Nature Invasion

I love living in the country. It is peaceful. Nature surrounds us. Nature invades us. That part I don't like.

The kids were in bed, a gentle breeze was blowing in the open windows, the sounds of frogs, and crickets floated through the air. It was utterly peaceful. I seized the moment. I grabbed a book, opened all the windows in my bedroom, and climbed under the cozy blankets to read. Nobody knows how to party like I do.

I quietly read for at least ten minutes, hardly daring to believe I was lucky enough to participate in a leisure activity, when I heard the rattling of the screen door that leads from my bedroom to my back deck. I thought it was the wind, and did not tear my eyes away from the words I was devouring in the book I was reading. But the rattling continued. I chose to glance toward the door, more out of instinct that actual decision, just in time to see a black MOUSE ENTER MY BEDROOM! It squeezed under the screen door, scampered across the carpet, and caused my heart to pound like a jackhammer. I flung books, pillows, and blankets in all directions as I attempted to climb the wall and take refuge on the ceiling. This, along with blood curdling screams, induced the mouse to turn right back around and exit my room by the same route he had entered it.

So, now I know that screaming and throwing things is an effective weapon against mice.

And I think I need a cat.

Terrible Wreck

"Mom! Let me in!" Emery screamed outside my bathroom door.
"I'm not dressed," I explained.
"It doesn't matter!"
Sensing the distress of the situation, I left the water in the shower running, dripped across the bathroom to my robe, and quickly put it on. When I opened the door, a blond-headed, red-faced girl howled in my direction.
"Did someone hurt you?" I asked, alarmed. "Did you break something? Are you scared?"
"Worse!" And she shoved her foot into my face. It will never cease to amaze me how a child, when scared, can contort their body into a multitude of gymnastic shapes in order to bring attention to the injured part. But what I saw left me woozy.
"Your toe is all bloody," I yelled, because I'm good at deducing things.
"I was climbing the apple tree, and I reached for a really big apple, but I fell, and when I was falling down the tree a piece of bark slid between my skin and my toenail."
"Eww," I muttered as the darkness closed in around me and my knees turned to jello. "We'll have to get tweezers and pull it out."
"You can't," she cried. "It's not a solid piece of wood. It's all soft and when you pull on it, it just crumbles."
So I carried her, in my soaking wet robe, to the kitchen and put her foot in the sink. After soaking it in water long enough for my scalp to stop tingling, I told her to bite into an apple really hard as a distraction while I tried using a needle to pry the chunk of bark out from under her toenail. Alas, the child spoke truly when she said that the bark just crumbled. The needle was totally ineffective. Then I placed the poor girl into a bath hoping the warm water would eventually disintegrate the wood. The only thing that course of action succeeded in doing was to irritate the poison sumac rash that covered her body.  Finally, I attempted to use a needle to scrape the crumbly substance out of my daughter's nail bed. That action induced screaming likely to cause deafness in our neighbors. She bit my brush in half and screamed so loudly I expected my eardrum to climb out of my body and run away.


We spent the rest of the evening in the ER where she brought the nurses to tears with her sad face. They rushed to give her ice, Advil, a pillow, a pony. That is when I decided to take her with me every time I have to wait for endless hours.

The doctor finally numbed her toe and dug out all the bark with special tweezers only doctors are allowed to play with.

Then Emery's phone buzzed. She had a text from a friend asking how she was doing. Without even a slight pause, Emery responded, "I am a terrible wreck."

I looked at her laying on the paper-coated table with a nasty rash all over her body from poison sumac, a horrifying big toe,  tears running down her blotchy, red face, and I agreed with her diagnostic.

But she's my sweet, little, terrible wreck.

Disaster Muffins

Some weekends are gentle and leave you feeling relaxed and refreshed. Mine wasn't. It came in like a lion and devoured me. But that is another blog for another time. The point is that I was tired. More like exhausted. So, at 10:00 Saturday night I should have gone to bed, but I had to make muffins for Jesus.

My church is pretty awesome. It is full of great people that I really like, we do a lot of fun stuff, and it meets in a movie theater so sometimes I get popcorn, and that is about all I need to make me happy. Because football season is upon us, and because my church is pretty great, before church this Sunday we had a tailgating party. We all met in the parking lot, brought breakfast food, and celebrated great weather and football before church. Which is why I was making muffins at 10:00 the night before.

I am not what you would call a baker. I don't bake. But, I decided muffins were pretty safe, and to make them extra special, I added some of the delicious Michigan blueberries my mom gets for me every year. They are bigger and juicier and sweeter than any blueberries you can imagine. I added them with a smile just imagining all the church folk devouring the muffins and pounding down my door for the recipe. I would say, "Well, first you have to go to Michigan and pick the blueberries."

I'm not sure what happened. There really is no explanation. They were a disaster. They never got puffy on the top, and they needed to bake much longer than the recipe called for. When I tried to take them out of the muffin tin, they exploded.


Due to the large amounts of hysterics, my husband sensed something in the kitchen was amiss. He entered the kitchen, sized up the situation, told me to go watch TV, and totally redeemed the situation. He, the muscular construction guy, made beautiful muffins.

I'm not a baker.

Classical Music

The classical music station owes me about a thousand gallons of gas.

When my kids are riding in the car with me the radio station has to be set to screamo, rap, or rock that rocks. And we have to listen to it loud. While I can only handle about three rap songs before I begin to rip out my hair by the roots, I am actually growing to enjoy the screamo. I sometimes even play it while the age appropriate people aren't with me.

But, sometimes, when the rulers of the radio dial exit the vehicle, I push that dial to the classical station. Violin concertos and piano sonatas fill my mind. They fill my mind and leave no room for such mundane thought as, "I'm going to the grocery store." I just drive. I don't mean to. I mean to do my errands in a timely fashion and return home to accomplish housework. But, instead, I just drive. I have ended up downtown when I was headed to the jr. high school. I have chased a long forgotten gravel road, wondering where it ended, when I intended to show up for my haircut.

Violins are my favorite. They make my soul smile.

I get wrapped up in the story of the music. I want to lie in the grass and watch the clouds decorate the sky. I do not want to shop for bread and milk and boy's underwear. And I usually don't. Which is why the classical music station has cost me a thousand gallons of gas. And my boys wear old underwear full of holes.

"It's okay kids," I want to say. "You might not have breakfast or underwear, but my soul is smiling."

Worth it.