mary mary commentary

Whew!  We are just busy!  But it is good.  I am really enjoying the sunny, albeit rather windy, spring and feel like we dodged the bitingly cold winter bullet this year.  It is so comforting to have the grass greening up and the leaves back on the trees where they belong. There is something about this time of year that makes me restless!  Spring fever, as it were.  My friend moved a couple of weeks ago (sob, sob) and it made me want to move, too!  We have halfheartedly looked around for a bigger house, but my husband relentlessly reminds me that we are reaching the peak of our full capacity -- steadily chug, chug, chugging up that first steep hill of the roller coaster, almost there to that breathless pause of no return, looking down the empty track at nothing for the sheer drop off. Then the mechanism releases and we are off, with our hearts in our throats, letting them off one by one until Matthew and I finally, out of breath, finish the ride alone.  It's all downhill from here, right?  I'm not ready for this!  So we probably don't need a bigger house, I just like to dream about it sometimes.  We might go look at one tonight (rubbing hands together in anticipation...).  I also have been plotting to just switch some rooms around to stave off my itch for change.  I'll keep you posted about that.

Last week Charles turned sixteen!  Everyone is surprised he wasn't that old already.  He does look mature for his age, but rest assured, I am fairly certain he isn't acting older than he is.  I asked him what he wanted for his birthday since I couldn't think of anything, and he replied, "I'm content."  Amazing.  He is funny all the time and keeps us laughing.  Last week we had a kind of humorous incident.  I made the all-time best snicker doodles ever!  They were baked to absolute perfection and I ate too many.  Well, the next morning Lucy failed to see a glass in front of the microwave before she opened it and said glass crashed to the floor.  Almost simultaneously in another part of the kitchen the cookies also crashed to the floor.  Matthew put the cookies back in their container because they were just too good to throw away and then cleaned up the glass.  We felt it would be safest to put a note on the cookies explaining that the possibility, however remote, of glass being on them was there.  It said, "Be careful!  There may be small pieces of glass on the cookies.  Look before you eat."  When Charles came home from school he thought that we were just trying to keep him from eating the cookies and was horrified to learn that there really could be glass on them.  He yelled, "I should throw them away for everyone's sake!  Are you trying to kill us?  There is no way I am eating any."  I tried to assure him that if I really thought there was glass, I would have discarded them.  He was disgusted.  The next morning on the box of cereal was this note from him, "Be careful of poisonous fruit that looks like raisins in the cereal."  Ha, ha!  On Saturday I took part in the Great Cloth Diaper Change -- where people all over the world changed a diaper all in the same moment.  It was mostly to bring awareness to cloth diapering and to the fact that in every minute in the U.S. 60,000 disposable diapers are thrown away -- every minute!!!  Well, Charles thought that was THE most absurd thing he had ever heard of in all his days.  Yesterday, at our family meeting as we went over the calendar for the week he very straight faced-ly added that he was getting together with 100 other guys on Saturday at 2:00 to simultaneously pee in a urinal.  Matthew was confused to say the least, but I knew right away that I was being mocked!!!  So Happy Birthday, insolent one!  Love you!