What day is it?

Oh, right.  It's Monday.  Okay I'm all caught up now.  It's summer, the kids are not back in school yet...once S got done with summer camp the days all started to sort of run together.

I'm just going to ramble.  The kids start back to school in one week.  I don't know what I will do with myself, that first day.  I know I will be freakin' tired because we will all be getting up at, like, 6:30 a.m. so that Elder Daughter will be ready for me to take her to school by 7:45.  6:30 A.M., people. I'm a SAHM, and my kids have never been early risers, so this is an adjustment with every new school year.  I may have a ride to school for her, so that Younger Daughter and I don't have to get in the car, take Elder Daughter to school, then come back home and get Younger Daughter further ready for school before her van comes to pick her up at almost 8:30.  Frickity-frack.  We are having a garage sale on Thursday. Here are some photos of the stuff for sale:

 Here you see bins of clothes; a sit'n'spin which neither of my kids could really use; bins of books

Clothes rack with the kids' too-small Halloween costumes, and too-small dresses

 Books, these were my husband's. I was surprised he was willing to part with this many.

This is the growing pile of to-be-sold stuff.  I took this picture several weeks ago, the pile got much bigger and spread to the other side of the garage as well.  Cleaned out a lot of stuff from the basement - toys, lots of those; books; three old televisions which have a VCR attached (not sure if they work, they'd need a converter thing); a printer/fax machine; a printer; a record-player/cassette player/radio thing; an old Apple computer; a Little Tikes slide; a Little Tikes "Cozy Coupe" (those red and yellow plastic cars that moves with foot-power); several car seats; two playpens.  And many more bits of flotsam and jetsam.  Oh!  In the process of cleaning I found my roller blades!  I wouldn't put those on again if you paid me, I'm sure I would break something.  I also found my ice skates; I may end up keeping those as they almost fit Elder Daughter at this point (and they don't fit me, not that I'm really fit enough to ice skate at this point).

I have to admit, while it was incredibly liberating to take bag after bag of stuff out to the garage, or fill many trash bags with stuff for trash day, I did hit a point where going through the kids' stuff got difficult and I had to take a break.  I mean, I know they don't play with this stuff anymore, or wear whatever it is - but it is still hard to continuously let it go.  I'm not having any more kids...these girls are It.  So in letting these things go I am simultaneously letting "That Part" of my life go.  Which means not only are the kids getting older...so am I.  Here is the item which stopped me in my tracks, and I had to stop sorting for the day:

It's a small, blue, plastic wagon.  It's small enough that the kids couldn't ride in it but I think S would put her stuffed animals in it and take them for a ride.  I don't even think she is that attached to it.  But for whatever reason, I got to this little wagon - and just had to stop making decisions about all the "stuff" for that day. 

I'm keeping the wagon.





So the sale is in three days.  I'm about ready to just put up a sign that says "everything's $1" and be done with it.  Not excited to be out in the garage for the next few days, pricing everything.  I told someone once that I would love to get my house emptied out to such a point that, should some emergency arise where we had to move, we could be completely packed up in two days.  I don't think such a thing is possible when it's a family of four; inevitably there's just too much needed for daily living to have such a spare living space!  So I've gotten rid of quite a bit this summer, and will enjoy making money watching more of it go to people who will hopefully use it.  But I'd say we are still a pack-up-the-house-in-one-week-at-least family.

Elder Daughter starts middle school on Monday. She is wearing makeup now.  She is not too heavy-handed with it...but I have to say, it is still an odd sensation for me, to look at her with makeup on.  She complains, when washing it off at night, that the soap stings her eyes.  I (rather unsympathetically, I know) responded, "welcome to the world of makeup".  She also is all up-to-date with her shots, now - got three altogether last week.  Two in one arm, and the shot area proceeded to hurt a bit and swell up a little.  One of the shots was the meningitis vaccine...have you heard those commercials?  Well, I don't even need the commercials really, we've probably all heard the news stories where a young person got meningitis and passed away a day later.  That scenario scares the cr*p out of me.  We go to the middle school tomorrow, to get her schedule and hopefully track down the whoever-it-is that can correct her schedule (K was horrified to find out they think she's taking choir.  She's actually supposed to be signed up for orchestra.  I'm not sure why Choir is so horrifying.).  S will have to come with us and I'm sure that will (NOT) be fun, as I'm sure K will be totally embarassed by S staring at everyone.

It has been an okay summer, I guess.  We had about 10 days of really ugly heat, and that was about it; it's actually a bit cool-ish outside at the moment.  The pool we set up has lasted, thankfully, without collapsing - it's not on level ground, and when you fill up a pool with about 4500 gallons of very heavy water and the pool isn't on 100% level ground, you end up eye-ing the thing every day wondering if it's going to make it.  I was pricing pool heaters the other day.  Since it is starting to get chillier here at night, and the pool is in the shade most of the day, the water is, uh, not exactly fun to swim in.  Did you know that pool-water heaters cost anywhere from $150 - $1600???  I don't think we need the super-expensive one, thank God!  But Elder Daughter's b-day party is supposed to include swimming....which will save me from having to think up appropriately-amusing party games for 5-6 pre-teen girls...so I may go ahead and invest in the heater!  I did not end up teaching K how to cook this summer.  Well, correction:  One morning after dropping S off at camp, I came home and showed K how to toast two waffles in the toaster oven for her breakfast.  Silly me, even though she seemed to be awake, lucid, and paying attention, she now does not remember me EVER SHOWING HER THAT.  Seriously.  I also would have been challenged to get her excited about learning to cook.

Okay, okay....I chickened out on the cooking thing.  She and I butt heads about so many things sometimes...including and definitely NOT limited to how she treats her sister...that I was not eager to do the cooking thing because I know she would have fought it.  I mean, yes, of course, in 10 or 15 or 20 years she'd have all these great memories maybe, and perhaps she's be inspired to become the next Ir.on Chef or whatever.  But in the moment, to be honest...I was just intensely grateful that the two kids had some time apart, and didn't exert myself to "force" K to spend her sister-free time doing something she probably would have fought me about.  Oh well, such is life.

Ah, enough rambling.  Thanks for visiting,
Later,
Jen