The music in our house this week

They Might Be Giants - Here Comes Science

All 6 of us love it. From the 2 year old to the 40 year old. You cant blame us. Its catchy.


1. Science is Real
2. Meet the Elements
3. I Am A Paleontologist
4. The Bloodmobile
5. Electric Car
6. My Brother The Ape
7. What Is A Shooting Star
8. How Many Planets?
9. Why Does The Sun Shine?
10. Why Does The Sun Really Shine?
11. Roy G. Biv
12. Put It To The Test
13. Photosynthesis
14. Cells
15. Speed & Velocity
16. Computer Assisted Design
17. Solid Liquod Gas
18. Here Comes Science
19. The Ballad of Davy Crockett

Wood Burning Woes

Ive never lived anyplace with a fireplace or wood stove. In fact when I was purchasing a house some 3 years ago, I refused to even look at homes with either because of the crazy hike in homeowners insurance. Plus the fact that I had small kids and was terrified something awful would happen.
So now Oliver and I have one. We spent a week chopping wood to stack outside the back door. Easily one of my least favorite chores, second only to moving leaves.

Now we need to stove cleaned so it can actually be used without burning the house down. Then I need to have a long conversation with the kids about the wood stove rules or before long I'll have a 2 year old trying to add wood to the fire for me. Its getting colder and colder and the house is getting colder and well frankly, Im a crab-ass when Im cold. God bless the men in this house for putting up with me while we wait for the chimney guy.

It will be at least the second week of December before he arrives.

Oliver and I had a long conversation about Christianity in the car this morning. We share very similar core beliefs and both agree that organized religion is a crock. We attend a non-denominational church every Sunday and we have both spent a lot of time studying world religions and were both raised in religious homes, his Catholic, mine Christian Reformed.

I think it began this morning while listening to something on NPR and I pipped up and said I felt bad for Muslims because they as a whole get a bad rap just because like 1% of them are nutty extremists.
Oliver likened it to persecuting all Christians because theres a terribly small percentage who run around bombing abortion clinics.
We concluded together as we pulled in the driveway that perhaps true Christianity is doing the right thing because its the right thing, not because you have a fear of not going to Heaven.

P.S. Have you heard the story of the fig tree in Matthew? Jesus was hungry and pissed off. I mean, I can sympathize but still.....

And we're off!

We are back on the parenting train tonight. C and JR have returned from dads house! The house is filled with the joyful sounds of Oliver throwing out thinly veiled threats as he wreastles the kids into bed and I can hear the indignation in their little voices in return.
One of the biggest tension points in our house revolves around the kids playing too close to the huge plasma tv. C has aspergers which along with other weird quirks, he "dances", flapping his arms and dancing on his toes. JR is just a nut because hes two and a half. These two things combined cause Oliver a huge amount of stress about his poor tv. Tonight we reached a solution that works for everyone....

A circle of painters tape on the floor around the tv and then, "If I find you inside that tape I will *insert your favorite child friendly threat of bodily harm here*" and the children nodding and staring at us wide eyed.
Now that Im not on constant vigil making sure the children stay away from the tv, I can focus my energy on keeping the children away from the dogs. The dogs have fleas. FLEAS! Thats not even what concerns me. What concerns me is that we put flea junk on them today and Im completely terrified that the children will get it on themselves and then best case scenerio they give me grandchildren in the future with 3 eyes. Worst case scenerio I never get grandchildren because they die from some odd chemical poisoning.
Irrational? Maybe. Do I care? Of course not.
So I spent my evening shriekingasking them kindly to please not touch the dogs or cats.
We also made cake in an effort to turn on the oven and warm up the house...
and because Im addicted to cake. I only had to wipe one egg off the floor after JR "helped" and a quarter of the batter off the walls after C "mixed".
Just when I though relaxation was iminent seeing as the children have drifted off to sleep Oliver asked me to proof read the paper hes writting. He has many convictions and one of them is genetically modified corn. I wont lie. I couldnt care less. Im sure its important. And I do my best to be interested because I know its important to him.
Another beer and I'll be warmly receptive to all of this corn mumbo jumbo.

This is where I live

Welcome to my new home. Im still settling in. Im still exploring town to figure out what they have to offer but I dont go into town much. I do know, we are REALLY close to the lake. About 3 miles or so. Saugatuck is the gay vacation capitol of the world or something like that which is cool. Its a big vacation destination for people from Chicago. Its got almost no one in it in the winter and it explodes in the summer. It seems cute from what Ive seen so far.

Saugatuck is what it means to slow down and relax. I'm still learning.

The Grown-Ups only weekend! Ok we're actually just playing video games too

Every other weekend Oliver and I have a child-free weekend while all 4 boys are off visiting their other parent. Our scheduals are completely wonky at first glance but when you look a little harder you'll notice that we have time with just my boys, time with just his boys, all 6 of us together, and then some time for just Oliver and I. Every 2 weeks its a constant rotation. Really as far as custody issues go, I think it works out great. We are still trying to locate someone who will also take the dogs and cats away for the weekend too.

For the last month every single weekend has been us constantly running around. We have had all kinds of plans and places to be and it had just gotten ridiculous.

I declared this "Do Not Disturb" weekend.

A and JD left this morning for school and we wont see them again until Monday, C and JR will return to the house on Sunday. That mean from 8am today untill 6pm on Sunday we are doing nothing. Or rather, we're doing whatever we want and doing it in our own time. Mostly I think Oliver wants to stock up on food and beer and spend the weekend relaxing by the fire. I have some things I would like to do.... if I get around to it. Mainly taking the dogs to the beach for a run(them, not me. I dont run) and perhaps putting away laundry.

I might even look around to see if there is any decent live music around which is never an easy task. We live in a town with less than a thousand year round residents and this is the off season. Its not a very happenin place these days but one can always hold out hope.

And with that, my Do Not Disturb weekend starts. Ive been trying to decide how much personal information to devulge in this blog. Seems like the general viewing public would have an easier time understanding, and I would have an easier time writting if you all knew where we live.

I'll sleep on it.

Did I just move into a gang war?

I thought I got away from the sound of gun fire when I left the city.
Wrong.
Hunting season is opening!
Oliver is explaining hunting to me. Well the finer details anyways, like when which seasons start, and how to not accidently get shot mostly. These are things that would have been good to know BEFORE I went tromping through the woods yesterday to explore(I found trees).
I've made Oliver promise me that there will never be any dead deer hanging upside down in our yard ever. EVER. He looked uneasy but he promised.

Everyone has comfort boundries. Mine are somewhere just before dead animals strung from trees.

Fishpond: 1 Me: 0

Last week Oliver brought me home a gift.

Leather work gloves...

He used to bring me home flowers. *sigh*

This morning he was gone so I decided to put those work gloves to use in the yard. A shower, 2 shades of eyeshadow, and 4 different kinds of hair product later(hey a gals gotta look good), I was ready to go. To go get coffee anyways... You see I don't make great coffee. I make good coffee. Oliver makes the great coffee and hes not home. Coffeeshop you say? Well thats easily going to take me 45minutes round trip. Gas Station coffee it was!

I put on my work gloves and drank my coffee. All good work gloves should first be broken in with a good relaxing cup of coffee. While surveying the yard I decided that I could start raking leaves and then burn them. I hate raking and Ive never in my life burned leaves. This would require building a fire.

So I managed to get a fire started without starting myself on fire, or falling into the fire. No one has ever left me build my own fire. This is personal growth people. I got about 2 piles of leaves together and started burning them by the time Oliver got home. He had a sparkle in his eye. That "shes doing yard work!" sparkle.

I went to work around the little koi pond disgusting wreck of pond scum. The pond area is about my second favorite place in the yard. Its a little pond surrounded by rocks and plants. Its been filled with disgusting pond scum and a wooden floating duck since I got here but my goal is to fix it up so it looks nice next year. So I started moving the rocks around and pulling weeds. I got this brilliant idea that I needed to reline the edge of the pond and the garden next to it with rocks. A little voice in my head spoke up and said "If you mess with that pond you're going to fall in". I of course promptly told that voice to shut it and went about my business anyways. Well, it was right. I did fall in. Just a foot, but do you know how bad that one foot smells? Like pond scum, or crap if you're unfamiliar.

This whole time Oliver is blowing leaves around the yard and Im pretty focused on my new little rock garden. Oliver will tell you I was playing with rocks to avoid doing leaves. I of course know that is ridiculous.

In my archaeological conquest in my new found rock garden I dug up all kinds of stuff. Someone did think it was appropriate to bury broken pottery. If history has taught us anything its that pottery survives. This stuff doesn't compost(oh compost, thats coming isnt it?). I don't know what they were thinking but I learned to not garden without gloves. Ok I don't garden. I cant keep anything alive. Like I said, dirt's not my thing.

Eventually Oliver sucks me into using the leaf blower right after he teaches me how to use it. This is about the same time as the kids get off the bus and come up the drive. I couldnt hear them but I know they were begging Oliver for a turn with the blower. But alas, I blew leaves for an hour. That does not do good things to your body. Why do people use those things! My arm still feels crazy from all the vibrating.

I told Oliver about my trip into the pond tonight around the fire. He laughed so hard I thought he would fall over. Im glad someone thought my smelly foot was funny.

I was also informed that theres a giant angry woodchuck out back that Oliver is going to shoot very soon.

Oh boy