'Fess up!

There are a lot of mysteries in my house. Who left the back door open, for instance? No one ever did. It must have been the dog! (Actually, it WAS the dog, who figured out how to push the door open if it isn't locked.) So here's a list of this week's little mysteries of life:

1. Who left that giant booger on the hand towel???

(Timothy's suggestion that it was probably Wesley makes him my top suspect.)

2. Why is the front porch covered in something oily?

(I still have not figured this one out. It just appeared suddenly after I watered the porch plants, and I have no idea what it is. Disturbing.)

3. Who keeps knocking the dish towel in the kitchen onto the floor?

(Answer: Miney. Yep, I caught him at it. He reaches up and pulls it down, puts his front paws on it, and slides it all over the kitchen floor. Remind me to get a fresh dish towel every time I need one.)

And last, but certainly not least...

4. Who farted???

(No one ever owns up to this, either, and I suspect no one ever will.)

Lessons I've learned whilst residing in a wind tunnel...

For those of you who don't live in Oklahoma, I would first like to inform you that it is windy here. Unduly so. That part in the song, "Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain", well let it suffice to say that they are not. even. joking. In fact, "sweeping down the plain is, particularly in the spring, a bit of an understatement. In fact, I think most days the plain is just happy if the wind doesn't sweep it right into another state.

I have now lived in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years. You'd think by now I would have learned everything there is to know, but no, the wind taught me an entire series of lessons today. I present them, for your edification.

1. On a very windy day, bumblebees get tired of the wind. They make seek refuge inside.

2. Five house cats are apt to notice a bumblebee the size of a hummingbird well before you do.

3. Cats who have discovered a large, loud buzzing thing in their house will immediately think it is some new game and give chase.

4. Five house cats giving chase is going to get your attention pretty fast.

5. A large bumblebee who has just been chased by five cats is going to be in a very bad mood. All your attempts to remove it from the house will be met with threats of violence.

6. On any day windy enough to drive a bumblebee indoors, it is not a good idea to try to go outside and clean bunny cages.

7. A 2x4' bunny tray, upon being caught by gale force winds, will come at your face at an alarming rate. In doing so, it will dump its unsavory contents, and in all likelihood, said contents will become an unsavory shower.

8. If you ever have any questions about whether or not you have hay fever and a tray full of dirty hay showers you, you can immediately find out. Hint: If you sneeze 27 times in 5 minutes, the answer is yes. And if you count the sneezes...well, you're probably a little weird.

9. If your back door is not well latched it will blow open with astounding force.

10. If you are bent over directly behind the door when this happens, busy scooping the cat box, it will probably hit you in the backside and propel you face-first into the litter box.

There, you're enlightened! And now I'm going to take another shower.

A post about poop...

Just thought I'd share this disturbing story from yesterday. Timothy came out around bedtime holding a large sponge and looking sheepish. He announced to his father that he was done cleaning his shelf and could he please have dessert now. I looked up from my knitting and asked the seemingly innocent question, "What was wrong with your shelf?"

Timothy grinned rather wickedly and stated, "It was covered in poop! Daddy said I had to clean it up before I could have dessert."

My mouth dropped open and I turned to Chris. "You had him cleaning up poop? He's not old enough to do that by himself? What was it, cat poop?"

Chris said, "Nope, not cat poop."

This gave me pause. I finally worked up the nerve to ask, "Was it human poop?" I wasn't sure I wanted the answer to that one, really.

"Not exactly," was Chris' reply.

It took me a while to get the full story, but the long and short of it is that Chris had gone into the boys' room for something and discovered that Timothy had written the word "poop" no less than 20 times all over his white bookshelves in various shades of crayon. As Timothy later explained, "There was red poop and blue poop and orange poop...all the colors of poop."

It would be better if Timothy never knows how hard we laughed when he was safely in bed.

What I did over my summer vacation

There is really no fast way to catch up on months of blog neglect. Especially if you are like me and can't for the life of you figure out how to flip pictures so that blog readers don't throw out their necks turning their heads to look at the pictures. But I digress.

I decided it would be easiest just to post some random assortments of pictures. And by the way, my use of the word "vacation" might have been a little sarcastic. Moms don't get vacations. They don't get sick leave or overtime, either. I tried standing in the living room with a sign demanding fair treatment, but no one even noticed, so I gave up.

First off, I grew some things. These are peas. The best peas you'd ever hope to eat. And I grew them. If you want your kids to eat vegetables with enthusiasm, try having them help grow them. Amazing!

I also spent a lot of time cleaning bunny cages, brushing bunnies, carting bunnies outside for play time, trying to catch bunnies when they sneakily opened their cages and escaped into my kitchen, and made disgusting oooooing and aaaaahing noises over how cute they are. Knit sleeps on his back with his giant furry feet in the air, but I haven't caught it with the camera yet.

My children also spent a fair amount of time communing with Knit. They know better than to get too close to Purl. We're fairly certain she descended from the rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In other words, she's slightly evil.

Then my friend Kat, known among certain circles as "Kat the Enabler", taught me to dye yarn. It was fun. REALLY fun. Here is some sock yarn I dyed. I call it...Hubba Bubba. Am I dating myself? I loved that gum!

At some point, this creature adopted me. Her name is Maura. She weighs all of five pounds, has only three working legs, and is The Boss. When Maura meows, you listen. I find that letting her run the household saves a lot of unnecessary worry. Plus, my children obey her far better than they obey me.

As you can see, I grew some more stuff. These were my herbs somewhere mid-summer. The small tomato plant below has since made a play for domination and taken over the front yard. I should really take a picture, because I'm not kidding. One day, my house will just be the big lump covered in tomato vine. However, I'm not complaining because we've had LOTS of tomatoes.

Kat was involved in this activity as well. She taught me to spin. I've always wanted to learn, and I'd been saving for a wheel. For my birthday, Mom, Dad and Pawpaw conspired to get me my own wheel. I also need a picture of that. Because this is apparently the only part of my wheel that I photographed. Odd.

And then I grew some stuff. This is a heap of mixed greens. It was delicious. We ate pretty well this summer, considering my garden tried to kill me. (It gave me poison ivy that landed me in the ER. Twice. And no, I wasn't trying to grow poison ivy. It's a long story.)

I would like to say I grew this, but I didn't. The birds did. I have very helpful finches.

I made some pickles, using my grandma's recipe. My cucumbers didn't do very well, but my cousin donated some cucumbers to the cause. I enjoyed making them, even if the smell of the brine caused Timothy to walk around with his shirt over his face for an entire day.

So, that was my summer vacation, the highlights. Yes, I realize I turned into a hippie. I didn't mean to, if that counts for anything.

Poor Miney!

We did some serious house cleaning and reorganizing today. Part of what needed to be done was vacuuming the entire house. I should first point out that the cats hate it when we vacuum. They're terrified of it, and usually hide in the garage from the moment they hear the vacuum cleaner come out till several hours after it's been put back. I should also point out that Miney, although (or perhaps because) he weights nearly 20 pounds, is the biggest scaredy cat of them all.

Somehow, Miney failed to hear Chris getting the vacuum out, and wound up trapped. Chris was vacuuming the kitchen, so Miney's escape route to the garage was cut off. I should now point out that Chris had the big door open in the garage earlier in the day. When he does this, he locks the cat door so they can't escape to the outdoors. You see this coming, don't you? If not, here it is: Chris forgot to unlock the cat door.

So Miney finally worked up his courage and made a run for it. At top speed, all 18 pounds of him slammed into the door, which didn't give. He backed up and made another run. Again, his head hit the door with full force and it didn't move. By this time, Chris had the vacuum off and was trying to help, but it was too late. Yes, Miney, in his panic, made for the kitchen door, changed his mind when he got there, turned, darted between Chris' legs, and ran head-long into the cat door AGAIN. I'm not sure if he had weakened it with his earlier attempts or if he had just reached warp speed at this point, but he broke the lock and made it out to the garage. It has taken me the rest of the day to talk him into coming back in. He still flinches when anyone walks too close to the hall closet, where the vacuum cleaner is stored.

Still life

Recently, I vacuumed out the couches. It's amazing the things you can find inside a couch. In this case, the items included a computer cable of some sort, a card from my grandma, a matchbox fire engine, two safety pins, a couple of paper clips shaped into some weird form of origami, a broken crayon, a comb, my missing size "N" crochet hook, some nicotine gum and part of a banana peel. Not pictured: several metric tons of crumbs. I don't know why this amused me so much. I think maybe it's the banana peel that did it. I'm glad I found that while it was still relatively fresh. Otherwise, I could be writing a far less amused blog about a mystery smell!