She's Such a B

I'm moving!
Okay, not today - who blogs when they're actually moving?  But I do have stuff in boxes.  I WE get our keys next Saturday and I have a 17 foot UHaul reserved in my name the following Tuesday.  On Wednesday I'll probably be dead, but...thems the breaks, right?

Yesterday was the day I had planned to start packing.  And I had also planned to squeeze in one more layout.  I figured I'd pack for a couple of hours in the morning, and then set aside two hours to play with paper.  Ted had a baseball game scheduled last night, but it rained pretty hard the night before and throughout the morning.  I got a little cocky, thinking that surely the game would be cancelled, which would mean I could pack more and push scrapping to the evening.

HA.
hahahahaha.

No.  Ted's game wasn't cancelled.  But by the time that became apparent I had already extended my packing time into my scrapping time.  Also, last night was the last night for me to make a meal and have "all" of us eat something homemade together. (all = me, Ted and Molly...which is such a tiny 'all' these days!)  The bottom line is, I got to play with paper for about a half hour before we had to head out to the park.  The game was good - the sun was out at the beginning, and it got a little chilly when the sun went down, but at no point was it unpleasant.  The boys won 6-0. (Yay!)

We got home after 10:30, and even though that's long after I prefer to scrapbook, I was going to finish the page I'd started.  I couldn't bear to pack everything up with this picture and this story untold.  I wasn't excited about where this was going at first, my tired brain just wasn't clicking the way I would like it to.  But in the end, I'm very pleased. :)

*GASP*  I cussed on a scrapbook layout! BAD SCRAPBOOKER!

Oops.  I'm not sorry.  This is our life and our story, and this story includes a bad word.

Ted is the most laid back, easy going, helpful kid on the planet.  He rarely complains, and is always willing to lend a hand.  I'd even go so far as to say he's chivalrous.  This past week I worked to spruce up a drafting table.

It went from this:

To this:

This transformation took about 3 hours of scrubbing, power sanding, detail and finish sanding and buffing on several layers of wax.  The point of this is: my arms were like jelly for the following two days, and when I said something in front of my kids, Ted's response was "Mom.  I would have done that for you."  And indeed he could have - he just won the Applied Tech award at school, meaning, of all the kids, the shop teacher thought he was 'the man.'  We had a little talk about how I like getting that sense of "I did it!" pride, too, and that the sore guns were totally worth it.  But Ted would do just about anything to spare me pain.  If he treats his future wife half as well as he treats me, she will be a lucky, lucky woman.

"She's such a bitch!" is our inside joke.  Whenever I ask him to do anything his usual response is "Okay."  Not "Okay." in a "what-ev-er" tone.  He may not be excited to gather the garbage and take it the curb, but his response is positive -  like he's just happy to be of help.  I love that about him.

So when I ask him to do something and he says "Ok" so willingly, I playfully say "I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking: "She's such a bitch!"**  To this Ted earnestly responds "Mom.  I'm NOT thinking that.  I don't EVER think that!"  We tend to go on like this for a bit.  Ted knows that I'm teasing him, that I know that he doesn't think that.  It's just fun.  And it makes him smile at me in an exasperated way.   We've been doing this schtick for a couple of months now, and the other day I said I was going do a scrapbook page with that title. And blog about it.  He smiled, but protested, saying that everyone would think he was mean.  For the record: he's totally not mean at all.

**Yes, I shouldn't set such a terrible example for my kids, but I'm not saying anything their peers don't say, and we've had extensive conversations about what's acceptable and appropriate.  And honestly, they're not big bad word sayers.  I've scrolled through their texts, and their friends cuss like sailors, but I rarely see anything, and even then, it's damn or crap, so I feel like we're doing okay there.

And that's it.  I doubt that I'll scrapbook again until July.  Just thinking about that break makes me sad.  I've had so much fun playing these last couple of weeks.  BUT, I'm SO excited about scrapbooking in my new place, where I get to be in with the rest of my people.  And on my new desk (Have I mentioned how pretty she is??) And standing up, too!  Yeeeee!  It's going to be so great.

Wish us luck!