love pedicures, but I've never gotten a really good paint job. I'm very picky about the paint on my toenails.

So there you have it! Are there things that you would or wouldn't love to pay someone else to do for you?

I really do love my new career

Yesterday was a hectic day. It was the first Thursday of the month, meaning that I had to put together a new MusicMakers class (my little weekly music group). I had left most of the work for the last minute, so I needed to run around town gathering music & props & stuff. So by 9 am, the kids and I were dressed and out the door. I decided to stop at the gas station and treat myself to a cup of hot chocolate for the morning's errands. As I paid for my drink, I had a flashback to my former life. For almost 8 years, I worked as a banker. I stopped on my way to work on many mornings to grab a quick bite or a drink - anything to delay getting to the office. I loved my customers at the bank, but it was a super stressful job and I worked with some unsavory people, so I remember quite well the feeling of dread I had every morning as I headed to work.

As I exited the gas station yesterday, I felt funny, surrounded by people headed off to their various jobs. I had on jeans and cute new shoes, and I wondered if any of them wondered what kind of job I was headed to. As I got in the van, where my cute kids were laughing their heads off to the DVD they were watching, I realized how lucky I am.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with all of my responsibilities. It's hard work being a mom and running a household - I'm sure I don't have to tell you! There's always so much to be done, and a lot of times, the kids either keep me from getting as much done as I could, or they undo the things that I do (like housework!). I never get a break from Carter's new 2-year-old attitude, and I don't get a lot of adult conversation. I sometimes feel very lonely.

So here's the upside: I get to wear whatever I want. I don't get to decide when I wake up (I guess I could, if I wanted to get up before 6), and I have to work around naps and grumpy moods, but for the most part I get to plan my own day. I decide what to do when. And I get to spend all day with my kids. (Believe me, I don't always realize how lucky I am in that regard.) I can be silly, and spend as much time playing as I'll allow myself. I get to witness the hilarious conversations that 2- and 4-year-olds have with each other. I get to pick them up when they get hurt and dry their tears and love them back to happiness. As I write this, I'm watching their adorable little bodies bounce up and down on the trampoline as they laugh hysterically.

The bottom line is, I love what I do. I need to keep this in my mind all of the time. I would be so much happier focusing on the good, and I'd be a better mom to my kids. I hope I can hold onto these thoughts and feelings for a long time.

(By the way, I know I've written similar posts before. I apologize for the redundancy.)

How to build a mantel

In case you ever buy a house with the ugliest fireplace in the world and you need to camouflage its hideousness:

Step 1: First, you need to start with a blank canvas. If you're lucky like me, you'll have the joy of knocking bricks out of your wall with a hammer and chisel. (I won't bore you with pictures you've already seen.) Then your husband will get to cover the gaping hole with sheetrock and mud and tape forever, trying to make the wall smooth. This isn't easy when you've never done home improvement before. You'll end up with this (which looks very odd with nothing but a row of bricks on top).

Step 2: After a few months, when your friends are convinced that you're never actually going to build the beautiful mantel you've spoken of, get started. You'll need to screw a large board into the bricks, or I should say, have your husband screw the large board into the bricks. You'll be trying to hold this board, which is very heavy, perfectly still, even as it jumps when the screw goes from the wood to the brick. The board will shift because you're too wimpy to be your husband's helper, and it will cause some unkind words to be spoken between the two of you. You'll both be quite frustrated. You'll need 2 smaller pieces of board to wrap around the sides, and you'll need to miter the corners, so your poor husband will get very good at cutting angles on the chop saw.

Step 3: Screw another large board on the top, perpendicular to and resting on the first board. This will be slightly easier and shouldn't prompt any harsh words.

Step 4: Place a large piece of crown molding underneath the top piece of wood. Hammer in with small finishing nails. This will also need to wrap around the sides. Because the crown molding is already angled, the angles you'll need to cut for the sides will be nearly impossible to get right. You'll need a genius for a husband at this point. (This is why I offered to build the mantel myself and then withdrew the offer. We would have spent a fortune on crown molding when I cut the angles wrong over and over.)

This is how the molding will look when it's nailed in:

Step 5: Nail a tiny piece of trim along the very bottom edge of the front board. The angles will be really fun to cut on the wrap-around sides of this stuff. Forget to take a close-up picture of this step.

Step 6: Fill in all of the screw holes, nail holes, and any other gaps with putty and then sand smooth. (You should drag this step out for a few weeks so your husband doesn't expect that you can ever get a job done quickly.) Prime with Kilz (I learned this from my mom) to keep any knots in the wood from bleeding through. Then paint. And ta-da:

I recently discovered that I am scared to death of decorating. I have no idea what to put on my new mantel, and I'm terrified of actually hanging anything on the walls. It seems so permanent, and I don't trust my judgement. Any ideas for something cute to place on the mantel?

Nostalgia

I am not a runner. I'm really not athletic at all. (Big shock, I know.) I played field hockey in high school, and I pushed hard and was one of the fastest runners on the team, but I was not one of the best players. I had to really work at it. In college, my roommates and I would go run around the BYU track together, mostly because we were working our way toward the freshman 15 and we realized that eventually we'd have to exercise to avoid obesity. The older I get and the more kids I have, the more important it becomes for me to stay active. I don't really enjoy working out, but I like the feeling when I finish a hard workout, and the way I feel the rest of the day. (To be honest, I am in need of a targeted diet and exercise program to get me down to where I am comfortable with my weight, but that's a subject for another day.)

In Spokane, I found the exercise I really love. I had discovered walking after I started having kids, partly as exercise, but more as a way to take the kids to the park and get in a little bit of activity at the same time. Then after a month or two in Spokane, John found this cool running route. He took me on a drive to show me, and I fell in love immediately. The houses we passed were beautiful, as were the rolling hills, the forests of trees, and the openness of it all. And we saw cows, horses, deer, and innumberable other creatures. I decided to walk it for the first time when my sisters were in town visiting me. I didn't realize how long the walk was, and we weren't in the greatest shape - one of my sisters had a pretty new baby. So it took us forever, and we went in the middle of a very hot day. We were all terribly sore the next day, and I had a new goal. I was going to walk that route every day. It was perfect! (Here are some pictures. I know, not the first time I've posted pics of Regal.)




The walk started out around 4.5 miles, but it grew. At first I started turning around just over halfway through, and that made it a little longer. Then John heard about the Bloomsday Race, a 12K run downtown every year, and signed up for a team at the hospital. In training for the race, he discovered another road to add to our route, which made it about 6 miles total. I loved the new road. It was even more remote, and included a killer hill - the kind of hill that leaves you drooling when you get to the top because you're so tired you can't control your own body functions. I decided that I should walk the Bloomsday Race with the stroller. I used the race as an excuse to "train." I started turning around more than halfway into the new route, making a 7 mile walk. The most I ever did was 8.5, stopping at the church for the kids to play at the park and then turning around and going home. I became obsessed, and I timed myself every day, pushing to go faster. I fell in love with walking - walking for speed, preferably with a heavy stroller. Not quite sure what you'd call that, as far as sports go.

The Bloomsday Race was a memorable event. More than 40,000 people finished the race. They have 8 different start times. John got to start near the front because he was on a corporate team. Unfortunately for me, if you have a stroller, you are in the last group with all of the walkers, kids, and folks who don't care at all about speed. They told us when we got to the starting line that there were 35,000 people already ahead of us. It was so hard to push through that crowd, so I had a really hard time getting any sort of speed. I had been terrified of the course because it seemed really scary when we drove it. There were some pretty mean hills - one that they call Doomsday Hill and they even have a guy at the top dressed as a vulture, waiting for racers who can't make it up the hill. But my adrenalin was pumping and the hills seemed easy compared to finding ways to weave in and out of the other racers. With all of my frustration, I still loved that I had finished a race with my stroller, and my time wasn't too shabby. For those of you who have run big races like that, you know how exciting it is to be a part of something so big. We met up with John and walked back to the car with the kids, wishing that we could do the race every year. (I'm sad that I didn't take many pictures. Here's a pic of the crowd, and one of the kids and me before the race.)



Bloomsday 2008 is this coming Sunday. I swear to you, if money weren't an issue (gas prices are terrible!), I would drive up there this weekend just to walk it with the stroller again, pregnant belly and all. This time I'd make sure that I'm at the very front of the last starting group, and I'd be more forceful in pushing my way past people - once you get through the walkers, it has to thin out a little. I could use it as an excuse to visit my cousin in Walla Walla and walk my beloved route on Regal again. As strange as it may sound, I think there's a real possibility that John and I will do the Bloomsday Race again someday.

Flowers for Mommy

My cousin is going to think I stole this straight from her blog, but I promise I didn't. We have had the most wonderful lazy afternoon. After lunch, Carter went down for a nap and Tanner and Katelyn ran off to play, so John and I were free. We napped for a little while, and then we both decided to read. John studied and I lounged in bed, reading and sleeping off and on. Katelyn came in with this surprise for me. She said, "Here are some flowers for you. I put them in water so they could grow." When I took them to show John, he told me that he saw her carrying them in the house and asked her not to take weeds inside and she said, "I need to take them in to mom so she'll be happy when she wakes up." She can be such a sweet and loving little girl. These are the things that just make your heart ache with the love of being a mother. I have to steal this poem from my cousin:

A rose can say “I love you” ..An orchid can enthrall…

but a weed bouquet in a chubby fist. That is best of all!

Sadie

Meet our new puppy, Sadie. Yes, I said puppy. Believe it or not, she's even bigger now than she was in this picture. She's a yellow lab, and we think she may have some golden retriever in her, but we're not sure. She's only about 6 months old, so she's going to be a giant dog when she's full grown.

You may be asking, "What happened to Tess?" Well, if you spent any time at our house over the last 2 years, you know that Tess was not a good fit for our family. She was part terrier, so the constant yipping and hyperness were not ever going to go away. We finally decided in October that she deserved a better home, so we found an older couple with no children to take her and love her.

The kids were really sad, and we really did want a dog, so we put a lot of thought into what kind of dog to get. We decided on a bigger, smarter dog. And we decided we'd better get the dog acclimated to our family before the baby gets here, so we got her about 6 weeks ago. We were looking at little puppies, but I think we got lucky with a 4-month old, already housebroken dog. That took a lot of stress out of getting a puppy.

Sadie is super energetic and playful, and she drives us crazy. But she does settle down and snuggle, and she lets the kids do a whole lot to her. And we know that in a few years she'll be a very mellow family dog. I know a lot of my friends are not animal lovers and think I'm crazy. Actually, if you're my friend, you know for a fact that I'm crazy...

Must be a boy thing

I am the oldest of four girls. My parents both come from very conservative families. My dad recently had surgery and I heard him tell a nurse, "In my family, body parts were referred to by their scientific names, and they were never referred to." So, as you can imagine, having boys has introduced me to a strange and unfamiliar world. Tanner, my stepson, has been in my life for about 8 years now. That's where I was introduced to how boys do things. Believe me, it took me a long time to get used to all of the wrestling, and climbing, and jumping off of everything. And laughing at body humor that I never imagined people could think of as funny. I think I've mellowed out a little, and while I am most certainly the one giving disapproving looks to the boys (hubby included) at dinner for all sorts of inappropriate behavior, I can laugh at a lot more than I used to.

Tanner is 11 now, so his potty humor has matured somewhat, and he's smart enough to censor himself for my benefit, I'm sure. But suddenly I have this little 2-year-old who fits right into the boys club. With no lessons, no initiation, he just understands what is supposed to be funny. Here's an example. I was teasing the kids in the car the other day, trying to keep them awake because it was too close to dinner for a nap, and I shouted, "Boo!" at Carter. He started laughing hysterically immediately, and I was patting myself on the back for being such a fun mom, when he started repeating, "Poo! Poo!" That's what he thought I had said, and for the life of me I couldn't convince him otherwise, or get him to stop yelling that and laughing. So for the last two weeks, that has been his favorite word. He runs around saying it and laughing. Putting him on the naughty mat doesn't make him any less likely to start it up again as soon as he's off. He also loves to talk about "bottoms" and laughs at any body function that has a sound associated with it.

For any of you who doubt it, boys are born with this sense of humor. For the boys I've known, you can't take it out of them. Luckily, you can train them to tone it down a little, at least when you're around. I hope it doesn't take me too long. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot more "poo" talk around here than I'm really comfortable with.

*Update*
This made me laugh. Carter was running around saying poo again, over and over. I told him that if he said it again, he'd have to sit on the naughty mat. So he looked at me oh-so-innocently and said, "Sadie went poo outside." (Sadie's our dog.) He seemed to know that if he used the word in legitimate context, I just couldn't get mad at him. I swear, if you saw his face, you'd agree - he was trying to outsmart me. I couldn't help but laugh, then cut it off and put my serious face back on so I could resume trying to quell his potty mouth.