Yellow is the color of .... work.

I am tired of seeing YELLOW!

I put up about 45 squash yesterday. It was a decent amount. The I fried I dont know how many. It was actually more than we could eat in 2 days. And we can eat the hell outa some fried squash.

Then today I ended up doing another bushel. The kids have helped me alot. I am real proud of them. They helped me slice them, lay them out to drain and cool and bag them up.
I did catch Rayley eating a few of them. They couldnt have been that good. I only blanched them, so they wernt done. Plus they were bland. I didnt season them at all. But she was eating them instead of putting them in bags.

I got another 15 quarts today. BR told me that would be enough and not do fill up the freezer with squash. He loves it, but not that much. I have news for him. We might be eating alot of stuff we dont like here pretty soon. I also fried 2 chickens today. There is a little left, and made corn. Bow got corn and applesauce for lunch and something struk his funny bone during an extra large bite. He started laughing, sucked it up his nose and then sneezed. I think I got most of it out of my hair.

Then I decided to be a nice mommy and make a lemon cake. And Brett had wanted lemon icing on it. So I did that too. Somehow I ended up with a big glob of that in my hair too. I am actually glad its not as long as it used to be. I used to sit on it. at least now there is less to get messy.

I honestly dont care to see yellow for quite a while. On top of all that yellow, we gave Bow corn yesterday, and so I am seeing it from all sides. The kids couldnt wait to get some of the cake. And I swear I have the oddest kids. Rayley would only eat the middle cause she doesnt like icing ( I really dont either..) and Matt hated the cake altogether. BRett ate about half his peice and that was it. He said it was cause he was full. But I know him. He didnt like it, but he remembers me telling him that he wouldnt like it when he insisted that he wanted it. Since he put up such a fight and begged me to make it he wont admit he doesnt like it. Which is fine. I know, he knows, and deep down, he knows I know.

I got an email from his teacher today. He has 5 zero's in Lanuguage. Please explain to me how a 3rd grader gets 5 zero's? Please.

Now the first one, I can see. And I can almost see his teacher not bothering to throw that in when she writes me an email daily to tell me he giggled during class. But on the second one I am wondering why I wasnt notified. Now I can see it from a kids mo-ronic point of view. 'I got away with one, lets see about this one.. see if I can get away with doing nothing'. But shouldnt she have informed me that day when she wrote to tell me he asked to go pee 3 times that day?

THEn on the 3rd one.. I am seeing a pattern. She must not be. Heck he got away with it twice, why not go for broke?

The 4th one is a little more upsetting. ANd the 5th one.... Why tell me now? is 5 the magic number? He is now failing. And granted he should always do his work. He should NEVER not do his assignments. BUT what kid is not going to try to get away with something? If you turn your back when you see them sneak a peice of candy they will try it again. The second time you ignore them sneaking it they will possibly grab a 3rd peice. and before you know it they have the whole damn bag and you are having a chocolate fit and all you can find is an empty bag, with lots of empty wrappers in their bedclothes. KNOWIN they aint allowed to eat anywhere but the kitchen.

Anyway, I wrote her back. told her to send them home wiht him and I would make sure they got done. To please let me know if he was missing anything else ( do you think if he got away with not doing 5 assignments he wouldnt try it with all of them? ) and Thanked her for her concern.

I know what happened. She was having to turn in the 6 weeks grades and fiqured it out. I still dont see how this would fly. Unless she gave them 5 papers in one day and he just had a day he played and did nothin.

He came home today and I asked about it. asked where they were. He said he only did 3 papers. I asked why. he said he needed copies of the others and she didnt have the copies. I asked why he didnt already have the copies. He said he was absent that day.

I honestly have never looked forward to my kids being home for the summer. They eat like 8 grown mules, they scream and run, and jump, they go in and out of the house all day, they are always bringing home some weird animal/insect/reptile, They stink. literly. They loose everything from their shoes to their shirts. (I find them out in the woods or in the pasture), They make it impossible for BR to sleep during the day and I can just imagine how hard it will be for Bow to sleep. BUT I am so freaking glad to be out of school.

If he can just pass. I know that he has enough good grades to pass even if this 6 weeks is a failure. BUT I dont want him to fail a six weeks. EVER.

Yesterday was Matts girlfriends birthday. He didnt tell me till like 9 o clock at night, but I went and got a little trinket I had bought on clearence for Rayley for a birthday or Christmas or such and wrapped it up for him. HE told me that she loved it.

Poor Brett has decided to give up on girls. he still likes a little girl, but her parents wont let her like boys yet. They said she was too young for a boyfriend. So he is just always repeating "I just give up on girls"

And Bow has a new trick. He can get out of his car seat. Its a infant seat, and has the shoulder harness' that then connect to a buckle that comes up between his legs, they also pull together and are connected mid chest.

He moves his shoulders, flips his body around, pushes his legs, and somehow manouvers himself right around onto his side, then keeps twisting around until he is on his tummy, Then its just a few pushes and he is over the back of the car seat and closing the 3 inch gap between the back of the middle front seat and the back of his car seat. And he is just so damn proud when he does it. I had to stop 3 times yesterday and resecure him. ANd I cant get it any tighter. I have tried everything. I have moved the straps, I have made sure they were snug, I dont know what else to do. I guess he just wants to face foward like the big kids. I dont blame him, but shoot. I cant afford the ticket.

So for Rayleys birthday he is getting a car seat.

And a gate. I need a gate for him too. to keep him out of the kitchen. I swear he is already fast as greased lighting. You cant take your eyes off him for a second.

Rayley has decided that she needs 'ballentina restructions' I wish I could. But its just too far into town to even consider it. She loves to show me her 'practices' all the time. And she LOVES jewerly. Tonight I swear she had on each and every little cheap peice of jewerly I have ever gotten her. ANd she is starting to want to wear it to town. which means I need to get her some cute costume jewerly. She has some. a few cute necklaces, or bracelets. Not nice nice stuff, but something other than the chunky mardigras like beads or those fake dress up earrings. Oh and earrings.. ACK! I was raised with my grandfather saying "if God wanted holes in your ears he would have put them there" and I was the lucky one, I got my ears peirced at 9 years old. My mom was 18 and my grandmother was 42. LOL I was 15 when I got my second hole and I swear my grandfather was so mad he could have bit a nail in two. But gosh I loved them. he really freaked out when at 30 I got my belly button done. Wait till he see's the tatoo I want.
But I aint fixin to get hers done. No way in hell. Just like last night at the ballpark. She had worn a necklace and bracelet and a ring. well she went to play in the dirt pile. Then was back in 5 minutes. She wanted me to hold them. so they didnt get messed up. With earrings she would be an ER visit waiting to happen. It would get jerked out the first hour when she ran through the living room, over the top of the couch and launched herself at an unsuspecting brother walking by.

So now she has these 'earring stickers' that she uses. But we are about out of pink ones.. And that is a major tragedy. I will have to try to find some more. I have been looking everywhere. But I cant find a large quanity of them. Last time I found a sheet of like 50. so I bought a few sheets.

Tomorrow BR will be off, and I have to get some stuff cleaned around here. I still have to make my grape Jelly, and I would like to get that done pretty soon. I need to clean out my cabinets and the freezer. and I need to do up all the laundry that just appeared when I told the boys to clean their room.

Just what is a month worth to you?

We have owned our home for 2 years and one month.

Do you know what that means?

YEP. it means the warrenty on the AC is out. and its 95 degrees outside. Which is actually cooler than my house was last night and all day today. MUCH cooler.

Remember when we had the storm and I didnt have electric all mornin? Well my ice maker hasnt worked since then. Of course once I got to thinking about it I realized why. 9 days after our one year anniversary it went out last time. Come to find out there is a motherboard in there. I know that a fridge is one of the oldest appliences, yet they have seen fit to equipt even the cheapest models with a freakin computer. I kid you not. This thing aint fancy, its the BOTTOM of the line. It came in a trailer house for Petes sake. It has a ice and water dispencer. well those quit working. so we would have to dump the ice. THEN some part went wonky and it started spraying water EVERYWHERE! you couldnt even OPEN the freezer, it was Frozen shut. The frozen cascade of water was pretty, sorta.
I spent 147.00 getting that fixed. 9 days after the warrenty ran out. I didnt fix the dispenser thing, cause when I asked about it, his words were "oh wow, thats expensive to fix" .... as opposed to 150.00?? HELL NO!
Now its a year and 12 days since I got it fixed. and it no longer makes ice. It doesnt even try. There is no water going in. at all. I am NOT going to get someone else out here. I am just not. So I am having to MAKE ice. The old fashioned way. Not a big deal, except we go through ALOT of ice a day. okay, I go through alot a day. I guess at least this time its not shooting water. unless it is, and its shooting it behind the fridge... I hadnt thought about that..

Anyway, about 4 days ago we were sitting here and I smelt something burning, so I jumped up and made sure the stove wasnt on. I walked all around. I just got a wiff and couldnt find anything. Even the boys smelt it. BR told me to sit down, he couldnt smell anything and I was loosing my mind.. Little does he know. I lost it a LONG time ago. Oct 21, of 1992 to be exact.

anyway, we were sitting here and a little while later I smell it again. BR still says I am crazy as a loon.

The next day the house starts getting hot. And I smelt smoke again. This time BR says he thinks he smells it too, but it might just be living with a crazy person is rubbing off on him. I wish living with someone who picked up their plate would rub off too. So I go and check, sure 'nuff, we need to clean out the filters. While he is blowing them out he says he found my smell. its dust.

Okay, I'll accept that. ( its better than the alternative) we put them back on. the whole thing is kinda dusty in there, and it is Sunday, so I decide to vacumm it. This sends Rayley into a tailspin. She starts screaming bloody murder to not vacumm up Bow. She doestn stop screaming this for the entire 20 minutes I am vacumming. I did the walls and all.

We put the filters back on and it is sorta cooling. But the next day BR is awoken at 12:30 with the house at 85 degrees. its all froze up. So he blow dries it off and cleans a little on the coils and then goes to work. He forgot to tell me since I was at the school all day and didnt know I wasnt aware of it. But when I got home it was running fine. Then I had to go back to town and thats when he called to tell me I should have turned it up to like 78 to make sure it didnt freeze up again. It was too late by then. When I got home it was froze up of course. I turned it off and went through most of the night, then turned it back on.

He got home Tuesday morning as I was leaving. Sure enough it was frozen back up. But he cleaned it out adn this time blew it all out with his air compressor. he went to bed and when I got back home at 1 it was doing just fine. then I left again at 5 and when I got home it was froze up. I left it off all night last night. Then wehn I got the boys up at 6 I turned it back on and went to sleep. At 7 he woke me up saying it had frozen back up in the hour I had been asleep and so he cleaned it off again. went and turned it back on and in less than a minute it was a solid block of ice. Plus the fan wasnt running.

So I got up, I didnt want to. This was the only day I was going to get to sleep in this week. but I did. I called my dad. He is a HVAC guy. But lives far far away. he told me to test the thermostat. So we got a wire, jumped from the red to the green wires and it clicked and hummed a little. He also told me some of them have a kill switch if the cover is not on good, so we checked that, and while I was checking it I saw the breakers. I told BR to flip them, and in the meantime I would go back and jump the wires again. Cause my imitation of what it was doing was not good enough for him to make a diagnosis. Why he sent me in there to listen to what it did while he jumped the wires I dont know. But he did.
Anyway, I jumped the wires and he starts hollerin at me to stop!! stop!! stop!! this time I could hear the pop plumb across the house and then the griding of the motor. and once I got in there I could smell the smoke. It had also been sparking he said.

funny, the smoke smelled JUST like what I had been smelling for days. But I didnt say that. cause I can promise you, if I had brought it up, I would have heard "well you idiot!, why didnt you tell me you smelt smoke? this could have burned down the house!!"

Well, I started calling and called my dad back, he said to check my warrenty, I'd only had the house 2 years and 5 is usually the timeline.

I found it and sure enough, it was a 2 year warrenty. I kid you not.

So I called a repairman, they told me it would be about 200.00 for them to do it. labor. parts were extra. So I called to find otu the price of parts. JUST a motor and a .co.... cros.. ... something else. 250.00 I asked him all the pertinant questions, did it have the mounting bracket, was the exact same wires on it, what was the HP. everything. Because he refused to allow me to give him the part number. He wanted the unit number and looked it up that way. I even reminded him that I needed the little black cylender thing called a .... ACK! my mind is just NOT working, anyway. I described it. He swore it was all there, that it was all I would need and to just come and get it.
While I was on the phone with them, my mom called, she was on her way to town. Did I need anything?

YEP! gallon ziploc freezer bags, cause I have a bushel of squash to put up, and a fan motor.
She went to town. BR tore it apart and went to bed. it was already 86 degrees in the house and it wasnt even 9.

She showed back up just a little while later and I got the motor in here. The first thing I noticed was the 4 inch black cylender was NOT a 4 inch tall black cylender. it was a 3 inch oval shaped squatty thing. So I opened the box.
Sure enough it was NOT the right one. The brackets were diffent. These were a 90 degree angle, and were on there with a metal band that could be removed. MINE were at a 45 and were on there by brads.

I called back, the guy said "well you will just have to bring it on back up here.I cant diagnose these things over the phone" uhhhhhh I have the PART number.

Anyway, I controlled my temper adn then dressed myself and Bow and drove us to town.
Once I got there I had to get out Bow, tote in the new motor, go back out, tote in the OLD motor, so he could look at it. Then go BACK out to get the .... what the hell ever part it was..

He looked at it and said "are you sure it doesnt fit?"

I hate condesending, know it all men. I politely told him that YES I was sure. the angles alone would make it so it wouldnt fit.

He ended up getting on the phone with the manufacter or something. I could hear half the conversation and then I hear "Mr, I am NOT telling this lady that, she might shoot me right on the spot. her unit is ONLY 2 years old."

He decided at that point that I could get a ring like the one that came on it and just change it out. It was at a 45* angle. They only run about 34.00. Like I didnt have to waste that much deisel going to town. This is the 5th time this week. And I am NOT hapy about that.


I returned everything to my truck, one item at a time. and drove back home. It was like walking out of a steam room into a superheavyduty steam room. The house was already in the mid 90's.

WHen BR woke up he started to fix it. It didnt take long, but I was so hot and so tired of being hot that it seemed like forever. Once we got it put back in the house had topped 100.


That was at noon. its well after 11 now and its still in the 80's in here. but its blowing again. And I am SOO happy. Once the house was starting to cool off I decided I couldnt wait any longer and had to blanch and freeze the squash. I had a bushel of them. Of course my mom got me 2 gallon ziploc bags so, I had to make sure I didnt fill them up. She said all she saw was 'gallon' and picked them up. Of course they are in a box twice the size of a gallon box. LOL I am trying to not blanch them as hard, maybe I will be able to batter and fry them in the winter. I dont like them cooked down iwth onions.

I spent the last two days at the school, we are trying to wrap up a few loose ends. Then I have been trying to get together about 100 prepacks of school supplies to sell to the kids for school next year. You wouldnt belive how hard that is. I am tring to find all the prices online so it will easy to decide the best price to charge. I have just been researching. Ihavent made the order yet.


Well since the heat took so much out of me I am gona go to bed. I have typed half of this with my eyes closed and keep falling asleep midsentence. :)

The end is drawing near.

well Matts season is offically over. I for one am glad to hear it. He didnt live up to his promise and work as hard as he should have, and therefor didnt make allstars. I hate it for him. He is always one step behind Brett. And sadly he doesnt have the drive to live up to his potential. With just a little effort he could give Brett a run for his money. ANd in somethings surpass him.

But I did do the averages tonight. And although I didnt keep all the errors (cause it was sometimes just a comedy of errors) I did keep them on average and did keep batting stats. He was a WHOLE lot better than I gave him credit for. WAY better. There were only a few kids with a higher batting average than him. And that was just by one or two base hits. And contrary to him being moved into the outfield, he had a MUCH lower error percentage than alot of the others.

And I am not just saying this cause I am his mom. cause that hasnt been proven yet. DNA tests are still too expensive

I just hope I can come up with a way to make this child work harder for what he wants. I have tried, really I have. But it just never seems to sink in.

Anyway, enough depressing stuff. BRett has 3 games left. and then its nothing for the summer. I am looking forward to it.
I have a few more PTA meetings, then a few during the summer and thats about it. We are almost done with the yearbook, I have about 2 days worth of typing to do and then I will be duty free for a while.

But I have a feeling that Bow will make sure I dont have any free time. His favorite activity is to stand up. He pulls up on anything he can get his chubby little hands on. I have taken to ringing the living room with laundry baskets ( cause they are always there, and always full, and everyones always diggin in them)partly to keep him in and partly to keep the dogs out. I wanted to cut down on my vaccuming. Well he will climb INTO the basket, stand up, play, squeal, then climb out the other side. Usually tipping it over with himself. THen he is off to the kitchen. You cant keep him corralled. He isnt content wiht just pulling up and standing, he wants to pull up, get in, get over and get out.

He also LOVES a bath. I will put about an inch of water in the tub, put him in and he gets on his hands and knees and scrapes like a bull fixing to attack. Its hillarious. He will squeal and splash and just have a grand time. He isnt talking yet. Thank God. But he babbles like he knows what he is saying.


I should be getting some squash in the next day or two. I will have to put it up once I get it, but a few bushels will be nice. I am not real big on the frying it down with onions in it. I prefer mine to be sliced thin, breaded and deep fried. Same with my maters and okra. I think I am gona attempt to fiqure out a way to put up some green maters so I can fry them when I get a hankerin for them. I swear, there is nothing that says summer more to me than a plate full of friend green tomatoes. unless its accompnied by a helpin of fried okra, and some corn on the cob. And a pork chop.

BR told me to start laying out a hog pen and a chicken coop. Meat prices are killing us, so we need to start raising our own. I used to have chickens, but when we moved I didnt have anywhere to put them, so I gave them to my neighbor. I sure miss those real eggs. There is something to be said for fetchin an egg and frying it up. Nothin tastes better. If you ever eat one you will turn up your nose at those 2 month old things you buy at the store. They have NO flavor. But this time I will also be raising up some pullets. But thats a little ways down the line. Right now I just have to find the resources to get a coop built.

This weekend we helped my inlaws put in a new grey water line. Luckily BR had the tractor so there was very little hard work involoved. for him. The rest of us were the lackeys. But it was easy, and quick. There were 5 adults working. WOuld have been 6, but my mother in law kept getting in the way so we sent her off.

Sunday I did NOTHING. There are just days when you dont feel like getting up and brushing your hair. I really like those days. I have a feeling that I will enjoy a bunch of them this summer.

On the way home tonight as we got closer to the house we started to see smoke. We were on the other side of a curve and the smoke was centered where my house is. I had all the kids with me and I tell you, the urge to turn the truck around was so great. BUT, I kept going. The kids all got interested. They asked what was on fire. and said they hoped it wasnt someone's house. My heart was still in my throat. But luckily as we came around the curve we saw all the VFD sitting on the side of a pasture putting out a grass fire. The wind had shifted it so the smoke was sitting on top of my hill but it was far enough away to not be a danger. The kids all breathed a sigh of relief and I told them not to worry, it wasnt our house. Matt said "I know, I knew it wasnt our house, but I sure was praying that noone else had to deal with it either"

Then Brett said "yeah mom, it wasnt us we were thinking about, we have been there, we can live through it again, but what if it was someone else?, They might not be as strong as we are."

Sometimes kids make you put things in prospective. I never would wish a housefire on anyone. But they were right. We know we can deal with it. And honestly, all I was thinking was "please dont let it be our home" and then a distant second thought was for God to to be with who ever it was.

Now Brett has decided to sleep walk. and no amount of nice persuasion is getting him back in bed. He is just sitting there staring at me like a zombie. I need to get him back into that tornado remake they call a room and get him back to sleep. Its already midnight and they (as they have reminded me ALL day) only have 8 more days of school left.