A June Whirlwind

I can't believe it's July already.
June was a blur of activity.
We hiked in Spain,

Me with Earl and Maurice as we crossed the Pyrenees

 bought a house in France,

It needs a little love, but it has a garden

 said goodbye to all of our friends in France before we left for the summer and spent a night in Paris,

Always love the dramatic sky in Paris

flew home to the States,

Always love spending time with Mom and Dad.

At the Gulf of Mexico with Earl

drove from Florida to Ohio

Dinner with two of our three kids

 then Ohio to Massachusetts.

This is actually a view in Vermont, I think. Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire are all very close together here.

And here we are for most of the summer.
It's rural and I am sure to have lots of time to write, but less to write about.

Saturday Snapshot -- Pranks

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme, post a photo that you (or a friend of family member) have taken. Then leave a direct link to your post on West Metro Mommy. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.
I haven't played along with Saturday Snapshot for a while now, but this morning I saw something I thought I would share as a photo.
Our neighbor's son seems to frequently be the victim of pranks. Once his car was encased in plastic wrap.
This morning his car was bombed with sticky notes.

Not a bad prank, just time consuming to clean up.
Hope he didn't have to get to the ACT test  by 8 a.m.  like Tucker did.

Cat Pee and Open Windows

(Here's another story for Phyllis -- See Sunday's explanation)
Sunday morning, Grace had to be at work at 7, so I planned to meet a friend for a run after I dropped her off.
We headed out a little late at 6:50 a.m. and when I opened the door to our freestanding garage, a black, fuzzy cat went streaking out. He'd been locked in overnight.
The front of our blue car was covered with cat footprints.

This cat is innocent of the crime and
shocked at the actions of a fellow feline.

Then, I saw to my horror, the car windows were down. I never leave the windows down once I pull into the garage, Even as I was walked toward the car, I wracked my brain to think who could have driven the car after me.
Nope, I was the last one to drive it, and as the sun and the warm air had seduced me the day before, I left the windows down when I pulled in, and closed the big garage door.
When Earl had come home from work at midnight, he'd seen the "people" door was open, so he firmly closed it, trapping that furry cat inside.
As I walked toward the car, my hands full of water bottles and library books, I looked in the car to see if the cat had been there. On the passenger seat, I saw several little balls of cat poop. Crap!
I threw my things in the back seat and ran inside for a plastic grocery bag to clean up the poop, and a bottle of Woolite to scrub the upholstery.
Ick! I scooped up each dropping then carried the plastic bag to the outdoor trash can. I sprayed the seat and
rubbed at it with the rag.
"Sit in the backseat," I warned Grace as she approached with her coffee cup in hand.
Then I ran around to the driver seat and looked down before I slid inside. The seat had a tell-tale shadow to it.
Damn. The cat pooped in one seat and peed in the other.
I ran back in the house to get a plastic bag to sit on. Grace was going to be late for work. I stopped just long enough to wake my sleeping husband and accuse him of closing the garage door on a cat.
Then I raced back to the car, Target bag in hand.
I spread it across the seat and sat on top of it, feeling like the wetness was soaking through to my running shorts.
After dropping off Grace, I hurried to the park to meet my friend. I stood up and pulled the plastic bag from the seat. The moisture of the pee had interacted with the red circles on the Target bag, leaving red circles on the car seat.
Just great.
Once I got home, I blotted up what I could of the pee, I soaked the seat with Woolite, and I'm leaving the windows down to try to get rid of the smell of cat pee. Every time I pull into the garage, I make sure both garage doors are closed and that there are no pets lurking to jump in my car and use it as a litter box.

Car Envy

I suppose it is too much to ask teenagers to be grateful for what they have.
I was reminded of this yesterday when Tucker was complaining about the black car. He drives the black car, a 1999 Ford Taurus, to school and back most days. Earl and I, along with Grace, juggle the other car, which mostly works because I work days and Earl works evenings.
Tucker, 17, sees it as a necessity to have a car even though most places he ventures to, like school, are about a mile away. I understand that driving has to do with status rather than need.
Yesterday though, as he started to ask when we were going to replace the black car, complaining about the squeak when he turns the wheels, or the sun roof that doesn't work, and the way it vibrates on the highway (which he rarely goes on), I started to get fed up.
"You know, you just came back from France and New York, so money is a little tight," I told him.
It's true that he helped pay for the France trip, and the trip to New York was required as part of his Singers class, but the family still made financial sacrifices. And this at a time that my second job has dried up due to low enrollment at one of the colleges where I teach.
My feeling was, if he didn't want to drive the black car, then he could walk.
I was complaining to my mom later about how ungrateful Tucker was when I remembered a story about myself at his age.
My parents bought each kid a used car for their 17th birthday. They started the trend with my sister, so continued with each of us. My car was a dark green pinto.
I worked at Kings Island amusement park during my high school summers so I had to take the freeway to get there. As I pulled onto the freeway, getting up speed, the Pinto stalled. I was able to coast to the side and sat in the car wondering what I would do. This was long before the days of cell phones. I was just bracing myself for a walk down the highway and exit ramp, when a car stopped in front of me.
My older brother.
He drove me home and my dad took care of the Pinto. He had work done and swore that the car was road ready.
I refused to drive it again.
"I will not drive that Pinto," I stated indignantly. I was an insufferable teen and my parents, who had lost my sister around the same age, indulged me.
My dad found a blue Mustang II that I drove through the rest of my high school and college years.
So as I complained about Tucker, I recalled that insufferable teenager that I was. I hope I've changed a lot since then and I'm sure Tucker will too.
But he still has to drive the black car.

Early Thanksgiving

It seems like all of my posts have been fairly negative lately, so I thought I should stop and be thankful instead.
So, here, the Wednesday after Canadian Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for: My husband who, although he came home with only one chocolate bar from France two weeks ago, has worked everyday with only one day off. Sleep in today, honey. You deserve it. And take a second day off this week.
My unswollen, though still flaking, face. I'm on the last leg of the steroids the doctor gave me to combat my reaction to the Aveda moisturizer. With steroids, the medicine steps down. So I started taking six pills a day over a week ago, and now I'm down to three. Before you know it, I'll stop feeling all jittery and need more than four hours of sleep each night. I am accomplishing a lot since I don't need sleep. When you get up at 3:30 a.m., you can get an amazing amount done by 6. It's like the day's half over.
A second car. We've been a one car family since Labor Day Weekend when Spencer drove in front of a truck and, basically, had the front end of his Honda Accord taken off. No one was hurt, but for over a month now, we've had one car. That means I've just driven everyone where they need to go rather than Spencer or Earl (or Grace while she was still home) taking a car. Somedays, I never sat down in my house, just walked in the door after work and drove people around all evening. But now we have a second car. That the boys can drive to school or Earl can take to Home Depot. It's an Explorer, but, since two of my children have totaled cars and I have one more learning to drive now, I wanted something big enough to keep him (and the rest of them) safe -- just in case.
I'm also thankful that two of the college classes I'm teaching will end next week and I'll have a mini vacation, teaching only five course through Christmas.
Other things, yes, the weather has been gorgeous. The cats took a nap outside in the hammock with me yesterday. Well, I napped. They kind of clung to the hammock.
And when Tucker was hanging outside with me and the cats, he asked to take a picture of Tupi's fat hanging through the hammock. Not mine.
See, lots of things to be thankful for.
How about you? Are you thankful for something?

You'll Never Find...

When my boys aren't making me mad about something, they crack me up with their ideas of teenage romance.
This morning I was greeted with rain and 43 degrees. I decided to forego a cold, wet run. Instead, I took Spencer's car to put some gas in it. He told me that he had scraped together $2 in nickels and quarters the night before to put gas in the car. We give him $20 a week for gas so he can drive to school and to basketball practice with occasional forays over to Ohio State or to The Men's Wearhouse to order his tux.
That seemed like plenty of money for gas until prices shot up to $4.19 per gallon.
As I stopped at a stop sign, I heard things clinking. I thought maybe empty bottles were under the car seat. Another stop and another clink made me open the console betweeen the seats.
There, I found an aluminum bottle of Old Spice body spray -- a necessity for teenage boys.
The next item puzzled me. Two votive candles in glass candleholders.
When I got home, as the boys were scrambling to get out the door on time, I asked Spencer why the candles.
"I set them down in the sunken area and light them," he said. "Adds a little ambiance."
"While you're driving?" I ask.
"No, when I'm parked at the turf or the school lot."
I know that the high schoolers hang around their cars on weekend nights and I tried to picture Spencer with his flickering candlelight.
I told him he was definitely in competition with his father who had sculpted shag in his van as a teenager.
Then I suggested that candles and cars don't really mix that well since cars are highly flammable.
"Yeah, I gotta get rid of those," he agreed.
There goes the romantic candlelight when sitting in the middle of the school parking lot surrounded by other teenagers. I guess they'll have to fallback on Plan B -- a portable strobe light that they ordered from Best Buy.
"Are you sure we can't use it while we drive around?" he asked.
"Pretty sure."