just after college, i read a book that gutted me, and continues to haunt me today

the book was Two Part Invention by Madeleine L'Engle. it's a beautiful telling of two people madly in love who married and raised a family all the while living life to the absolute fullest. at the end of the book, L'Engle's husband, Hugh, dies of cancer, and i remember feeling just heartbroken for her as she described the death of her husband being like an amputation.

i re-read the book a month before kenny and i got married and it struck the same deep sadness in me then as it did the first time i read it. perhaps it is time for me to read it again, as Madeleine herself passed away this week.

although news of her passing is so sad, i can't help but smile at the thought of hugh and madeleine reunited in that forever place where there are no more tears.

you know how some dreams stick with you for hours after waking, and it feels as though they were so very real?

last night, i dreamt that kenny and i were tight friends with the steelers head coach mike tomlin and his wife. we were so close, in fact, that we had their teenage daughter babysit for us while we attended the first steeler home game on their invitation. this morning, i feel like calling them up and telling them we had a great time at the game, and their daughter did a great job putting our boys to bed.

in reality, i think his kids are nowhere near babysitting age.

it must be all the heavy rain we're getting here that makes us all stir-crazy. or perhaps it was the saline drops i used last night to stop my sneezing. or perhaps i just have really vivid dreams every night.

i am a big wimp. yesterday, i tripped coming out our front step and skinned my knee in two places as well as bending my left big toe in such a way that makes it hard for me to put any weight on it at all. kenny was on his way home from work at the time and it was all i could do from crying in front of rowan and sawyer when it happened (they were happily swiming on their swings when they heard their mama yell, "OWWWW!"). so i laughed for 30 minutes untl kenny got home and then i collapsed like a baby in his arms.

okay, not really...but i was relieved when he walked in the door so that i could stop walking around and put my leg up.

that's not what makes me a big wimp. i'm a wimp because i am blogging about it! i need your attention! it's much better this morning. it's not bright red anymore, and the toe isn't throbbing. an advil before bed last night helped relieve the throbbing in the knee. rowan keeps asking "why can't we touch your scrape?" sawyer gasps each time he sees it (i have a hard time looking at wounds. my boys saw it before i got a good look at it yesterday and sawyer's gasp made me worry. now i know that he's inherited my fear of looking at wounds because it really wasn't THAT bad to look at).

please, pity me.
 

i find this news article amusing but mostly offensive.

i can't believe this was even an issue in political circles! do people want it to be illegal to breastfeed a child on a park bench, a mall bench, or even...a restaurant?

get over it people. if you're uncomfortable with it, it's your problem, not the breastfeeding mother/child's problem. you can leave...don't ban them to the restroom.

we seem to have been swallowed up in this deck project. it's a huge project and kenny is a one-man worker. he had help the first day for two hours setting up the thingy-ma-jig that holds the deck to the house. (i know the actual word, but it's 8:29, i've been up since 5:00 this morning, and it's escaping me at the moment.) i actually helped him one day by laying the decking and putting in all the screws.* i have to finish that up eventually and will once the railing is in place.

our yard is suffering. the garden needs to be weeded, the grass needs to be cut. but we're keeping our head above water until it's finished. and it will be very soon. hopefully this weekend. hopefully.

this is the first big project where i was able to actually help out. since having kids, i do a lot of cheerleading on the sidelines of these projects. it feels good to get back at it and actually help out when adam naps and the job doesn't require a whole lot of muscle.

sorry, no pictures (mom!). i have taken a few, but the pictures don't do justice to the deck. i'll take some real pictures once it's completely finished.

so besides the deck work we've been busy entertaining the boys to keep them out of the construction area. last night, kenny found them a frog. rowan loved it. sawyer wasn't so sure. he didn't want to touch the thing, but he was very excited about trying to feed it a worm. after noticing me take a few pictures of the frog in rowan's hands, sawyer demanded i take a picture of his little "wormy." the picture below makes it look more like a cut on his finger, but really, that's the worm. and the camera actually focused on sawyer's sweet face rather than the worm. smart camera.

and what is a week or so without a picture of one of the girls? look! they're beginning to grow their crowns!!! they'll be 10 weeks old on monday.









*i worded that purposefully to make it sound as though i layed all the decking myself. i wanted you all to think i was some strong, do-it-yourself-er. but really, kenny brought each piece up to the deck and helped me with a crowbar to get the wood to lay flat. all i did was screw each piece into place. so it wasn't really a lie. and most of you won't even be reading this...so most of you will think i did do something really important in the building of this deck. besides keeping the boys from falling off of it. which really is the most important in the grand scheme of things. that and building it to make it sturdy and safe. and believe me, it's sturdy.

what do you do when you take your empty grocery cart back to the cart station in the grocery store parking lot and find an empty cart there with three full, (still cold!) gallons of 2% milk?

• do you leave it there hoping that the person who left it will come back soon and find it? (like i was going to do)

• do you walk into the customer service desk and tell them that someone left it hoping that the original purchaser will come to the desk and get it back? (like the man who asked me if it was mine as i was walking out of the cart station was going to do on his way into the store)

• or do you pull into a closby parking spot, start walking past it on your way into the story, and take them without a second thought and put them in your car and continue to head into the grocery store for your shopping (minus the milk on your list since hey - score! free milk in the parking lot!)? (like the man who pulled into the spot next to mine as i was beginning to leave)
  

three free gallons of milk is tempting, but i do believe in a form of good karma, and once i left a full box of diapers in a cart in the parking lot and it wasn't there when i returned 10 minutes later, nor did the customer service desk know anything about an abandoned box of diapers. and i was so sad about it for days.

i'm not tooting my own horn, but seriously...please tell me you wouldn't choose the third option (even though i agree, it's most tempting!).

i was wondering why all of a sudden there is a ton of spiderman stuff in the stores. i thought it was because i was noticing it only since rowan and sawyer's interest in "things-spiderman" has grown in the past few months.

and then i drove past a movie marquee yesterday and saw the words, "spiderman" on it. it STILL hadn't hit me. i thought perhaps they brought one of the first two movies back to a cheap theatre for whatever reason.

and finally, it hit me this morning HALFWAY THROUGH gene shallot's review of the latest spiderman movie as i was waiting for the Today Show to give me a weather forecast.

i'm just not as razor sharp as i used to be....