Mothering Many

That’s how much money I spent at the grocery store Saturday morning. And I only bought probably 3 weeks of food, and not even all the meat we’ll need for that amount of time. I loaded up 2 grocery carts, and by loaded, I mean stuff was precariously balanced on top, and it actually took three to roll it all out to the van. It’s insane, the amount of food we go through. And, there will of course be a bread and milk run about every three days. Thank heavens for the bakery thrift store!

It’s insane, the amount of food we go through. I guess that’s one of the juxtapositions of huge families. They are still eating you out of house and home while you are beginning to investigate medicare insurance for your golden years. Hehe, hopefully by the time we get there, the years will be the only golden thing around here, and there will no longer be little golden puddles appearing on the bathroom floor caused by “Not Me”.

Speaking of NotMe, I have given 8 times to singletons, and yet I have between 9 and 11 children at any given time, depending on whether the neighbor kids are here or not. They come and go, but NotMe is a pretty constant fixture around here. Maybe you have one, too.

Who spilled this?
NotMe.

Who used this?
NotMe.

Who played with this?
NotMe.

Who has shoes in the living room?
NotMe.

Come to think about, I bet NotMe is the one who eats so much around here. He loves chips, pop-tarts and crackers, and he’s not so keen on the oatmeal and vegetables.

You know, the internet is a lovely place. You can find anything on it. Stuntman is learning about cottonwoods and Coronado while reading Tree in the Trail, and Country is helping him finding it online (her request). Of course, not every page that comes up in the search result for Coronado is going to be about the explorer. It can take some wisdom to sift through the results to find the relevant information.

Now, Coronado is an innocuous, you can kinda tell from the blurb if a site is worth a visit or not, but what if your search is a bit more.life altering. What if you need information on cerebral palsy therapy, or your teen needs info on STDs for a report? It’s can be a little more difficult to track down reputable sources on the internet than in the library. Any whack job can throw up a website for the price of domain and hosting, but that doesn’t make him an expert, yk? And while I know there are some less than beneficial published books out there, at least they are more or less classified by the Dewey Decimal System. You can at least sort the truth from the fiction from the pure fantasy.

How do you go about teaching children to do that when the internet isn’t broken down into neat little numbered sections?

That’s what I am doing around here. It seems this family of many has accumulates enough stuff to fill several Condo Hotels. At least you would think so if you saw my living room. See, I am “clean sweeping” our house, but I am doing it while we are still living here, and also while I am teaching and working and doing all the other stuff I do. Yeah. Fun times, for sure. But let me tell you, my kitchen sure looks nice, and my room, it’s looking fine, too. Oh, and my bathroom. The rest of the house, well……..it’ll get there.

Yeah, I know I said I did this in December. And at the time, I thought I had. But back in December, I basically just cleaned around stuff. I did send some out, but not enough, and I still had to move this to get to that, stretch over and slide around, etc. I’m so over that. Less is totally more, just like they say.

I did my room this week. It took me four days to get my stuff done, and I did dh’s today. And I sent 5 bags of stuff to trash/goodwill in the process. Life is too short to fight with dresser drawers, and today, when my t-shirt drawer would not close when I put away the laundry?? I put four more in the goodwill pile. I have felt the glide, see, and the glide is good.

So says Spidey. Because if you get new shoes and those new shoes happen to be “Vans”…… you can use your vans to go to Wal-Mart. See?

ETA: Do you think this would make a viable weight loss alternative for moms? Cause I might be willing to try that. Once. But only for cookies.

I guess I have missed this blog more than I thought. Or perhaps it has missed me. Anyway, when the orthodontist office called a few days ago and told me they could not accept payments and they wanted 5600 dollars upfront, it was here I wanted to come post about, right after I finished peeing down my pant leg and laughing maniacally. Umm, those last two things were not related, except that they were both caused by the same phone call.

Anyway, we are going with plan B and the braces are delayed. I can’t afford all that metal at once: chrome is spendy, whether it’s braces for your teeth or chrome accessories for your car.