a brown crayon day

I awoke this morning to the soothing sound of falling rain. I enjoy listening to it; perhaps because I grew up where rain was strictly a December-February sort of thing. Whatever the reason, it was a good morning for sitting on the couch in jammies, drinking a cup of Vanilla Coffeemate (with enough coffee in it to make it caramel colored), and reading/studying Philippians for next Weds. Bible study.

If only it lasted. For some reason I was just hazy and slightly depressed all day. Andy said it's the weather, but I've never been moody when the weather shifts before.

I attempted to get school done with the kids, but something I call "character issues" cropped up instead. Sample: "School ruins my life, it's boring, it wastes my time..." etc. (I gave up a career for *this,* I think to myself). So instead, I decided I was going to return good for evil, and help David in the cleaning of his room.

Good idea, but my good intentions quickly degenerated into a foul, fierce mood when I pulled his bed out from the wall and found an assortment of snack foods in varying stages of decay hoarded between the bed and the wall. Yogurt cups, dirty spoons, those orange-colored peanut butter crackers ground into the carpet, wrappers of packaged cookies... all intermingled with books, stuffed animals and dirty clothes.

I started flinging, arousing the indignation of my 7 year old preternaturally self-assured son: "It wasn't messy in here until YOU started working! **I** didn't make this mess, and I'm not going to clean it up!" (oh yeah, kid?) I (not-so-calmly) reassured him that just because it wasn't visible didn't mean it wasn't messy, and yes indeed he would be cleaning it up. I did grab my trusty Kirby with the hose attachments and did a good job underneath the bed and in the nooks and crannies, as well as vacumming those horrible mini blinds that must be designed to collect dust - then after that left him to it.

that didn't work. You would not believe the number of plastic dinosaurs, legos, odd shells, bones, etc. this kid has. So I went back in there, again intending to return good for evil, and we sat down to sort out all the toy bins and get things in their proper places.

By the time we finished it was going on dinner time and I was still emotionally and physically drained - even more so after tackling that room. We decided to go out to eat and do some shopping. So I grabbed a pad of paper and the closest writing utensil: a brown crayon. I thought it was very fitting. This was a brown crayon day; it only follows that I should write my shopping list in brown crayon.

Went to Happy Teriyaki for dinner where we ordered the usual: chicken and beef teriyaki for the kids; yakisoba for Andy. I ordered a bento box that had a little bit of everything tasty in it. By this time Andy and I were laughing at stupid things, so some mood relief was in sight. David bent over to look at the koi in the indoor pond and one of the big fish fluked him, soaking his face. I thought he'd actually dunked his face in the pond!

Since KMart is right next door to the teriyaki place, we went marauding over there. Taking inspiration from my friend Amy, and to prevent any more towel thefts at my house, I let Sammie and David pick out their own color towels for their exclusive use. But they had to pick the Martha Stewart ones, which were on sale. Egads, before I made that stipulation, David had chosen a dull army green towel, and Sammie had chosen flower-child pink. Can you see those side by side on the towel rack!? ugh. But MS didn't have those particular shades. David settled on a sage green; Sammie sighed and chose a plum-colored towel instead.

We finished the night with banana splits. So what was a brown crayon day turned into a rather nice wisteria evening.