Kiddie Tech Support, may I help you?

This morning, George, who is not yet seven years old, got a phone call from one of his friends from his first-grade class. I was fully expecting a little chatting and then, "Mom, can I play when I finish my chores?" But the boys kept talking. And talking. And here's some of the things I heard:

Type f-u-z-z-y-b-u-n-n-y.
Yeah, then you want to click on that red button.
No, type it across the top!
It worked when I did it.

They'd been talking for a little while and I went and got in the shower. Daddy was arranging to borrow his dad's truck so we could go get soil mix for our garden boxes. When I came out of the bathroom, George was in his bedroom, STILL on the phone. He'd put it on speaker. I noticed that the low battery beep had started. I told him that he needed to get off the phone. (Yeah, he could have switched to the wall phone, but isn't 45 minutes long enough for two first graders to be on the phone to each other?) He told his friend that he had to put the phone on the charger, but they could talk again after lunch. Because his friend wasn't done yet. Holy cow! My girls are not going to be the phone hogs, my SON is!

Anyway, I think we'll wait a little while before we have him intern for tech support. But I think he's ready.

More Charlie art

Charlie loves to draw pictures for people, but lately the boys have been into Play-doh. So one night after the school kids went to bed, he was playing with clay and made something for everyone. He started with me (but I did not get a picture, because I saw it in person). He made me a happy face, a heart and a U. I think it was "I love you."

This was for George. (A car)




This was for the girls. (A flower)




And one for Daddy. (A dog)



Fun, huh?

Scared? Call Mom.

We got in late last night and I just left my cell phone in the pocket of the jacket I wore last night and left the jacket on the back of my chair at the kitchen table. So this morning, I pulled everything I left in my pockets out. As I pulled out my cell phone, I saw that I missed a call and had a voice message. Weird! I checked whose call I missed. It was a call from Home at 7:32 am. 7:32 am??! From HOME?? I listened to the message, but it was only about two seconds and there were not any voices.

After questioning, we found out that it was Charlie. He had gotten scared, so he called me. Nevermind that I was asleep in my own bed and he had to go find a phone to call me from -- I've told him that if he needs me he can always call me. I guess he's paying attention after all.

Are we?

This story happened in late fall of 2009. Charlie still couldn't say his R's very well. (Funny how he's learned to say them as George has been learning to say them correctly.)

Charlie asked me, "Are we chunnel?" I could not for the life of me figure out what "chunnel" was. I thought that maybe there was an R sound in there that Charlie could not say correctly. So I kept repeating that word as best as I could back to him.

"Chunnel?"

"No. Chunnel."

"Chewnal?"

"No, chunnel."

"Churnel?"

"Yes! Chunnel!"

"Churnel? Really? Where did you hear that word?"

"I don't remember. Are we chunnel?"

"I've never heard the word chunnel. Do you remember the sentence you heard it in?"

"Like owls are NOT chunnel, so are we chunnel?"

Suddenly, it all clicked. NOT churnel made a lot more sense than churnel. Nocturnal! I laughed so hard! So I had to explain that the word is actually "NOCturnal" not "NOTchurnal."

Even though he did not get it right, I thought that was some pretty good critical thinking on his part to know that nocturnal meant sleeping during the day and being active at night and that we were opposite.

Love that kid!

DeJunking

I think that everyone who reads my blog knows that I am a pack rat. Like a BAD one. I know that I need to get this under control. I'm sure I'd be a happier person if I could get rid of half of the stuff that I've got. And I bet that I would be happy even if I got rid of more. Logically, I know it. But emotionally, when it comes to parting with things, it gets painful. For those who don't suffer from this disease, I don't know how to explain it. I go through panic attacks. I have a hard time breathing, feel a tightness in my chest and can't think straight. There are times when it is worse than others. So if the mood to purge ever strikes (which very occasionally it does), I try to jump on it and do as much as I can.

I discovered a thread on Amazon.com (I did not even know they had discussion threads) about being a hoarder and disorganized. I felt that way, so I checked it out. It was last Saturday and I had a cold that was just draining energy out of me. So I was just sitting on my bum. I spent quite a while reading in that thread. Someone recommended a book called "Throw Out Fifty Things" which I started reading today. I get teary even reading about throwing things out. But I thought to myself that I could spend a few minutes somewhere purging something. So I did.

I went downstairs to the family room and pulled out a box of toys that have just been boxed up for over a year. I figured that I would just be able to basically dump the whole thing in either the trash or DI bag and feel so good. It did not go quite that well, but it was a start.

I want to log things as I purge so that I can look and see that I AM making improvements. They may be small and they may be slow, but that's better than nothing, right? So here's my tally today:

Trash: 1 small bag
Give away: 1 big garbage bag

Most of what went in these bags were small McDonalds-type toys. (Don't tell my kids.) This is probably the easy stuff, but I still have to start somewhere. I'm not starting where the book told me to either, but I wasn't ready to go there.

I'm starting. I want to continue. I want to be free from so much clutter. I want to be able to invite you all to my home without feeling shame and embarrassment. And I can do it.

Sunny Corner

A couple of days ago, I was ruminating on the naming of my blog. I knew it was going to be one of those things I would think harder about and then come up with something I just liked better.

Since I was a teen, I have been enamored with the idea of naming my house when I grew up. Maybe you had the story in Young Womens too. In Denmark, Holland, and that area it is common to name your house. Apparently still. Or at least when the manual was published that they used twenty years ago when I was a teen. Anyway, I also loved "Anne of Green Gables." They named their homesteads there too. I was just certain I would name my homes.

Fast forward to 1998 and I moved into my first home. I toyed with "naming" it, but nothing ever seemed just right. And I wanted it to be just right. So it is just "The Little White House on Ellison." When we moved into our next house in 2004, the name came to me right away. "Sunny Corner." It is on the Northwest corner of our block and has lots of windows and seems sunny most of the time. Plus, it was a play on words for how I want my home to be -- sunny, happy, smiling. I don't know how often we achieve that, but it is still my goal. In respect of our roots and where the original idea came from, I translated (or rather had a friend translate) Sunny Corner into Danish and came up with "Solrig Afkrog." Doesn't have quite the ring I was hoping for, so usually in my mind I stick with Sunny Corner.

Okay, what all of that was about was that I thought what a nice ring a blog title like, "The Ramblings from Sunny Corner" or something like that might have sounded. But then, what if we move? I guess I'm happy that I've got what I've got. But I wanted to post it so you could all see what a possibility of a cute title I could have had. Now it's out there. And I can forget it and feel better.