and the mother of the year award goes to...

Yesterday was a red letter day in which I definitely was in the running for Mother of the Year.  There are two incidents which stand out.

1. First I was having trouble with my several years old pre-lit Christmas tree.  Last year the very top strand of lights was no longer working so I added one string and then this year hardly any were working so on Tuesday I ran out and bought a few more boxes and instead of taking off the non-working lights (I tried, but they are really tightly wound around the branches) I just wrapped more on and plugged them all together.  Yesterday morning I noticed that about half of them were off again so I was fiddling with all of the wires and putting way too many into one outlet, but they were all on again so I was happy... until I heard a popping and fizzing sound and looked and saw that the lights were all smoking!!!  So I almost burned my house down because I like shiny lights.  I'm just glad I was still standing right there.  I hate how disposable and cheap the lights and everything are, but I suppose I'm not ready to go back to candles.
2. The second thing is much, much worse.  I put Phin down for a nap before I went to pick up Ella for her voice lesson and told Matthew, who was working in the basement, that I was leaving.  I had dropped Ella off and ran to the very conveniently located Goodwill and was in there for about half an hour when my phone rang.  It was my neighbor.  She asked, "Where are you?"  "I'm at Goodwill."  "Who is home with Phin?" "Matthew."  Well, she found him screaming, screaming, screaming in her backyard and she thinks he had been back there for a while because she had heard her screen door five minutes before she found him, and he was in his socks and no coat -- there was snow on the ground and it was below 20˚ and he was all wet, but she now had him wrapped in a blanket sitting on her couch.  I felt so terrible!  And the outcome could have been so much worse!  There is a very busy street three houses down so he could have been run over or kidnapped, or he could have been outside for a lot longer, or wandered somewhere farther away and gotten lost -- people get their kids taken away for things like this!  I even thought about locking my back door because I know he can open it, but I knew the girls would be home about 10 minutes before me and they don't have a key so I didn't do it.  We will have to come up with a better solution, unless he learned something from the experience, which I doubt.  When I told Ella what happened she responded, "He is just as stupid as Mittens"  -- our cat who also really thinks it would be amazing to go outside and then upon discovering the cold temperatures immediately changes her tune only to discover that she can't open the door.  The similarities are eery.