Somewhere Over the Rainbow

I've been gone for far too long from this blog.  It's hard to actually get time to post when Honey thinks the computer, its desk and the stool in front of it belong to him.  I find him on a daily basis lounged with his feet propped on the desk talking to the screen.  Funny boy.

So what the heck have I been up to?  Well, besides the usual laundry, cleaning and kids ...

I cleaned and organized the craft room.  That was a 3 week project.  It was really difficult for a ADHD kid like me to focus on getting this room done.  Everytime I would start in one corner I would inevitably get distracted and find myself in a some other corner of the room an hour later shuffling stickers around wondering why I stopped scrapbooking.  But the end product was worth it.  Now every tool I could possibly want is in its own place and easy to reach for an adult (a notable and important distinction for the little grabbing hands).

My favorite Frys came for a wonderful February visit.  They brought the sunshine of California in their faces and it was such fun to have them here, if only for a couple of days.  Chocolate cake, food, pedis and shopping later I sadly sent them back to the other Frys.

I took a few days to prepare for the March celebration of Little C.  And then a few more days, some nasty words (thought not spoken) and a sore back trying to put together the sand box.  It was fool's proof.  But you had to be a fool to try it.

Dear Costco,

Love most of your products.  But the sandbox?  The item is great  but the directions, which left out important pictorial details and had absolutely no written directions were atrocious.

Signed,

Foolish Mother

Part of the sandbox preparations included retrieving free sand from a church parking lot.  Apparently the church in question was ready to get rid of their volleyball pit.  So I drove my van over, lined the back with a tarp and began to shovel.  Then I drove home and unloaded it into the side yard.  An hour later, inside, I began to obsess about the possible cats and creatures that had taken a dump in it over the years.  It was like another matress fiasco.  Why do I try so hard to be frugal (read: cheap) and end up sorry (read: stupid).  So I mixed some bleach with water and "cleaned" the 1,000 pounds of sand.  And then I decided I used too much bleach and needed to rinse it.  One huge mess and 4 days later the sand was put in the box, much to the relief of my distressed 4 year old.

Do you see DH in the corner there, bringing back a load?  

I left a small amount for him to move just so he could properly appreciate the amount of effort we had put in.

Another part of the sandbox preparations was shoveling the approximately 10,000 pounds of small, sharp gravel out of our side yard.  The area measures 12 feet by 50 feet and there was roughly 4 inches of gravel throughout.  There were a lot of trips back and forth with the wheelbarrow to haul all that rock.

But the best part?  That was when, during the hauling of the millions of tiny rocks, my neighbor Mo showed up on my doorstep, shovel in hand and said that she was there to "shovel some rocks."  Three hours later we had gotten almost all of them.  Don't I have the coolest neighbor in the world?  You don't have to answer ... I already know it.

Sideyard devoid of stone; Corner in distance is where we'll build the garden boxes.

Once I finished there I started hauling the big rocks out of the corner area that will become our vegetable garden.  The plan is to build 3, 12' x 5' stone garden boxes.  I purchased some stone veneer, usually $5-$10 per square foot, off craigslist for $1.50 a square foot.  Steal!  But alas.  It's still going to be pricey to translate my in-brain vision to the real world.  Which means I'll probably get half way through the dang vision and cave because my amateur skills look nothing like the professional design I have in mind.  Sigh.

Clearly, I'm struggling with in-head/real-world existing and how the two don't usually intersect.  I started this post a week ago.  And mentally checked it off my list of things I did but actually never pushed published.  Case in point.  My apologies go out to anyone who's contacted me in the last 3 months and hasn't gotten a response.  It's floating somewhere between here and Oz.