pira

Got a good haul out of the attic yesterday ~ no finishes but have 6 garbage bags filled and many boxes crammed with items to donate. Also removed an area rug that I'm just going to dump. I love that rug but there is no getting rid of the cat pee smell so out it goes after hording it for a year. I also cleaned out 3 kitchen cupboards of items I don't use or haven't in years. That is a very good feeling :)

Today it's depressingly overcast and raining, so we can't continue in the attic again until the sun comes out as there is but one lightbulb up there and the area we need to attack next is far away from the electrical light source but...is near a window. Hopefully this afternoon ...tomorrow my parents come for a visit so that rules out anything getting done unless we get to early in the morning.

And last but not least ~ here's a few shots from this weeks' vase of tulips. They were a very unusual bunch, flopping and actually crumpled in places. The colour has oddly faded to *meh* as the petals pushed unfurled which has been a great disappointment....but here a few before that point.


( Pink Tulip-spam )

Last night the hubber and I watched a dvd after the sprog had gone to bed, and I was rather overwhelmed with a wave of *empty nest syndrome*

Earlier in the day I'd driven my eldest to the airport. She was off to visit a friend (her French Exchange partner from a few years back) in NYC for the weekend and the Middling-Spawn was out with girlfriends for the night. She wouldn't be coming home 'til the next day.

Usually I'm thrilled at the chance to have some calm around the house, but for some reason I was really feeling the weight of it last night.

I grew up as an only child of a pair of onlies, so I'm not bothered by a *quiet* household ~ and having married a Serb, I have to learn how to live in a loud one. Everything in this place is done at full-volume. So what happens is that I tend to relish those moments when the place doesn't resemble a three ring circus and in particular ...the clown act.

Yet ~ something about yesterday triggered a sense of melancholgy, that this is what life would be like once the girls were launched into the world. As my 9 year old snuggled up to my side, eyelids drooping and mumbling that maybe he should go to bed, it hit me like a thunderclap that I was not looking forward to the summer, when his energetic sisters are both off on their adventures far from the domestic fold...

My job as a parent is to encourage them to stretch their wings and explore the world by giving them the chance to leave the nest on their own. The eldest is going to visit France with a friend, the other is backpacking in Greece (she'd visited the Iberian penninsula last year). They are fairly humming with excitement and while I smile and help them plot the course of their adventures I'm torn up inside. My heart is like that drama mask. In turns laughing and crying, proud and sad; as my mind jumps ahead to the future...the one where all three are fully independant and living their lives far from my doorstep.

So this is what my mother went through. =__=

Karma is sending me a message. I think there is a P.S. at the bottom of the memo that says *oh and by the way, call your mother more often*

*0__o...Hard to believe that THESE sweeties could lay waste to a household.


The funniest part was trying to take photos of them in their pretty little dresses.

They are ALL jocks (basketball, rugby, soccer, volleyball)...so....

Directly below the pretty dress-hems were the most black & blue sets of legs this side of the NFL. >D

(one girl even had her ankle taped up)

Battle scars ~ the latest must have fashion accessory!