The French

I was on CrackBook the other day and an old college chum of mine had posted something about water restrictions and how the dirt around their house was separated 2 inches from the foundation.  Then, one of their friends posted that their water bill was 300 (THREE HUNDRED!!) dollars higher than normal, but they have 1/2 an acre of grass to keep green and that it was cheaper to keep it green than to resod the whole yard.

This frustrates me to no end.  We are in 'Extreme Drought Conditions' you daffy cow!  What right do you have to keep 1/2 acre of GRASS green so that you can have a pretty yard?  This whole idea of having a yard solely dedicated to grass is silly to me anyway.  I've kept my trees alive and watered the foundation with a soaker hose, but my 'grass' is a lovely shade of yellow.

The french aristocracy are the ones that originated this whole idea of having acres of nothing but grass to prove that they were too rich to soil their hands with any kind of farming.  You see how well that worked out for them.

All or Nothing

It was pointed out to me yesterday that I am an all or nothing person.  I agree with that remark.  But I am trying to teach myself moderation.  For example, we have been a no TV family in the past, now we have 1 TV which I police pretty strictly.  TV time was very rare except for the times that it wasn't.  My kids would  go weeks with out watching TV and then for a few days they might get 6+ hours a day.  So, I'm trying to let them watch 1 hour of TV a day-if their room is clean.  I've done this for 3 weeks now and it seems to be going well.  Now, if I get pestered about it they don't get it.

I am this way about many things, but food especially I think.  It is best to not keep potato chips in the house because I can eat a whole bag of the suckers.  I try to stay away from soda because it's a trigger food for me-I have a soda and then it opens all sorts of craving pathways in my brain.  I think I've found a pretty good solution to the potato chip conundrum...pop corn!  It's salty, it's crunchy, and you can have a ton of pop corn vs. a handful of chips.  Who wants to stop at a handful?  Which brings us back to moderation.

1 Down

It's happened.  When I got 4 chickens back in April, I thought that this way I'd still have 2 or 3 if I lost any of them to babychickitis.  Today we lost a chicken.  She was in the middle of the coup, stiff, with eyes clouded over.  It was one of the white ones.  Either Peeps Lafeet or Lucy.  I sent the boys out after dinner to give them water and food and even though they still had food and water she was dead.  I think it's this blasted heat. A friend lost 2 chickens the other day as well.  Liam discovered her, had a good cry about it, and was consoled.  I am sad as well but I know that we take good care of them and we just can't control the heat.  We have no trees in our yard so they spend the heat of the day panting in the coop anyway.

Water Conservation

All the traffic flashy type signs say 'Conserve Water-Extreme Drought Conditions'-At least around here.

In general, I think that our family does small things that do conserve water.  For example, when we brush our teeth, we turn the water on to wet the tooth brush, turn the water off, and then back on to rinse mouths and tooth brushes.  Ray and I have a shower head that uses less water and has a cool function to reduce the flow to almost nothing-so that when you are washing your hair or body you don't waste all that water.  The boys have a similar shower head that uses less water, but doesn't have that cool low flow option.  

When I shave my legs, I do not run the water in the shower.  I keep a big cup in the shower, fill it with water during my shower, and when I'm done getting clean I turn off the water.  Then, I take a dab of hair conditioner, put it on the bits that need a shave, and use the water in the big cup to keep the razor clean.  Risking TMI territory-I am a hairy girl, and this is the way that I have shaved for 2 years-and it works just fine.  The conditioner has the added bonus of acting as a moisturizer-just rub in whatever the razor leaves behind and you have nice smooth legs.  The past 2 winters I have not gotten dry legs like I had in before I started this method.

Also, risking more TMI-ahem.  'If it's yellow, let it mellow.  If it's brown,  flush it down.' (ew, I can't believe I just said that.)

I just read a way to wash hair less often.  Take a cotton ball, soak it in witch hazel, and rub it on your scalp.  This helps to soak up the oils on your head.  Then the article says to blow dry on cool, but I bet you could get away with air drying.  I will try this when it cools off.  Right now, I get sweaty enough that I have to wash twice a week.

I am working on a project right now out in the yard.  I REFUSE to water my grass, but it has gotten so very dry here that I have finally put a soaker hose out around the house.  I'm working on sheet mulching the entire perimeter of the house.  I have gotten the back yard done and about 10 feet in the front yard.  The cool thing is that I had enough soaker hose to snake it in the blackberries and strawberries-so that's 2 beds that I don't have to hand water any more.  The sheet mulching will keep the water where I want it to be-in the ground not in the air.

Yesterday I found 2 fire ant beds along the front side of the house.  I tell you what!  Nothing makes me scream like a girl and stop yard work like putting my hand in a fire ant bed.  I need to get orange oil to take care of the suckers, but Lowe's was out of it.  Dilute a little orange oil, pour it on the fire ant bed, and they come streaming out, exoskeletons melting off.  It'll kill the bed in about ten minutes.

Texas fire ants are not to be confused with Vermont fire ants that are just toucans in disguise.

Good One!

I was over at my dad's house last week. He was looking for pictures of L and O's baptism on his computer so that I could see them. He couldn't find them but he did find pictures and a couple of videos of our family from the spring that we moved into our house.

We moved to Burleson in March of 2005. The boys were almost 3 years and 5 mos old when we moved here. Those of you that have older children might understand me when I say that L has always been 9 and O has always been 6. When they pass a certain age, you sort of forget what it is like to have wee little ones under foot. And pictures remind you of that time but not quite like a video does. On my dad's computer are 3 videos from this time. I vaguely remember having his camera for about a week but not why.

One video is of L either right before or after turning 3. 3 is SO little. I had forgotten the way that L moved and sounded when he was 3. He still had that 'Mom and Dad are mostly the only ones that understand me' speech. Guhpa=Grandpa, Camuh=Camera. Ray was asking him if he loved Grandpa(it was his camera after all, we had to get film of the kid saying that he loved him), and he said that he did. He also said that he loved the camera, this one was unprompted.

One video is of R holding 5 1/2 mo old, hulking, chubby wubby Tiny O. He is holding him so that you see really just R's hand and O is 'standing' on the table. You hear happy chattering sounds coming from somewhere off camera and O staring in that vague baby way with a slight smile in the direction of the chattering. All of a sudden, the baby(R, really), produces this GIANT BURP. O startles a little, I call out to see if he will look at the camera-this whole time he is staring in the direction of the chatter. R prompts L to say 'Good One!' in reaction to the burp. Does L ever say it? We never find out because that's when I turn the camera off.

What do I get from these videos, other than a faint nostalgia? My children are much the same. You can see and hear aspects of their personalties even at such young ages.

L-so happy, and chatty, and just sweet.

O-In awe of his brother.

I don't want to 'go back' in time to that age. I love my children now just the way that they are. I don't deal with the tantrums of a 3 year old, or have to pump extra milk for a week so that I can leave the house with out my baby and not worry about his milk supply for a few hours. But, oh, those videos brought back the happy chatter that almost always accompanied L, and the vast chubby cheeks that was my O.

The video also reminded me of the time that I had to retrain my children to say 'Excuse Me' after burping rather than 'Good One!'.

Maybe I should take videos of the boyos a couple of times a year so that when they are 30 I can remember that O loves his stuffed dragon and that L likes to build elaborate things with legos.

Reset!!!

I have had a tough week diet-wise.  There has been no activity or tracking of food this week.  I could use the excuse that I am sick to cover the activity but there is no excuse for the food ignorance that I have been practicing.  It's time to get back in the truck, drive away from the cliff, and set the cruise control.

We, each of us in my family of 4, have been escaping into internet and/or movie land too much lately.  I tend to putz around on FaceBook and watch Netflix for many hours of the day.  R will come home and almost immediately get on the computer to check sports statistics and play his latest game-'Storm the Castle'.  It's 'Angry Birds'-like-so it's very mindless.  Very little of actual e-mail checking/writing or other productive internet time is actually accomplished by either of us.  The boys have been watching at least a movie most days and sometimes they get KERA as well.  They also tend to pester me until I hand them my IPOD touch to play one of the few silly games that I have on there at least a few days a week.

I have to ask myself if this is what I really want my children to see as examples of adulthood.  Mom and Dad, staring at a computer screen for various non-productive reasons, while the living room is a wild mess, the kitchen desperately needs mopping, and the yard needs a mow.  I know that it is not what I want them to grow up to be like, but there are times when I feel powerless to stop the momentum of lazy/poor choices in my own life.

This week, I propose a challenge to my family.  I say we go off the grid starting tonight.  No internet for a week.  No movies.  No TV.  I think that I'll actually get lesson plans done for the coming school year and maybe end up with a pretty clean house by the end of it.  R may actually work on some writing that he hasn't seemed to work on for a couple of months.  Maybe we both need to stop disengaging our brains and engage them in things that need more than just the half-assed attention that we seem to be giving things.  I'll maybe have time to mop! And read actual books to my children!  And finish a languishing knitting project!

I find my children's childhood slipping away.  I need to show them how an adult is to act.  How an adult is to interact with the world around them.  How an adult is to act in relationships with husbands, wives, friends, the world in general.  And it is NOT with a screen to buffer the rest of the world.

Breaking Down

For the last 3 pay checks that Ray has received, we have justenough to pay the necessary bills, the 'we have been dumb in the past but are paying it off' bills, and to fix what ever it is that's broken.  We have had our home AC break, both of our vehicles, and now the home AC has broken in a different way, with the toilet handle breaking in my hand yesterday.  Ray can fix the toilet, and the AC guy is on his way.  He said on the phone, that a lot of people are having trouble with their AC's in this heat.

It is HOT every summer in Texas.  It gets so hot that it is hard to move and breathe out in the stuff.  We have been hit high and hard this year with less rain than I remember having in a long time.  Burleson has had almost no rain at all and every day has been 100 or more since the first week of June.  I find it hard to even want to do anything that requires stepping outside.

My plants are surviving despite the heat.  I have a second round of tomatoes that will come in the next few weeks, the trees that I planted last year and this year are so far surviving, and we still have 4 chickens.  I go out 3 times a week to tend the garden and water trees, and the chickens are tended at least  twice a day.

The boyos are getting more TV this summer than they usually get.  With a movie or 2 hours of TV being watched a day.
***

The AC guy just came and went.  The capacitor had gone out.  Luckily this was a quick, non-expensive fix.  BUT, there goes any extra money in our account.  It seems like what ever breaks, takes just the right amount of money to fix it.