Patience is a Virtue but Delivery is Divine

This year has been the year of home improvement in our home. As some of you know, last summer I came up with an ultimatum for my family. We were to either fix up our house so that it looked like a home and not one big frat house, sell the place and build a new one, or sell the place and move to Florida (still kind of with I'd sold them on that one). Well in this economy selling the place would be about as easy and flying to the moon. So we decided to fix the place up. Fresh paint, new flooring, new furniture that no one had peed on. I would be lying if I said that I didn't love my "new" house. I do however the process of the great re-make wasn't an easy one. Nor is it now easy. I am not a home decorator. If I were I'm pretty sure I would have done it right the first time and would merely have needed new flooring instead of the whole shebang. As I don't know what I'm doing I went to an expert. She was wonderful. She came up with some great ideas. What she didn't come up with is a timely manner in getting things in, and an understanding of what the word budget means. After the first two rooms were done, I decided I had the thing down pat and took over with what she taught me to look for and a few ideas of my own as well as my friends.

We started last October. We emptied rooms and filled nail holes and repainted. We got new hard wood floors in two of the rooms. This was a dream of mine. I always wanted hard wood floors. We get the floors installed and the walls are all painted what I didn't count on was waiting till Christmas and after for my furniture to get in. What I also didn't count on was that come July those same hardwood floors that I dreamed of and wanted for my very own would buckle. Now here I sit in September looking at my strip of paper that should be hardwood. Where they have ripped out the faulty section, in hopes of figuring out what went wrong.

If you were to ask my family what my strongest suit is, they would not tell you patience. The wouldn't tell you cooking, or baking, organization either, but by far patience is lacking in my temperament. Perhaps it's an only child personality trait that I just can't ditch. I'm not sure but I think that in this instance I've been more than patient far more fair than most. It's been almost a full month since they pulled up the wood and have yet to come and fix it. A less patient person would have called them long before now and told them to either get out here and fix it now or get out here rip it all out and give them back their money. Have I done either of these things? No. No I've sat and waited. Until last week I had held out hope that any day they would come and fix it and all would be well. Last week I decided to call. I explained I was unhappy. I told them a solution would be appreciated. A return phone call was to be made, it never was. So today I called and again said I was unhappy (Seriously? Do they not know that when mama isn't happy nobody is happy?) I said I would like this taken care of that my patience that they had commended me with in the past is now spreading thin. Today I got a call back and hopefully in the next couple days some manufacturing guru will come and say what the problem is and they will fix it. Hopefully!

This journey we have been on has been quite an adventure really. Living where we do we get a lot of spiders. Some of them live in my stairwell well out of reach. I discovered that they are of little use to me as they were unable and unwilling to help me paint the corners that were hard to reach. How we painted it before is a mystery to me. We have learned that a bookshelf isn't just a bookshelf. Some book selves are Divine and even those are full of my treasured books. Which was the reason behind the birthday present of the nook. This device feeds my desire to have immediate satisfaction as I'm able to buy book from it without ever leaving the house. This is good as we no longer have a bookstore in our town. We have a Walmart and a Meijer that both sell books but it's not the same as a bookstore where you can roam isle after isle of imagination and education. You lose that in the nook but you gain just as much so I feel content.

Did you know that having the right stuff is better than having a lot of the wrong stuff? We learned that too. Over the course of 15 years of marriage and children you accumulate a LOT. Getting rid of a great deal and using just what was needed has calmed me immensely. I no longer feel it's best to be away from home as it's simpler now to get it all cleaned up and this calms me. Before it was just SO much that it overwhelmed me to the point I'd rather move and start over. For this I'm very grateful for the help that was involved in this process.

My office still needs help. I have yet to figure out how to get it manageable. Perhaps it's more conducive to my work to have it messy. It's good material. However, as the rest of the house is so orderly, I think the greatest gift for me would be to have someone come in and show me how to get this figured out also. The vastness of the mess is what gets to me. I often have trouble seeing the trees for the forest. Some people can't see the trees for the forest, I'm backwards. In all actuality I should be able to take one desk at a time and get it right then move on, all I can do is keep looking at what is left so I walk away, to one of the more calming rooms. My reading room is lovely. It's also known as the living room. I call it my reading room because it's you know, where I read. It's also my favorite room, aside from the missing flooring it's lovely. The light is best in that room and the couch is very comfy for settling in with a good book.

So this is what I know. Deliveries only happen when you are painting in another room. It also helps if it is a holiday. It doesn't matter if they have a factory full of furniture you will get yours when they get good and ready to send it. Washable fabrics are your friend. Patience is a virtue but delivery is Divine!

So How's the Book Coming?

Him: So how is the book coming along? Me: Well... Him: Have to got page one of the manuscript ready? Me: Well... Him: Have you even typed "page 1"? Me: No, but you see it's because I have no printer. I can not work under these conditions. I need my printer to function properly. I have to be able to print otherwise what is the point of typing it? Him: Really? That's what's holding you back? Me: Of course what are you insinuating? Him: Only that you go out for lunch so often that when we go out together to a restaurant it's like walking into Cheers. Everyone knows you. But of course that couldn't be the reason. Me: I need material. How am I supposed to get material if I don't ever leave the house?

This is how our conversations go. What this doesn't indicate is that when I get inspired to write one of three things usually happens. 1. He calls me to do something for him. 2. One of the kids calls me to do something for one of them. or 3. I run out of time as it's time to go to lunch of course. For example, just this week alone as Wednesday was his day off we spent the day running errands and having a nice lunch together. Then as we were home and we were waiting on the children to get home, I decide it's a good time to write. He thinks it's a good time to change the faucet in their bathroom. This is how that played out. I'm sitting at my desk typing away when... Him: Hey can you come here for a minute? Me: Sure, what do you need? Him: Do you have strongs? Me: Seriously? Him: Just come here. So I go upstairs and attempt to loosen the nuts holding the faucet intact. I being the weakling that I am can't budge them so I return to my desk. I sit down and start typing again when... Him: Hey come here and help me a minute. So I go up and help again and return to my desk to type when...Him: Hey I need your brains can you come here a minute. So I grumble up the stairs yet again. This goes on about two more times. So I ask you, when do I get to finish a thought? He wonders why I can't get an entire book together when it's next to impossible to finish a thought long enough to blog. Thus proving my point that I'm only charming and poignant in short spurts. I can't do the long haul because I don't have time to do the long haul.

If it's not the writing it's the scrap booking. Our oldest child is a freshman this year. She has yet to enter the 3rd grade in her scrapbook. This is a source of contention amongst us as it's my job to remedy this situation. This I must do in between the laundry and the cleaning and the running to soccer, and volleyball, and drama. What do I do with my time? What are you most likely to find me doing if I'm not doing any of the aforementioned above? Reading. Slipping into another realm where I have no dishes waiting to be done but a 17 year old girl is fighting for her life in a place called Panem. Or a place where vampires walk among us and account for the oddities in some people. Is this the best use of my time? I don't know. Is sitting in front of a television set with no use of any imagination at all a good use of time? I don't think so. I have always enjoyed television but I have to be doing something else at the same time. I can't just sit and stare. It's mind numbing. But to read is to be mesmerized by something bigger and better. The thoughts and descriptions the imagination can lead you to in a book is so much better. Plus although I do think life is funny. I'm not convinced mine is worth reading about.

I do not know any vampires nor do I know any werewolves. But I do know some great kids and one great man. My children are smart. Something they get from their father. He is quite brilliant really. This is good because I can only help them with their math homework till about the 4th grade. After that they enter what I like to call "that new math". Perhaps you've heard of it, it's what my mom used to tell me I was studying as a kid. Truly the only math I ever really needed to learn is what I like to call "shopping math". This is where I go and figure up the sale prices when I'm shopping to decide if it's a good buy or not. One thing I did learn from my mother is to never pay full price. I also learned that when you can't find a hammer to hang a picture, a meat cleaver works just as well. Tips and hints from mom. She was nothing if not resourceful. She once thought the best way to get me to eat spinach was to mix it with green beans. (Do not try this at home!!) Needless to say it didn't work and had she made me a spinach salad with strawberries and warm bacon dressing her problems would have been solved as my green leafy veggies would have been consumed.

My best friend however, is the backbone to this operation. She doesn't get near enough credit, not that she ever looks for any. She is the voice of reason, when reason jumps from a window. We have often called each other in times of crisis. But our best times are spent over a chocolate tall cake. It seems when all else fails and life is just too hard chocolate and conversation are the cure. She is very handy when it comes to "shopping math" and also as she was a math and an English teacher she is my editor. If I ever get her anything to edit. Which leads us back to where we started. Him: How's that manuscript coming? Me: Just as soon as the new printer shows up, I'll type "page 1".

Sergeant Major Mommy

I have figured a solution to every problem we have. The country has been run by men for far too long. I am under the impression that if women had been running this country all this time the national debt would be no more, war would cease to exist, and everyone everywhere would be better dressed if not better fed. I should preface this with the statement that I do not hate men, I am married to the pick of the litter and no I have no intentions of running for office. I am just a wife and mother living in Nowhere, USA who has a big mouth and a few ideals of her own she would like to share.

Those of you who are married will be able to commiserate with these truths that I hold self evident. Women, mothers especially are the only ones on the planet who can find things. We are the only ones who can switch gears fast enough to discipline a child and take care of a dead pet all while holding a party in the house. We are the only ones who can talk on the phone while moving which is to say that while on the phone we prepare meals, do laundry, and check homework all while holding a conversation. We plan the parties, we supply food, we make the calls, we run the errands, we run the mom's taxi service, we accomplish this and manage to do it all without a man at home to hold our hand and instruct us on what to do. I do not discredit men who go to work and provide for their families. I thank them. God bless them. Without them I would not be able to stay home and raise my children. However, there are plenty of women in the military and plenty of them involved in politics who are willing and able to make a change.

Who in your home is the one who finds things? The mother. Who should go looking for the bad guys? The women. By all means take the men with you let them do the killing and the blowing of stuff up. But if you want something found from a person to a pair of clean socks you don't send a man in to do the job. You send the mom. If I want a jar of jelly opened I don't ask my daughter to open it I ask my husband. But if I want my brown jacket that is hanging on my side of the closet all the way to the right. I don't send my husband, he will never find it. I send my daughter. If she doesn't find it she will bring every other option and check the laundry till she comes down and says "ok the one you want is in the wash which one do you want?" A man would have come down with a green jacket and claimed I didn't own a brown one. Why are we in debt? We make money every day right? Make some more! Honestly if you run out of underwear you don't just stop wearing it you buy some more. Goodness I realize this is the ramblings of someone who doesn't watch the news and doesn't get the paper. (Why would I read about or watch the things I cannot change when there are so many more entertaining books to read.) I have better things to do. I can't change the programming any more than I can get all men everywhere to figure out which day is trash day and get it to the curb on time, every time. Nor can I get them to get the laundry to drop into the basket instead of just outside it. But really? Does everything have to be that difficult? Life really wasn't meant to be so counterproductive. If you don't have money for new weapons then quit ordering more. If a woman doesn't have money for all the groceries she needs, she doesn't go spend what she does have on her hair. She figures out ways to spread it out and make enough food to feed a family and wears a hat.

You don't hire a plumber to do your electrical work. You don't have the UPS guy pick up your trash. You don't have the guy who trims the trees also trim your hair. You get the right person for the job. You get the person who will get the job done quickly and efficiently and lets face it, for most jobs you need a woman to get it done. How many women make honey do lists only to check off the list themselves. Men are busy. Men work hard for a living to provide the very food you prepare for your families. I get it. But a woman works all day from sun up to sun down cleaning the clothes that they wear, preparing the food that they eat, finding the socks, cleaning the house that they live in. You don't send a woman in to do jobs that they are unable to do. I am unable and unqualified to do welding, chop down a tree, fight forest fires, I also can not walk away from perfectly good ice cream either but I digress. I'm just saying ladies I believe it's up to us. Behind every great man is an even greater woman. Everyone knows who wore the pants in the Clinton administration and it obviously wasn't Bill. Perhaps next time when the need arises we shouldn't send men who will drive around for hours lost because they won't ask for directions. Men who won't find them or if they do will not close the deal. Women are the deal closers.

Disagree, dislike, be disgruntled if you choose to be. This is just my opinion. My husband disagrees he believes in fact that men are the ones who have made this country great. Men have fought for our freedoms, men protect us every day. I don't disagree. But even Abraham Lincoln gave his mother credit for making him the man he is. Let's just remember the wives, daughters, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, and nieces along with them.