Kitchen: tiles pulled up, moved to laundry room & pantry waiting for the adhesive to be applied. Dh has most of the cutting done so next trip should see permanent adhesion. These are white ‘hospital’ tiles - good for their new home. There were too many broken to keep in the kitchen but too many to pull up and throw away. Ceiling - kiltzed (is that a word?) ready for a second coat of plain paint.

Laundry room & pantry: Dh swept up a gross amount of cat fur and other yukie crud. Tiles are laid but need adhesive, he is nearly done with cutting the odd areas.

Family Room: Last week Davo carpet cleaned many, many times (thanks again). Walking into the house there is just the faintest of sniffs of ‘cat’. Hurray!!

Girls Room: Basically as finished as its going to get. The painted paneling has been repainted a dusty peach - the chip looked pink but girls are fine with the color. I cleaned the carpet several water changes worth. Cat hair!! ugh!!  Paneled walls, closet rod, trim all washed. A few spots on the ceiling, some curtain rods and curtains, some pledge on the plain paneling and it is good to go. We can at least start moving girl stuff. I see future tweaks but AFTER we get into the place.

Took one of the mistake paints (sells cheap at Walmart) and tried it on the boys room. It is lighter than it seems - more an antique white that a tan. Painted a swatch in one bathroom, hall, boys room. Next time will decide which gets the paint.

That was all that got done. Some kind of weird virus is going around - slowly. About two weeks T. had stomache pains. We thought it could be his appendix but no. Found me Friday. Oh my, he was not wrong to complain it is painful. A real midol moment  pain wise but only pain wise.  Stomache is very, very tender to the touch which isn’t easy with a nursing baby. Not much helps either - sleep helps. Mommas need not apply though, too much to set right the next day. Today finally feel more like myself but still need regular breaks. Hope it passes quickly.

Next up: how to move a pantry. I’m not looking forward to moving the stash or re-organizing. Too bad samantha stevens isn’t my neighbor, lol.

My hometown can brag that it is on old route 66 of Cars fame. A quick drive past the Gemini Giant to impress. The restaurant is a favorite stop on 66.  Counter girl was one of my first jobs - I can twist a cone or make almost any favorite ice cream treat from the 50’s thanks to the Launching Pad.

Gemini Giant

Things have changed so much since Chicago discovered the local small towns. As Stephen King wrote ‘it is inevitable’ - why drive 1 hour plus to a home with a small, small yard & bad neighborhood when an hours drive or train ride leads to a small town with good prices & safe neighborhoods? Inevitable that newbies bring change. Inevitable that the changes result in new places looking like those left behind. Inevitable that safe becomes an elusive dream and parents no longer allow children to wander about without supervision.  Inevitable that those small towns are now classified as suburbs.

Backhome is trying to be overwhelming. We are STILL trying to get the new place in presentable shape. We have decided to paint where it is already painted, meaning the unpainted paneling will get a good washing and left to later. The girls room was painted yesterday as was the kitchen ceiling. Both need a second coat but look so much better. Davo spent the afternoon cleaning the disgusting carpet in the family room so the litterbox smell isn’t as overwhelming. Still plenty of scrubbing & painting to go though.

On the purchasing side (not repair stuff) checking into a handpump for the well and ventless heaters. At a previous ranch style home we began using a five burner and loved it. Not only was the house heated better the propane use was about half of the furnace use. More importantly the place was heated during an ice storm power outage.

Yikes! The prices on those pumps! And ours isn’t even an overly deep well. Gotta do some more internet searching. 

Must get going on the fall aspects of the garden. Need to get a bed ready for garlic and one to move the rhubarb into. Where is the time going to?

And the beat goes on…la dee da dee dee….

Other photos & the Gemini Giant

Bone Nor

Motel

Care to guess what it should say?

Yes dear husband,  I am wearing only one sock. The baby got fussy.

In other news:

Little Missey has learned how to pour. She demonstrated this by pouring from the gallon pitcher onto the table.

Baby has also learned that doing so will cause momma to call you by name and move quickly. She gladly demonstrated how a half gallon of lemon-aid splashes very, very nicley. 

Cleaning up a half gallon spilled and splashed in lemon-aid requires four large bath towels, three paper napkins, two kleenex and one sock.

Yes dear son, I am wearing only one sock…

Perhaps help you around that final bend?

Go play with the ball

Thanks to Shy Wolf for the link.

**Grandbaby boy spent three days in the hospital with a virus. The fever would be moderate in an older child but not in one only four weeks old. Lots of weird diapers, up-chucking, and pedialyte. (cherry is not good in the diaper sense). He is home now - after a full battery of x-rays, scans, pokings & proddings. Official word: “He Has A Virus”. 

Whatever the “virus” it is going around our area. Fevers of 100-101 F, tired, irritable and blah. sometimes throwing up or the other end. It lingers a few days, disappears a day or two and reappears. This is one that must simply be waited out. Seems rather early for this type of virus though.

**One of the department workers at dh’s place of employment is off on medical leave until the end of the month. dh has been working 6 days a week and is very tired. The list of things to get done to move is not getting shorter but the days are. Frustrating that a man can work his buns off and Uncle Sam gets first shot at the check.

The new place has two meters - one for the house & one for the shop. Sensible. We turned on the one to the house to clean and discovered the water pump is through the shop. DH has lights now.

**My oldest friend in Arkansas is in hospital in Memphis. A few years back she went off the deep end relationship wise & divorced the man who loves her deeply. We haven’t seen a lot of each other but still get along fine. Like most women around here who sooner or later find a loser, she found hers. He likes his fists until she had enough. Seems she tried to move him out of her house. He thanked her with a .45 to the face then turned the gun on himself. She called 911 herself. Latest word is that she is now thickly wrapped up in the hospital but able to write to communicate. His life support was pulled. Stupid. Nine months pregnant she weighed 95 pounds - it isn’t very Christian but if someone had to die I’m glad it wasn’t her.

**DH’s grandmother is in the hospital in intensive care with fluid building up in her lungs. It doesn’t look good. She is nearly 90 and has been ready to go for awhile. Still is one trip I’m not anticipating.

**Chickens have a new trick–flying over the fence. Molly girl, the black lab half puppy, loooves to greet them or at least try.

And through countless hours of practice the rooster has perfected his crow. Hee hee several of the kids at the daycare next door stand at the fence and practice with him. Bet their parents are wondering where that came from! lol

**I have a grand summer cold. It is a better cold than most as I spent one day cleaning out from under the beds in the kids room. Nothing improves a cold like crawling with the nose two inches from fifty year old carpeting. Generic musinex is good + lots and lots of water. All I have to say is Puffs…with lotion…

Looking on the bright side, this cold has now made it hard to notice the yellow-stained-in-two-corners-carpet in the family room of the new place. Thank you & Thank you & Thank you to Grits for vaccuuming that room in preparation for further cleaning. I could blame it on hillbillies who don’t know better but the previous owner was from California. I’ve heard of ammonia being a good cleaning agent and have a diy attitude, but isn’t that a bit over the top?

**What is it about boxes that thrills children so much? And why are toys the most fun after all the bits are together next to their packing box? Why do 1 year olds insist that a shelf must be entirely empty? Does the floor look cold without a thick covering of books?

**Into this mess knocked the DOD (Department of Defense) to do Nikos background check interview. Pardon the moving mess. Underneath the toys, boxes, pillow and blanket forts, and other newly discovered old toys the floor is vaccuumed and swept. Don’t mind the computer room - the baby thinks the floor is cold.

It went well. Nikos was born military. Has wanted to be a soldier since he was five years old. Hard part is finding neighbors who know us and have seen him living here. See we live on a corner. On the corners of this + are: us, a baby headstart, a headstart, a bank drive through. Next door to us is a Methodist church, Behind us is a Church of Christ, last building on this block is the parsonage for the Methodist church. Across from us (at an angle) is an older retired woman. We know her a bit, her daughter and granddaughter. We keep to ourselves, mostly and so does she. Good arrangement and we get along fine–but does make it hard in an interview type situation. What busy teenager spends time visiting with the new retiree across the street? But she got what she needed and he should be cleared soon.

We are under the weather but if nothing else is true, weather is always changing. Hoping for some sunny days soon. Guess I’d better upset some cardboard ships and load them up with new, nonhuman cargo. Sniffle, honk, honk, honk….coming aboard!!!

This trend would be easy to ignore but there are some aspects that are core or central to most homeschoolers - the need *not* to do things the public school way. While this is written about the Christian movement I have seen similar thoughts in secular places. Not the patriarchy but the reluctance to let go, to wait for the perfect something to occur so children can be released to a place that has benefits. The need to insure that they continue on the road - less traveled or not.

We call it by different names. Today it is the Cloistered Homeschooled Syndrome. Briefly, it is the failure of the parents to understand, appreciate, and respect the individuality of their adult children. They sacrifice the individual identities of their children on the altar of their own emotional needs, making them nurse when they should be killing and dressing their own food, making them obey when they should be learning to command. They seem to think that grown children are God’s gift to them rather than their gift to God. Through letters and personal contact, we see more and more of this cult-like isolationism, parents demanding absolute allegiance to the family group, and fearing outside contact might break up their “fellowship.” Adult kids who want to launch out on their own are told that they are rebellious and disloyal and are causing grief to those who have nurtured them. Emotionally needy parents manipulate their grown children into remaining loyal to the unit. Thirty-year-old daughters sit at home acting as surrogate mothers, watching their prospects to ever be a mother dwindle.

 Continuing…

It is now become a disease of epic proportions. We call them PDFs, Patriarchal Dysfunctional Families. The children are treated as permanent property of the parents. If they don’t marry, and many of them never have the opportunity, they remain at home as a sort of indentured servant, never rising to the status of an adult, always under authority of the head of the clan, the Patriarch Daddy.

And…

What is pitiful is the whole process is done in hopes of getting the perfect will of God, but one vital ingredient is missing—encouraging your children to become responsible, autonomous, well educated, and experienced adults as soon as possible. You should have trained your sons to be men by the time they are fifteen, independent by the time they are eighteen. Your daughters should be capable of living apart from the family by the time they are eighteen and should be allowed to make their own life’s decisions somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Unmarried, grown (18 years old) children may remain at home; it is good if they do; but the parent-child relationship should evolve into an adult-adult relationship by the time they are sixteen to eighteen years old. Parents should have earned the right to give advice, and kids should have grown in wisdom enough to ask for it. But a parent should never invoke his parental authority on a grown kid. It is demeaning to both and akin to not being potty trained.

Finishing…

 The glory of a parent is to work himself out of a job, to stand back and see his kids fly solo. I expected to have supplanted myself by the time my kids were eighteen. And so it was. Long before that, I began to confer with them adult to adult. I have stepped back and allowed them to make decisions that I knew were not the best choices, and sometimes I was wrong; they were wiser than I.

The best question that sums up what has often crossed my mind…

Whose need is being met when a Father treats a 22-year-old girl like a child, dictating the parameters of her choices?

So read the entire link and lend your thoughts…nicely of course.

Our first eggs!!

Current cost about $50.00 each. (chicks, feed, equipment, fencing and such).

On her first birthday, she went to the park:

Played in the water…

Checked it all out…

pictures courtesy of Sister C.