Wanted: Dead or Alive...but mostly dead.

A few nights ago, I accidentally left the door that goes out to our garage from the kitchen open all night long. Oopsie. I've squished a couple crickets, but no biggie, right?

Wrong. There is a biggie, alright. A big FAT mouse. He ran across my kitchen floor when I flipped on the light in there at 6 am and he scared the crap out of me. My house is clean. I have like 50 stray cats in our yard. How the CRAP did I get a mouse? Sick!

I'll tell you how. HENRY. We frequently see little critters coming in and out of his garage, and last time I was over there, the floor was a carpet of rodent feces.

Dear Mouse,

Why? Why my house? You had a freaking paradise set up across the street with your pals. The kitchen alone is a smorgasboard. Were you crowded out? Did the fruit fly colonies hog the rotten fruit pile? What about the bathrooms? The toilets are full...that seems like the kind of thing a nasty little critter like yourself would be interested in. Why did you come to my house? Now I feel all icky and want to move. Also, I'm afraid to take off my shoes and it is 103* outside.
Curse you, tiny beast!
I am armed with dcon bricks and enough traps to kill an army (just in case you have any little friends, but I really don't think you do). You are going to die.

-Meg


Dear Henry,

Your house is disgusting. Now that you've attracted mice, do you know what are going to come next? Snakes. I don't do mice, I definitely don't do snakes, and I don't do well with hoarders. Expect a visit from the Health Department very soon. Also, you probably should not be driving while taking hydrocodone. You also probably shouldn't continue taking hydrocodone if you're describing its effects as "just the same as water".

-Meg

I cleaned my garage today (finding a mouse in your home will drive you to absolute insanity.) I'm sorting, scrubbing, and purging everything I own. Nothing is safe from the wrath of my ScotchBrite sponge. I even cleaned my cleaning products. Hopefully Little Fatty came over on from Henry's on his own and doesn't have 20 cousins slummin' it with him in our crawlspace.
I'm so grossed out I can't breathe. I don't think I'll sleep until Fatty is dead.
I'll blog more later. I need to go finish bleaching everything I own.

Things that must be shared

I am a terrible photog. Especially when it comes to food. I should have channeled my inner Sheena and at least wiped the basil from the side of the bowl. No time for that. I snapped this shot, we sat down to eat, and the pasta was gone within minutes. Thanks to Emily, this is my new staple. (how am I not 500 lbs?)

fresh garlic (pressed)

pasta: linguine, spaghetti, angel hair

fresh tomatoes (dice)

fresh basil (chiffonade)

sea salt

pepper

marjoram

olive oil

balsamic vinegar

cook noodles. toss with everything else. eat. be happy.

thank you emily, for bringing this simple goodness into our lives.

Out of the Blue

Reese: Mom, having a brother is much more fun than not having a brother.

Mockingbird

Tonight, when I closed the door to the chicken coop, I peeked inside and did a head count.
"One, two, three, four...uh oh. Where's Goldie?"

Missing.

Crap.

Did something eat her? Did she hop the fence?
Where is she, and why didn't she go to bed when the other hens did?
We grabbed flashlights and after searching the yard for her for 15 minutes, I thought to look UP.
Busted.
Notice anything wrong with this picture?

Yeah. That's a freaking chicken up in my dogwood tree. Evidently, Goldie has earned her name, as Quincy named her after Goldilicious, the imaginary pet unicorn from the Pinkalicious book series. Both unicorn and hen are fans of playing hide and seek in the dark when they are supposed to go to bed.

The problem: I couldn't just leave her up there. We have squirrels, oppossum, raccoons, snakes, groundhogs, armadillo and all sorts of predators back there. She'd never make it until morning. I really didn't want to tell my kids the story of the Little Dead Hen in the morning, so we set up a light by the coop to lead the way for her, and tried to coax her down. .

My first attempt to get her down was to shake the branch. THAT got her to move.
To a higher branch.

Then, I tried poking her with a golf club to "shoo" her down. She hopped around and bawked at me. What a tease.

So I busted out the ladder.
Goldie freaked out and hopped from branch to branch, always inches out of my reach.
The scene was not pretty: me in a skirt, at the top of a ladder, clinging to the tree, swatting at a hen in the branches with a plastic golf club, and getting pecked at and pooped on, while Goldie spazed and sent feathers flying everywhere. Add "coax a chicken down from a tree" to the list of things I cannot do. We all know that if she had been a kitten stuck up there, I probably would have gone to bed and left her up there to die. Goldie seemed to be aware of the fact that I'd rather be watching Big Brother on Hulu than fetching a hen from a tree and I swear she was heckling me the entire time.

Aaron thought this scene was just ridiculous. He brought a broom outside and tried to push her off the branch, but instead she was so spooked, she perched herself on the bristles of the broom to roost! Naturally, he tried to get her to fly off, so he started gently waving the broom around and banging the handle against the tree branch. She wouldn't budge and her claws held onto the end of the broom like a sticky booger that wouldn't fling. Now add to that me wiggin out the whole time, I'm screaming at Aaron, "No! Stop! Just bring her down to me like that! I can catch her! Bad chicken! Goldie! Get down! Aaron stop! You'll squish her!"

He slowly lowered the wobbly broom end down from the sky and Goldie plopped right into my arms. As I put her to bed in the coop with the others, I felt like one of those...those pet people.

You know the type...remember The Office episode where Dwight locks all the doors for his "fire safety" scare and Angela franticly throws Sprinkles into the ceiling with Oscar?

Maybe we'll change Goldie's name to Smelly Cat.
Yeah, I named my chickens.

Oh my gosh. I AM a cat lady! Ahhhh!

Remember

Do you blog?
You should. Blogging beats Facebook, and here is why:
The other night, I couldn't remember a detail about something that happened like 3 years ago.
I searched my blog archives, and sure enough, the answer was there. Booyah.


Blogging: 1 Facebook: 0.


Do you have a blog that you've been neglecting? Why? Did you run out of things to say? Do you feel like you can't blog unless you have an elegant manuscript to post?
Who cares? Out of the 133 people that have permission to view this blog, I think only 15 or so come back regularly, and y'all would come back to read no matter what I posted, right? Right. So if you're hung up on posts that you need to catch up on, or you don't have the time to edit photos or writing to perfection before posting, here is my advice:


Blog anyway.

Edit later. Catch up later. Sit and write an amazing article later. In the meantime, don't miss documenting the everyday. I've only had this blog for 5(ish) years, and there are already so many little things that when I look back and read, I know I never would have remembered had I not blogged about them. Imagine how much foggier days like today will be in 30 years.
I'll want to have access to details my memory failed to hold captive.
Whether it is 3 years or 30 years from now, when I read some of these posts, I hope that Future Meg will be filled with gratitude for:

-Corbin being out of diapers
-letting Quincy dress herself
-the paint stain on the Dogwood finally wearing off
-braving a torrential rainstorm to get blueberries and grapes in the ground
-scotch gaurding the sofa
-an easier first day of school for Reese
-Aaron's job
-helping others and accepting help offered
-literacy
-saturdays spent driving to and from the temple
-Q's hair no longer being a mullet
-choosing good friends
-hours in line to meet princesses at Disneyland
-magnifying church callings
-bagging chores and spending a day at the splash park
-skipping naps and playing in the pouring rain
-hours spent on lesson plans
-deciding to save this or get rid of that
-going on dates and little getaways with Aaron
-efforts to be more frugal
-splurging on things that mattered
-trying new things
-taking the kids to the library
-trials overcome
-saturday morning runs and soccer games
-time and money spent building and maintaining a food storage supply and 72 hr kits
-keeping my house clean
-growing our hair out to donate
-remodeling our house
-reading good books
-long drives to visit family
-battling weeds and bugs to have a garden



I know some of these are small things, but my hope is that in years to come, reading posts like the ones about raising baby chicks and the long wait for eggs will remind us of what a miracle and a blessing it is to get fresh eggs from our backyard every morning. Eggs are a novelty that will probably wear off eventually and I don't want to take it for granted. Sticky hands and syrupey kisses are a novelty I don't want to take for granted. Glue stick decorated chairs are a novelty I don't want to take for granted.
My children will not be small forever. I was slapped with that reality when I sent Reese of to 1st grade yesterday. Really? 1st grade? Pretty soon it will be high school, and all we will have of what's behind us are memories.

and hopefully, 1200 more blog posts to help us relive them.

1st Grade

Look at how brave my girl is.
She tried so hard to hold back the tears on her first day of school. We gave her a hug and a kiss and reminded her that she can do hard things, and then we left her at her desk. (Obviously) I went back and spied through the window by her classroom door. She continued to cry quietly for a few more minutes, and then a girl from her class last year went into the room and said, "Hey Reese!". I knew she'd be ok, so we left. This morning, Reese was all smiles when it was time to go to school. She happily got on the bus and blew us a kiss from her seat. Great improvement from last year. Watching her cry is difficult, but I'm not going to lie...I love feeling needed. I miss her so much more than she misses me. We had chocolate sprinkled donuts (what else?) after school, and dinner (cut into star shapes) was served on cafeteria style lunch trays.

The school year is off to a great start! We are proud of you, Reese!

"Make a Wish, Take a Chance, Make a Change..."

Our back to school party was everything I had hoped it would be for the kids. (scroll down to the last post for the lesson)
I don't have the right set of words to describe just how beautiful and peaceful the evening was, and the photos don't do it justice. It was special night I hope my children never forget. Thanks to the Irlenborn girls, Zebleys, Nielsens, and Engers for partying with us!
Prepare for photo overload

yup, that's Corbin dressed as Woody. He was the lone boy with 13 girls! I think he grunted, threw enough rocks and waved enough sticks that no one dated question his masculinity.