Remember my desk picture from my last post over a month ago? It looks a lot like that now, except with a LOT more stuff all over it. Stuff for me to do. I like being really busy at work though – it makes the days fly by, and pretty soon it’s Saturday again and I’m at home. So work is good. As the weather turns, we get busier and busier. The heating season kicks in and all the sudden the phone is ringing off the hook.

At home… well, that’s a different story. I am so frustrated. I leave around 6am, before the kids are even up. If I’m really lucky, Jeremiah is awake to say bye to me. I get home between 8-8:30 (again, that’s if traffic is behaving itself) and I see the kids for maybe 30 minutes before they go to sleep. And I’m totally exhausted. If I stay up much past 10, I am pretty much useless the next day. The thing is, I’m only really working 9-6 on typical days. There’s usually one day a week I get in really early (if I’ve stayed in the city the night before) and one day I stay until 7 or so. The point is, it’s really hard to get out of work at 6 and think I could be getting home in time for dinner if we just lived closer. Instead, some days, I don’t see my kids at all. But moving right now is not option. We’re in a big damn hole and until we dig ourselves out a little, we’re trapped here where there is so little work and so little opportunity…

I’ve been keeping it together pretty well… I’m actually much happier now than I was before, to be perfectly honest. I’m exhausted and I miss my kids but I think things will be better for us now. Not even better but… functional. There is a reason I have completely abandoned homeschooling, stay-at-home-mothering and everything else I was doing to get a full time job, and it’s not because I just felt like I needed to get a career to feel fulfilled or some other feminine mystique-esqe reason.

Anyway, I’m trying to balance my time during the weekends which I am finding to be the biggest struggle so far. I want to (and should) clean and cook and be domestic… but I am fucking exhausted. This weekend I’m sick so I’ve been in my pajamas for two days doing nothing but hanging out with the kids. Jonah had to go to the doctor Saturday morning and afterwards we decided to just run to the beach for a couple hours in spite of how everyone was feeling just because it was nearly 80 out and this is probably the last nice weekend we’ll have in a while. It was totally worth it.

Today, I’d like to go to church but the truth is, I probably won’t. Because I’m exhausted and because I’m jealous of the time with my kids. Because I don’t want to drive for 45 minutes. Because we need groceries. Because I haven’t done any of my laundry for work. I’d like to hang out with people but I won’t do that either for all the above reasons. I just can’t balance. I am trying, but it’s not happening.

On the upside, I got a new-to-me computer for a SONG from our good friend Nick so I can once again communicate with the world via the Internets. I know I have my phone which I can tweet with and such… but I can’t reply to emails or anything in a timely fashion. Anyway. That makes me hopeful. Now that I’m feeling more comfortable at work, I can start trying to get the other parts of my life in order.

I didn’t die. I just started a job. Look, I even have a desk!

It’s not this neat right now, unfortunately, as the longer I’m there, the more actual work piles up all over it. Anyway. I’m basically an administrative assistant at Hayes Mechanical on the south side of Chicago, which seems like an insane commute considering that we live in Wisconsin, but I get to share the ride with my dad so the commute (other than the fact that it takes time away from my kids) is actually a perk.

Still, I spend an inordinate amount of time in the car, and I’d like to move to the city as quickly as possible.

You’re probably wondering what the hell happened, given that I’ve been an avid supporter of stay-at-homeness, homeschooling and the like. I still support those things and I hope I get back there someday but the simple fact is that we can’t afford it right now. And I’m tired of relying on the government for everything. I’m 28 and the help we were getting was supposed to help us get a leg up, not become a lifestyle. So I’m done now and taking matters into my own hands. My dad offered me this fantastic opportunity at his company and I took it. I’m tucking away every dollar I can to buy a house and Marky’s income (which, as a musician and artist is pretty much what you would expect it to be) is now supplemental rather than what we rely on.

I am so calm these days. I haven’t had an anxiety attack in three weeks.

There’s been a price to pay, however, since I can’t homeschool the boys, they were all registered at our local school. This has been incredibly hard, but the fact is… they love school. They’re happy there. Marky works while they’re in school to make extra money and he’s there to pick them up and drop them off. I’m hoping this is not a long-term solution, but we all get to a point where enough is enough. And if you’re handed a fantastic job with health benefits… well, you don’t walk away from that. So I didn’t. And I work really hard… and I like it. I like my job a lot, actually.

Anyway, Nana was in town this weekend and wanted to take the boys out for the afternoon, so Marky and I snatched the opportunity to have a little date. The complete lifestyle change has been really hard on our relationship, so we needed the time together to reconnect.

We hit a bunch of consignment stores and our favorite flea market.

I had a hard time walking away from this.

We bought matching hippie rings for three dollars.

Reel-to-reel recording equipment. It was hard to walk away from this too, but we decided we were only going to spend $20 and we blew most of it on records.

This organ has been there for weeks. I think Dustin should buy it.

The corn is so high these days.

I love these fields by our house. So we pulled over to take some pictures.

This isn’t what I thought my life would be at 28, but sometimes you have to release yourself from your expectations, shake things up and try doing things differently. Because if what you’re doing is getting you nowhere, then you can’t expect that anything is going to change if you don’t change. So we’re changing. And we’ll be okay.

Okay. Listen. I know I drive everyone crazy with my lop ear bunny obsession, but I just feel as though I MUST share with you this vital piece of information about lop bunnies which, unbelievably, I DID NOT KNOW until just the other night. While lop ear bunnies are amazingly cute, lop ear BABY bunnies are so adorable I want to cry, laugh, throw up and buy eight thousand of them.

And this is why:

LOOK AT THEIR EARS! THEY ARE TINY, FLUFFY AIRPLANES!

Seriously, my heart just exploded all over. It’s going to take me all night to clean it up.

Also: Bento boxes. Do any of you use these? My mom packs my sister’s school lunch in bento boxes and I have to admit, I was pretty won over by them. I like these, especially, from Kir Devries.

My interest lies in the fact that I will be trying to pack my lunch for work often to save monies and I don’t really have anything on hand that will service so if I’m going to get something, well, it may as well be cute, dang it. Also this one (and pretty much ALL THE REST OF THEM) from Mode5:

The other incentive besides saving money is, of course, that if I have the freedom to get whatever lunch I want, five days a week, you can bet that a significant number of those lunches will involve cheeseburgers. And possibly bacon. Most likely both. I know that I should not do this to my body so maybe if I’m distracted by cute boxed lunches it will somehow keep me from noticing the fact that I am eating rice and not french fries dipped in vanilla milkshake. (I know. I’m awful.)

Anyway.

Here is one last bit of rabbit cuteness that will totally leave you feeling like a puddle of loveydovey mush. If you are as addicted to this crap as I am, you can get SO MUCH MORE of it over at The Daily Bunny. If after viewing this website you end up moving to the middle of nowhere to open a giant rabbitry so that you can be constantly surrounded by thousands of baby bunnies, know that neither I nor The Daily Bunny can be held responsible. Although, I personally won’t think any less of you at all.

(Picture by Steve.)

I got a job. My dad hired me on at his office in Chicago, which is, I’ll admit, kind of a crazy commute but then again, I used to commute from Beloit, Wisconsin to Chicago so it’s not that crazy. Plus I can carpool with my dad and brother so that’s pretty swell.

I’m really excited, actually. I’m sad that I won’t be a full-time stay at home mom anymore but you know what, I got to do that for seven years which is a hell of a lot longer than a lot of moms get. And I’m sure I’ll get back to that. But for now, when things are so hard everywhere, compromises have to be made if we’re going to survive.

I will really, really miss my babies though. They have a really great daddy though, so I’m not worried about them at all.

What this means for homeschooling is still unclear. Marky could homeschool them but that’s a lot to take on when he’s still freelancing as well. I don’t know.

So we’ve been enjoying this last week before I start as much as possible. Playing outside, enjoying the neighbor’s pool…

They don’t seem to be bothered by the prospect of me being gone, so that’s good. And hopefully we can find a place closer to the city or at least near my parents so the commute won’t be so insane. Maybe even buy a place of our own?? Not to mention that it would be pretty great to live close to my parents.

So yeah. It’s all a little overwhelming. My friend Jeneanne (who works full-time and has four kids) asked me if I was ready for the change. Truth is… I’m not. But I think it’ll be okay. We can do this.

Look! Sally Jane Vintage featured that ModCloth dress I was drooling over! I love this look. I totally already have those boots too, thanks to Stephanie.

Before:

After:

Hair is all one color again, bangs are back AND curls are layered. I love how it gets thinner at the bottom now. My hair no longer weighs ten pounds and it holds a curl. Hallelujah. You have no idea how much better I feel. My friend Becky is super talented with the scissors, I gotta say. If anyone in the Naperville, IL area wants a stellar haircut done by someone who listens to what you want AND is super nice, let me know. I will totally hook you up.

Bonus: Little monsters now want to be friends with me.

So August first was seven years for us as husband and wife. It doesn’t seem like that long.

We typically don’t celebrate our wedding anniversary because, frankly, our wedding was kind of bummer. I was seven months preggers with twins, wearing a tent I got at the thrift store. We signed some papers at the courthouse in front of a handful of family and only two of our friends. It was not in any way what I’d hoped my wedding would be like and for a long time I kept pretending like it didn’t happen, like it was just an official thing and my REAL wedding was going to happen soon. So instead of celebrating that, we always celebrated Photobooth day, the day we got together. We made a big deal out of it every year and that was somehow better.

I think I’m over the whole wedding thing, finally. I threw away my book with all my wedding plans and pictures of dresses. And I realize that while that day meant everything… that day meant nothing. It doesn’t matter now what I wore or that I was ridiculously pregnant. Some of the people who are hugely important in my life now are people who I didn’t even know then, people who wouldn’t have been there anyway. It’s for the best we didn’t spend a lot of money having everything perfect… all of that doesn’t matter at all now.

So this year marks seven years of marriage and we celebrated. Not the day that we signed some papers… but each day of the seven years we’ve muddled through together, in spite of all the trouble and bullshit we put each other through. I’m not going to pretend we’re the perfect couple, because we are definitely not. We’re way past the honeymoon phase where we fool ourselves into thinking that our relationship transcends all others, that we perfectly compliment each other in every way, that we are immune to everything, that we know better than all those other mortal couples out there. It just ain’t so.

However, in spite of our mortality, in spite of everything, we’ve stuck it out. And, I still like him. I love him, of course, but more importantly, I still… like him, like him. He pisses me off but he also still gives me butterflies. I feel really lucky to have that. And when we’re not connecting, when things are shitty… I can always have hope that we’ll come back around, that we’ll be giggling together, stealing kisses when the kids aren’t looking and hanging out like best friends. So on our anniversary, these two best friends went to the flea market. Afterward, we got Thai food, walked around by the lake, bought some beer, then came home and drank it while listening to every record we own.

I got a typewriter from 1942 for $35.

Marky found a new record player for us for $40. It is PERFECT.

Jeremiah loves the record player. I have a Muppets record that he puts on repeat. He told me he wants his own record player for his birthday.

I love this picture. ♥

Anyway. Yeah. Seven years. Here’s to seven more. (love.) ♥

This weekend my whole family (sans husband) piled into three cars and took off to Devil’s Lake State Park for some camping. Me and my siblings had never been camping together before, so it was pretty crazy. We had 12 people altogether, including my kids. It was my parents’ gift to us which was pretty amazing. We hung out around the campfire, went to Cracker Barrel TWICE, made hotdogs, cooked s’mores… It was just really, really great. The kids and I had a blast.

Uncle Joe.

Jeremiah: “I wasn’t messing up Joe’s lean-to. WEALLY I WASN’T! WEALLY!”

Explorers.

“I WASN’T UNPACKING MY BAG ALL OVER DA TENT! WEALLY! BE-WEAVE ME!”

Half-way up the mountain. These kids hiked six miles up 1400 feet over rocky terrain. They were still running around at 10pm that night. They were not tired AT ALL. Through this experience, I learned something very important: My kids really do have endless energy. It is not my imagination. I physically cannot wear them out. If climbing up and down a mountain and walking six miles doesn’t make them tired by the end of the day, I’m pretty sure NOTHING WILL.

See?

Tom.

Swimming!

The beach was so nice. The water was WARM and full of little minnows.

This little “tide pool” (can you have those at lakes?) was a big hit. We played here nearly all day.

Gorgeous.

I love the Midwest. I know who I am here.

Just in case you were all on pins and needles, wondering what became of my garden this year… Let me fill you in.

This year it’s all about flowers. Yes, I abandoned my vegetable garden for the time being. For one, I knew I wasn’t going to have the time for it this spring when you really have to put the work in. For two, I have spent the last three seasons wrestling with it only to have crops eaten by pests because we are between two apartment complexes who are heavy pesticide sprayers (also, one of these is a NURSING HOME. Heavy pesticides right under the noses of medically compromised people? Makes SO much sense, right!?) Anyway, as you can imagine, my yard is a haven for all critters escaping the poison, including the ever ravenous Japanese beetles. You can see their work above.

So my goals for this year changed. I was not going to wrestle the elements for veggies, I was going to make my yard pretty. Not only pretty, but absolutely irresistible to bees, butterflies and most importantly, birds and toads who would hopefully keep the bad bug population to a minimum. I have to say, I have not been disappointed.

This:

Became this:

This:

Became this:

I planted lavender and bee balm, sun flowers and morning glory. I transplanted some lemon balm from the back as well as some lazy susans. You can’t see, but hidden in the morning glory tower is a bird feeder so the finches can come and get a snack without feeling totally exposed to the kids running in the yard.

The front, which previous just had an ugly bush and grass, now looks like this:

More morning glories for the bees and butterflies and hummingbirds (WE HAVE HUMMINGBIRDS OMG OMG!) and lots of pansies and violets, irises and hydrangea… I could go naming everything but truth is, I don’t know all the names. Sad, I know. I’m still new at this.

I made these jar lanterns a while ago. They’re hanging all over now with tea lights. I’m obsessed with sitting outside at night with all these lit. It’s magical.

I bought a bird bath and it’s been used consistently. This morning I saw a baby finch, still fuzzy around the edges, come to the bath for a drink and his mama flew in and showed him how to bathe. He gave it a shot, all unsure of himself. It was hilarious. Also, the toads like to hang out in here.

In back:

Number two out of four bird feeders.

This is completely wild which I had not intended. The herbs went crazy, The tomato plants went crazy.

Yum!

Made a pillow for my little chair on the porch.

This is my favorite plant ever. I totally splurged and spent eight whole dollars on this little guy and it’s been worth every cent. It just blooms and blooms and blooms some more and the butterflies love it. I can sit and watch them come to it all day. It is just glorious.

Anyway. I’m pretty happy this year. I’ve spent more time outside this year just enjoying the yard than any year previous. There’s so much activity and every time the boys and I weed, there’s some new kind of bug or bird or some type of critter we discover and marvel at.

Someday, when I have my own house, I’ll have a big yard with all kinds of nooks and crannies and stone paths and it will be absolutely magical.

Until then, I have to say, I am pretty content with this.

I’ve been making stationery lately, the old school way. Wanna know how I do it? K.

First you need:

Scissors, good quality glue stick (not the kind you give your kiddos for school) and, if you can get your hands on it, some vintage typing paper. Bonus if it’s slightly yellowed.

A printer that can photocopy. 

Some images. I got mine from this fabulous French blog here.

Now, I like to keep this as lo-fi as possible, so the only digital editing I did was to correct this one tiny problem:

See how yellow these images are when I printed them out straight? Now if I want to put them on paper that isn’t quite so yellow, I have to edit that out. So with some futzing with the basic contrast and exposure, I worked my images into this:

See how much whiter that is? Plus I cropped out the stuff I wasn’t going to use to try and save on ink. You will not have to do this really unless you’re using images from vintage books. Now, carefully cut out your images and use your glue stick to attach them to a piece of paper. You can use a regular piece of multi-purpose paper if you want. 

Now, put your paper on the glass and color copy (or B&W, whatever) to your heart’s content. Bonus if you have a bunny to snuggle in your lap while you wait for your extremely slow printer to finish up.

And then… 

You’re done! If you’ve got some lines that transfered from the outline of the cut images, you can cover them with white out and photo copy again but personally, I like the DIY look. I made the paper with pretty simple means and I’m okay with it looking that way. These scans look really white but the paper is actually slightly yellowed so the effect is pretty great.

If you’re a smartypants with Photoshop, you could digitally dissect the images and make the stationery that way, then take your file somewhere with a nice, smooth laser printer… In fact, I might just ask my husband to do that sometime for me. But til then, I’m pleased with how these look.

So that’s it! Now go on, type a letter to someone. 

Well, I kinda thought that after Monday things would ease up, but apparently, life had other plans for me.

So, I completely forgot that I told my mom I would babysit my siblings while she and my dad went on a two day business trip this week. Fortunately, my mom reminded me the night prior so I got my ass in gear packing and cleaning up because I knew we were going to come home right as my mother-in-law was scheduled to come in for the weekend so I was not going to have a whole lot of time to prepare.

We headed to Johnsburg and stayed the first night and the boys WOULD NOT GO TO BED. Seriously. They passed out at 2am and were up again at 6am, which meant that I was up for most of that time as well. And anyone who knows me knows that I don’t do well on very little sleep. So my parents left in the morning and I tried to keep the kids calm in between all of the freaking out that was inevitable after the previous night’s lack of rest. Micah woke up with a fever and then threw up so he was just miserable. He felt better after a few hours but nothing I did all day made anyone happy at all. I could not wait for bedtime. My brothers who are home for the summer decided it would be a good idea to make some margaritas and mai tais and I couldn’t have been more on board with that plan. My youngest brother Joe helped me get the little ones down for the night at 8:30 sharp and I got to sit around sipping cocktails while playing Qwelf with my brothers and neighbors.

If you have never played Qwelf, you absolutely should. It’s hilarious. I had such a great time. I actually got to bed at a decent hour even. I think I was asleep by 11:30. Amazing. The kids woke up in decent moods and I thought, this is great. Today is going to be awesome. I got my sister ready for school, everyone had a shower… that’s when I realized I left all the patio furniture cushions outside all night in the rain and had forgotten to cover the pool. Minor hitch, right? Not to be discouraged, I went to make some coffee and could not understand why the coffee pot would not turn on. That’s when I got zapped by the outlet. Then, I realized I had misread the time my sister was supposed to be at school. Fortunately Thomas was awake and ran her over there, but her teacher never showed up so she came right back home. That’s about the time Micah started freaking out about his eye. At first I couldn’t figure out what was wrong but then I saw… he had seven spider bites all over his eye and it was starting to swell shut.

After some serious rummaging, I found two bottles of Benedryl. One expired in 2006, one in 2009. I went with 2009.

Now, in the midst of all this, I’m supposed to be cleaning the house because my mom invited a bunch of parents over for a meeting about Club Layton. I did a once over of the place and realized I was not going to get very far with the kids around. Fortunately, my parents arrived at home much earlier than I expected and we took the kids to Burger King and my brother Thomas finished cleaning for us. Amazing. We got home and the place looked gorgeous. My sister went to cheerleading practice and after pretty significantly burning three of my fingers on a defective curling iron trying to get ready, I had a few minutes to hang out with Caroline who’s visiting from Germany. She taught me a really awesome game and we played it with the kiddos until the parent meeting started.

Parent meeting was awesome and I felt really good about everything we got done. I’d already decided to leave for home right after the meeting and so we packed up and headed home pretty quickly after. It was lightening a bit but nothing to indicate that I was about to be caught in the middle of an apocalypse.

Now, I’m a pretty hardy midwestern girl. I’ve seen a lot of storms, including tornadoes and such, so understand how serious this was when I tell you I momentarily thought we were going to DIE. As soon as we passed the “no cell sevice” border between my parents’ house and mine, really out in the middle of nowhere, with only commercial dairy farms around in any given direction, we got slammed. Rain that came down so hard I was sure it was hail, and wind blowing us all over the road. I would have pulled over but I knew we were in the big valley by the creek and the way the rain was coming down, we were liable to get caught in a flash flood and sure enough, I started to notice that even though I was going slower than spit, there was a serious wake coming up around the tires. I rolled down the window and looked down and the water was up nearly to the top of the tires.

I had all three children in the back and my rabbit. Thank God everyone was asleep except Micah who was surprisingly calm although he kept asking if the car was on fire, I never did get out of him exactly why. I knew I had to get out of the valley but I couldn’t go faster than a crawl for fear that I was going to stall the car. Right as we are nearing the hill that will lead us out I get a whiff of that tell tale odor that means there is water in places in the car where water cannot be if you want to continue moving. Fortunately, my little van held herself together and we started up and out of the valley. Now I am definitely looking for somewhere to pull over but we are in the fields where everything is flat and long. Not to mention, I couldn’t see anything if I wanted to. The wind was really awful then and there was a horrible, horrible roar all around. I was sure we were driving right into a tornado. I kept trying to scan all around every time lightning would strike down to see if there was a funnel cloud nearby but I couldn’t see anything at all. Just water in the sky, water on the ground and corn in between.

Eventually the storm started to let up but it took almost the rest of the way home for it to die down. Right as we pulled in our driveway, the rain let up totally and the wind stopped all together. The kids woke up and went in house like nothing had ever been wrong.

I, on the other hand, went in and drank down a beer pretty quick while I said my thank you’s to Jesus about a hundred times over.

Today, I am totally not embarrassed to report, I did nothing. I took care of the kids, cooked and did dishes, snuggled with my bunny, tried to fix my iPhone, dumped a load of crap off my computer, folded a bunch of laundry, unpacked the car, caught up on emails, packed up etsy orders, made some stationery…

Okay, maybe I didn’t do nothing after all. I feel like a bum though because I let the boys watch like six episodes of Justice League so I could battle my technology in peace and Jeremiah played with his virtual puppy on my phone for about 45 minutes while I caught a nap. Our original plan was to go the zoo or play in the pool but with the storms and the stress and oh yeah, the week from HELL… I just couldn’t do it.

Anyway. The kids are in bed, there is a beer in the fridge and a whole new disc of MacGyver courtesy of Netflix waiting for me.

Tomorrow I am going to Chicago to visit Stephanie and the day after that, husband is home. Things are looking up. Thank God.