September always involves transition when Will goes back to a more traditional job. However, I have never experienced a first day of school quite like the one this past month. It started in the early morning hours of Will's first day of classes, after a restless night because our white noise machine, a box fan in the hallway, seemed to be on it's last leg and kept turning on and off. At around 6 a.m. a loud, rapid and pounding noise jolted me out of bed. Both girls started screaming from their rooms in terror as I frantically tried to figure out what was happening. There above my head was a strange red blob being pummeled by the ceiling fan. I ran to the light switch and turned the fan off but the noise kept happening, just at a slower and slower pace. It was then that a smiling Elmo balloon casually floated towards me, surprisingly unhurt. I threw the mocking monster face in the closet, slammed the door and ran to calm the girls down. As we regained our composure I tried to figure out what had happened. When we had gone to bed last night, Elmo was innocently floating around downstairs. During the night he must have floated upstairs and gotten his string caught in the hallway box fan which took several hours to cut. Once the string was completely severed, the box fan blew it's last breath and Elmo was free to float into my room and try out his luck at being a piñata in my ceiling fan.
I tried putting the girls back to bed since they normally don't get up until 7:30, but the damage was already done. As I was helping Lucy get out of her jammies, I noticed the back of her shirt was wet. Lucy then informed me that, "I spilled a little water in my bed." Upon further investigation, I discovered Lucy's bedside water cup underneath her pillow and her bed and pillow soaked.
Over breakfast, Emma knocked her bowl of cheerios and milk off the table. Milk dripped down the wall next to her chair, and found it's way into our heat register. Deciding not to cry over wet bed sheets or spilt milk, I packed up the girls and headed to the library since it was raining outside and I needed a change of scenery.
We had a lovely time at the library. It was nice watching the pouring rain while we were surrounded by books and cozy nooks. Driving home however, the rain started coming down in sheets. Parts of our street had flooded and as I pulled into our garage, grateful for the respite from the sound of pounding rain on our car's metal roof a sinking feeling hit me in the stomach. Will had decided to get four baby chicks the week before and this was their first time in a rain storm. Did they know to go under the coop for shelter? Not to mention Bearded Lady, a.k.a Sickly, could only walk backwards since her illness earlier in the summer - did she make it to shelter? I decided to leave the girls strapped in their car seats as I went behind the garage to check on the chickens.
I grabbed an umbrella and told the girls I would be right back. My fears were confirmed - Sickly was hunkered down in the pouring rain, while the four baby chickens ran around trying to take cover. The make-shift coop Will had made for the babies was exactly under a wall of rain coming off the garage roof that was going directly through their coop. I knew I had to think fast and get these five chickens out of the rain. I ran back in the garage to find something to transport them in. I found a cardboard box and a raccoon cage. I had to ditch the umbrella to carry the cage and box, but no worries, those babies and Sickly had to be saved! I picked up Sickly first, put her in the box and brought her into the garage. At this point Lucy and Emma were done with sitting in the car and were starting to get vocal. I told them I had to go get the babies out of the rain, and I would be right back.
I dashed back out into the rain to the chicken run. Let's just say that at this point, Elmo hitting the fan was nothing like the sh** I encountered while chasing after these baby chickens. First of all, I couldn't figure out how the cage door worked. I finally chased one chicken down, grabbed it and put it in the cage and no sooner did I turn around to chase the next chicken, the first chicken ran out of the cage. Not to mention that the chicken run behind the garage is on a slope and we've never gotten around to putting gutters on the back of the garage so the water had formed a poop smeared slip and slide that was having no mercy on me. Drenched and covered in chicken poop and mud I kept yelling, "I'm trying to help you! Let me help you!!!!" at the top of my lungs to the quick and tricky little buggers. Each time I lunged forward to catch a chicken in my hands, it got away from me. And each time I thought I had the cage door shut, no sooner did I turn around and they had escaped. Half an hour later I finally brought the cage with four soaked baby chickens into the garage.
Lucy and Emma were screaming at this point but stopped dead in their vocal tracks when they saw me.
Now I had a new dilemma on my poo-smeared hands. How do I get the girls through the rain from our detached garage and into the house without getting mud and poop on them? One at a time I ran them through the rain, holding them under their armpits with my arms straight out in front of me. Once they were both deposited in the house, I took the above picture to show Will the hard core proof of why I told him getting four baby chickens a week before he went back to school was a bad idea. After my second shower of the day was complete and I finished mopping up the poop and mud tracks from the back door to the shower, I threw Lucy's wet sheets and my soaked clothes into the wash and decided a picture of me soaking wet would not be enough to prove to Will that I was right and he was wrong. So when the rain stopped, I took more pictures to make Will get on his knees and tell me he was oh so sorry!
I am happy to say that the transition into September improved after this. Maybe after our wet first day back we had nowhere left to go but up. Also knowing that this is probably one of my last falls with Lucy home with me has added a new perspective to our days together. So, we have focused on quality time and I have tried to make an effort to not let the little things get to me - like wet sheets, spilled milk and runaway chickens.
September also has a way of making me appreciate each and every sunny day we get, and just like my count down to Lucy going to school, I know winter is right around the corner and I will miss the warmth when it is gone. We spent a great morning at the local cider mill eating donuts, drinking juice boxes (cider in Michigan this year is $9 a gallon so I brought apple juice boxes instead), and exploring the mill's beautiful property and trails.
We also have maximized our time in the backyard, playing hide and go seek...
...and enjoying our garden.
Carrots...
cucumbers...
rutabagas...
...and more beans and beets than we know what to do with. Here we are below with an assembly line set up to clean the ten pounds of beets we harvested.
Oh, and I can't forget this pale little moon flower I found in the garden too.
As you can see in the above picture, Lucy has a budding sense of humor. She knew I was taking pictures of the garden and quietly posed in this picture. I didn't realize it until I was looking at the pictures that the Brussels sprouts were planted directly in front of a rare and pale sight. Lucy told me the other night as I was tucking her in that there are three kinds of jokes - funny jokes, silly jokes and poop jokes. I'd say that's about right. She catches us off guard and we laugh even though we try so hard not to.
Lucy and Emma have been playing so well together this month. I really love how sweet they can be with each other when they want to.
Thank goodness our month ended better than it started! Happy Fall!
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1 comment:
Mike and I cannot stop laughing at your full moon. That girl needs her own show.
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