Found in the Bushes

My last blog was kinda sappy and made too many people sad so I'm moving on to the here and now. Today Bryce (our 18 year old son home from college and preparing for his mission. He just had his wisdom tooth out and is home recovering. Our idea of recovery is yard work. He can't wait to go to his city job on Monday!) was trimming the huge hedge out front and found this water bottle partially full of a dark yellow unidentified liquid hidden deep inside the bush. Ewwww. After using tongs to extract it I took a this picture. 

I have several ideas about what this mysterious liquid might be but my mind tends to go right to the most morose scenario. And I'm way too grossed out to actually unscrew the lid and smell it or anything. It is obviously not just old bottled water. 

So maybe like Nancy Drew I'll try to gather information from the many suspects out there. I do have boys and know that often they hate to stop what they're doing to come inside to use the facilities when nature calls - but i doubt a water bottle would have been a necessary receptacle in that instance.  So if any of you have any theories, ideas - or confessions - please post them here. Thanks for your help in solving the Mystery of the hidden water bottle containing yellow liquid.

Babyhood

While I'm thinking about my babies and growing up and all that nostalgic stuff I might as well embarrass myself further and post this little thing I wrote (kind of a poem I guess) about my grandson, Conner. I was lying next to him, trying to help him fall asleep, on the night before his mommy (my daughter, Julie) was going to come home from the hospital with his new baby brother. Conner was innocently unaware of how much his life would change - all for the better - but nonetheless, he would not be the baby anymore. (Sorry Julie and you other young moms if this makes you sad. It's really not that bad. You never miss diapers.)

On the night before

the new baby comes home

your two-year-old fingers cling to mine

as if holding on to something you don't want to lose.

Sleep creeps up and lowers your two-year-old eyelids - you can't

keep it back! Like growing up, you can't stop it, can't keep

it wrapped tightly like two-year-old fingers

now relaxing around mine, and 

babyhood drifts away

like a dream.

Growing up or Growing Old Continued

Luke, 6 months.
Luke, 30 yrs. (i guess i won't be writing his age on the back of his portraits anymore) Here with his wife Emily (forever 19 looking), Spencer (3) and Camille (18mo.)

If you have read my blog in the last few minutes you would realize that I accidentally posted it before getting very far - twice! I am still really struggling with this being over 30 and trying to be techie.

So to continue .... The blogs of those young mothers bring back lots of memories of life when my five children were all shorter than I am and I was the center of the three-ring circus we called home. I loved it, even though I complained too much all the way through those wild years.

My oldest "baby" just turned 30 this month. (yikes!) I can't possibly be old enough to have a 30-year old child even if I was a mere child myself when he was born. His baby picture is a little fuzzy because in those days we had cameras that used film (if you have any, you better save it to show your kids - they will have no idea what you're talking about) and had to wait weeks for the prints to be developed. So I took a picture of his baby picture with my iphone to post on this blog - thus the fuzz.(I love my iphone almost as much as my family - and a lot more than blogger!!)

I think I loved having kids around so much because I could keep pretending I wasn't growing up. My favorite part of the week now is when I help in my friend's Kindergarten classroom. I can do all the things I most love to do with a bunch of friends - fingerpaint, cut things up, glue things on, listen to stories, sing silly songs, build with wooden blocks, wipe my nose on my sleeve and giggle.

Kindergarten reminds me of all the other things I loved about childhood too: pretending, dressing up, playing outside instead of "exercising", tasting something for the first time, building forts, having races (ok, skinned knees, but then someone to kiss it and make it better) climbing trees, swinging, tag, hiding in really small places, watching airplane tracks in the sky while lying in the grass, never worrying about time or schedules (someone will just tell me what to do next) and, of course, TOYS!

I know I have a double standard - I've sometimes told my children (and myself actually) to  "grow up" - be responsible, make decisions, think about others, take care of your stuff and lots of other things that I know are important and that we really must do. But my fear is I'll forget what it's like to be a kid and then that would be going too far! That would be growing OLD - my biggest fear of all time - the really big monster under my bed! I don't want to grow old more than I didn't want to eat tomatoes when I was six! 

Of course, there's really no preventing the birthday thing - even my 30-year-old son has to accept the fact that he will never again be able to blow out all the candles at once. But do we have to grow old? Thank heavens for grandchildren!!! And thank heavens for their parents who let me hang out with them now and then. With them I can keep pretending!

Growing Up or Growing Old

Most of the blogs I read are from young mothers. I love seeing the pictures of their babies and kids and reading about their fun/busy lives. I realize I've forgotten just how exhausting and crazy it can get, but I remember enough to be quite impressed that they still find time to blog.

Growing up or

Blogging Blues

I sometimes wonder if I will ever truly get up to speed with computers and every other form of technology.  If I had a picture of me going cross eyed and pulling out my hair (luckily, I don't) I'd post it (if I could remember how) to illustrate how I feel most of the time when I sit in front of this screen.  It has something to do with my age because all my friends (well those who know how to turn on their computers) feel the same way.

   But  teenagers (or anyone under 30 really) can't understand my frustrations. Their fingers fly over the keys(even if they are microscopic keys). They know short cuts, uploads, downloads, uplinks, weblinks, itunes, youtubes, facebook, myspace, inyourface, insync (oh, i think thats a music group), twitter, jitterbug, subwoofers, - scroll here, click that, hold down the shift/apple/return/delete/F10 key at once - it's so easy!!!! 

And they - and all of you consistant bloggers out there - somehow fit all this technological knowhow into your day without even having to figure out how it works first or call the apple support people(over and over), or write post it notes of instructions to yourself, or heaven forbid look at an instruction manual! (do those things still exist?).  

So I may never catch up and my blogs may be few and far between. But I do have another site that I can navigate quite easily. It's called myinnerspace. Those brilliant(or not) ideas that aren't making it to this Blog will all be there. If any of you would like to visit my new site and access my unblogged blogs just call me. I do know how to use the phone!