It's Always Something

The instant you begin to believe you have your life figured out, a monkey wrench appears out of nowhere.  I don't even know what a monkey wrench is, but I seem to encounter them often.

This spring, it's a new weed.  It's popping up everywhere, and it's not just any weed.  It's a baby tree.  Now, it's practically an annual festival around here to spend weeks uprooting little maples, because our Mama maple tree has the babies.  (Before you go all arbor day environmentalist on me, please understand you can't have a hundred and eleven million maple trees on just one acre.  And you can't have them growing just one inch apart.  Or in your sidewalk crack.  Or adjacent to the foundation of your house.)  But these aren't baby maples. They're baby walnuts. How?

There's been a walnut tree here for decades.  It hasn't been fruitful and multiplied this way ever before.  What is happening?

Jasmine.

Of all the dogs who have been part of our family, none have been as obsessive as Jasmine about burying her treasure.  Anything Jasmine finds interesting to her, she buries for later.  Bones, mice, milk cartons, bolts, tennis balls, feathers, pop cans, gloves, heels of bread, and apparently, walnuts.  Thanks, my furry little garden buddy.  You excel at making sure I have plenty to do.

She'd better not get a hold of my Jeremy Renner dvds.

If Your Family is Awesome

If your family is awesome, your Mother's Day might go something like this.

Somebody cooks you a delicious hot breakfast.  Your out of state daughters call you first thing in the morning. You get hugs and kisses and happy-day greetings as your people wake up one by one.

Your family goes to church with you and on your way out the door they find a long stemmed flower on your porch from #MothersDayMarauders, and at church your pastor delivers an uplifting and encouraging message, because your church is also awesome.

There's an iced coffee for you to sip after church while the sons make you lunch, plant and water your vegetable and flower gardens, dust your life-size Jeremy Renner cardboard cutout, and shower you with exotic potted plants and your favorite candies and goldfish for your pond.

Your sons bake you brownies (from scratch even, not a boxed mix) with nuts in them because even though they don't like brownies with nuts, they know that you do.

Maybe this all sounds too good to be true, but that's because things like this only happen if your family is awesome.

Angel Got a Wing Clipped

Don't wash your dishes too hard.  Angel Doll did this, and the resulting broken glass sliced the tendon and nerves in her thumb.  Thanks to the absolute stupidity of meaningless rules imposed by exploiters of the fashionable new illness that's currently ruling the faux-civilized world, surgery to repair her opposable digit was delayed for a stinkin week.  (Do I have an attitude about this?  Yes.  Yes I do.)

Now Angel Doll is trying to cram forty-seven college papers into the last two weeks of the semester by typing with her non-dominant left hand.

It ought to be a snap for someone who in the past month since clipping her little wing has learned to tie her shoes, shower and dress, cook her meals, eat with chopsticks, and wash dishes (not too hard) without her dominant hand.

Even Jeremy Renner couldn't be that cool.