Monday Monday

Well, hello, it's Monday. Yay. The talk at the Curves this morning was all about the election tomorrow. Quite frankly, I'll be happy to have it all over with so that I can figure that phone calls are actually for me, not for "the voter in the house". One of the ladies that I work out with (73 years old, works out 6 days a week, and is as smart as a whip) is the presiding judge for her voting district, whatever that means. I think what it means is that she has to be there at 5:30 tomorrow morning and stay until the polls are closed, then take something (the registration books, maybe?) back to the county headquarters. Sounds like an incredibly long, tiring day. But she'll be back at Curves bright and early (at 7 AM) on Wednesday.

We are indeed fortunate that we do not watch tv nor have television reception. I was over at my next-door neighbor's house last week, helping my girls put her boys to bed, and every commercial was a political commercial. It was astounding and boring, after a short while. I was glad to go home.

Speaking of neighbors, something rather frightening happened the other afternoon. I have only mentioned it to a few close friends, trying to make sense of it all, and it ended up in my NaNo novel over the weekend. And here it is: On Friday, I was downstairs when Rachel came down and said, "Mom, there's a lady across the street standing in her door and crying." Once I finally realized what she was saying (you'll have to admit that it was a bit strange), I ran outside and indeed heard one of the older residents of the neighborhood across the street crying and moaning loud enough to be heard all over. I ran over there, turning around to tell the children to stay in our yard, and tried to figure out what had happened. Her husband was face down on the threshold between their sidewalk and the little garage door. She was alternately lying across him and pounding on him, saying, "What am I going to do? He's gone! Daddy, no!" and other stuff like that. It was just wrenching. This is a woman who is very in-control. I'd never seen her raise her voice, no matter totally losing it. Not that I blame her, I'd probably be incoherent. Anyway, I tried to figure out what had happened and her next-door neighbor came over and asked her if she'd called 911. I didn't even think about it. Duh. So the neighbor called 911, Jenny's daughter showed up and said she'd already done so and Jenny told us what had happened. She and her husband had been trying to push their riding mower into the garage. She'd gone into the house for something, come back out, and seen him like that. She started screaming for someone to help her. Her neighbor thought it might be my children out playing but figured out it wasn't about the time that I got out there. He'd been down for maybe 10 minutes.

The paramedics, firemen, and police officers showed up, worked on him, and got him breathing again. I prayed with Jenny, her daughter, and the neighbor. When Jenny's son showed up, I excused myself as I knew my presence wasn't needed anymore. But I honestly didn't think he'd make it. He looked gone already, despite his breathing. I'm assuming he had a heart attack since he'd had heart trouble for a long time.

I've been looking in the obituaries all weekend, trying to figure out if all the cars across the street meant what I thought they meant (that he'd passed) or that they were all there trying to get a plan of rehab together. This morning, I saw the obituary online. He did in fact pass on Friday.

Now this has very little to do with me, but it totally stunned and saddened me. We've lived in this neighborhood for 7 years and have seen most of the houses sold from the older generation who first bought them to younger families like mine (or to people wanting to rent them out). I've enjoyed living in the neighborhood with both young and older folks. But first my original next-door neighbors died or moved closer to family and now Leo is gone. And I feel just so heartbroken for his wife.

And I thought about the day when it might be me. More likely it will be Friend Husband dealing with my carcass but it might be me, if we are blessed to live as long together as my neighbors did. I can't imagine it. I just can't.

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Sorry, I don't know where I was going with that. Probably should have kept it closer to my vest but there it is. Anyway, I have to rock so I'll leave you with this:

I wrote over 4000 words on my NaNo novel on Saturday. Not a word yesterday. Sigh.

This morning the twins were again lobbying for us to have more children. This has been a constant theme since the couple who sits in front of us in church had their baby in June. David really loves babies. Anyway, I walked in from Curves to hear him and his sister saying, "We need to have another baby." Friend Husband replied that that was not likely to happen. Keziah then said, "What I mean is that I want a lot of kids in this family." I'm sure FH was about to guffaw, because, according to his family, we have way too MANY children in our family. And he told her that some people would think we already had a lot of kids in the family. I didn't hear anything else after that, but it seemed blogworthy.

Ok, anyone have any ideas about how to encourage our daughter to do her schoolwork? This has been building since April and it's just totally messing up our world. We've tried removing privileges one by one until the only one she has left is about to be taken away. And it's a biggie. It would involve taking her out of her enrichment classes, including taking her out of the drama class where she is the female lead in the play. I know she really really wants to do it but she doesn't do her work anyway. We've also tried encouraging her, being very structured with her, etc. but nothing has worked. Any suggestion, fire away.

Finally, two pictures:


It's very sad when you get so excited about gas that you take a picture of the current prices.

This picture is for Katie. This was Kez with her hair combed out before I did it for church yesterday.