September In The Rear View Mirror

The month of September has been a little over the top.

I don't say it lightly and I'm trying not to over-think it.

All of our lives are crazy, but it is quite possible that I took it all to a new level of wonky.

The final week hit a new fever pitch of things added and things gone awry.

September is notorious for crazy plus what ever the garden is doing.

This year our garden was small, but happy. Gallons of tomatoes, pints and quarts of pickles and buckets of salsa. The dirt and the flies sifted in with them. I had purchased Cinderella pumpkin plants too. I love them. They are all weird and flat and chubby. The pumpkins turned out to be a mass quantity of miniatures posing as Cinderella's. No big bright orange, funky pumpkins. Tons of tiny gourd looking pumpkins.

Sigh.

Then JQ decided to do some updating to the house. This is a welcome, needed thing and a momentous, messy thing.

I think it began with a new floor in the kitchen.

On the only day that I had to be in my office, on the computer, all. day. long. The tiny flowered linoleum, full of dents, nicks, and ugly the day it was put in, would probably never fully wear out.

Ever.

And on a normal day this would be such an exciting thing. The problem that surfaced was that the kitchen is directly above my office. JQ assured me that laying a new wood floor would not be a noisy process.

I would describe my experience that ten hour day, something like being under a bowling alley that was inside of a saw mill. I don't get headaches easily, but I did have one that day.

The floor is lovely.

He then moved on to paint the whole entire house.

It has been ten years since we have taken on this little project. As I recall the ceilings were lower and the square footage was less.

Have I mention my office painting fiasco a mere week before the main level painting project? The story of how I was convinced of the color I wanted from a 6" canvas-quote-inspiration-piece? The sad tale of how I bought an entire gallon of blue paint with great confidence, brought it home, put it on the wall and hated it. It took breath from my lungs every time I walked in the room. So. I went and bought another gallon of paint. This time a silver-leaf-gray. This one beautiful blog used it in three rooms of her home and assured all her readers that putting a neutral color on the wall is the way to go and then add in your colors.  People who have come in to look at our handiwork have told me,  "Oh what a nice green," "I love the light blue" and "Wow! This is so, very white."

Small picture that began the whole office mess.

We learned to purchase the $3 sample cans of paint before deciding on colors.

Our lighting must be different than anywhere else in the whole world, so greens looked blue, grays looked green and browns looked gray.

So we have purchased a lot (a-l-o-t!) of different samples. So many, that the women who work in the paint section run to find something else to do when they see us come in. Not even kidding.

And if you've repainted lately you know that it throws your home into u-t-t-e-r chaos. You become painfully aware that you need to declutter, that the old curtains never seem to work and the whole house needs deep cleaned.

To his credit, JQ has worked the hardest and done 98.5 percent of the painting. I helped one night, but the phone rang and he had my part done before I could finish the conversation.

We learned too, that apparently when you move appliances it's not a good thing?

We had tilted the oven, not even six inches back, to do the flooring. Then I made a pizza, from scratch, went to warm up the oven and watched flames shoot out of the front of the stove. We now  know that pizza can be cooked outside on our grill.

Did you know that an oven has it's own mother board? And when flames shot out, it successfully fried ours and with it the ability to bake, went up in smoke as well.

This has proved to pose a bit of a problem. It's hard to get repair men to come to your home and no one carries parts.

It was easy to ignore until Friday.

A friend of mine was getting married. I am so excited for them, even though I wasn't invited to the wedding.

Actually only family was invited. My beautiful friend who isn't fussy about a thing, found her Prince later in life and now her prince charming. It reaffirms my faith in real life love stories and happily-ever-afters.

They didn't want gifts or hoopla, so-  I had told her long ago that I would bring them cinnamon rolls the morning after the ceremony. This would be my signature way to communicate love.

Food.

And after I had made a ginormous batch of dough and it was rising all over the kitchen, well that was when I remembered that flames had come from my oven a few days before.

There were grandchildren here too. They are darling of course. The curly headed two year old amazes me with her full sentences, witty responses and how many polly-pocket clothing pieces she can stuff in her mouth at the same time. She wanted nothing to do with helping in the kitchen, but her brother was another story. He pulled up a chair and "helped" pour flour on the floor, honey in his hair and some stuff even landed in the bowl. The little baker-man flew flour, while his four year old frame sported a football jersey and his feet clad in cleats, because he was "ready for his game."

So I have six pans of rising dough, a red-head eating rubber doll clothes, a miniature football player helping to further change the decor in the kitchen, when the two puppies arrived.

Cutest puppies ever.

In a weak moment I had agreed to babysit the puppies.

For two weeks.

They had a rough ten days before their arrival. My friend Karen lives on the river. It is usually a tranquil, beautiful home and welcome retreat, complete with sparkling stream gently skipping past her back door. This last week however, flood waters all the way from the mountains arrived with churning brown water full of everything that had been stripped from upstream and threatened to destroy all they love. So the pampered pups had been shuffled around and now landed at my house all out of sorts and routines.

The happy level in our home went up on the Richter-scale.

We were all having a pretty great time and my neighbor and dear friend Lynette bailed me out of this sticky situation of no oven, by letting me run pans of rolls across the yard. The grandchildren would stand at the door and yell, "Grandma are you ever going to come back?" The dogs were barking and making themselves at home and  the cooking rolls at the neighbors was complicated by a much needed downpour.

Somewhere around this time is when our youngest came home from the college town, for the first time in months and the chaos reached new heights of happiness.

We went to bed late and were up early.

The puppies were barking before five in the morning and the grand-kids soon followed suit. I had a meeting to attend at nine that I wanted to skip, but had already rescheduled once.

I stumbled into the shower to hide from all the insanity in my house. Eyes half closed, steam rolling from the warm water, I was looking forward to a few minutes of being alone.

I moaned and pushed past the fact, that there were still toys left from last nights bath-time, and the mop that was being used on such a regular basis with the puppies, that I didn't put it away. The relaxation of this moment with the mop, the toys and I was interrupted, when two cute little cute faces peered in to ask me what I was doing and why was I taking a shower with their toys. They didn't seem to think it strange about the mop.

By 8:00 a.m. the puppies had pooped and pottied most everywhere and were corralled for a nap.  I was loading fresh goods, baked at the neighbors, grandchildren in pj's minus one shoe,  when I found out my own little corgi was missing. She had packed her proverbial bag and run away.

Honestly I could not blame her.

The neighbor was kind enough to call and notify me that Olivia the corgi was having morning coffee with her on the sun porch.

I wanted to join them.

So September is coming to a screeching, screaming close.

What was your September like friends?

#1234 Fresh grown homemade pico

#1235 An afternoon with Amy Jo and Max and
seeing my friend Shelley Moser who drove for hours to meet us.

#1236 A downpour of rain that blesses

#1237 A Pastor who leads by serving and example