Rosie the Chicken

For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live. - Ezekiel 18:32


So I have this chicken…

My dog is a known lover of chickens.  His name is Lucky, but occasionally he turns into his alter-ego, El Diablo, and kills and eats one of my chickens that has gotten out.  Or my ducks.  Or random bunnies.  He’s a meat eater by nature.  It’s no fault of his own that they are delicious.

So we keep the dog separate from the chickens at all possible moments and keep the chickens’ wings trimmed to minimize their flying over the fence and into enemy territory. 

But…

A couple of months ago I noticed we had a regularly out black hen.  Her morning trek takes her over her own fence, across the backyard, over the dog’s fence and into his pen, where she looks for a morning snack of june bugs that have drown in his swimming pool overnight.  Several times we’ve come home to find the chicken and dog in the dog pen.  So far, El Diablo has been ignoring the deliciousness of said chicken.

This morning she was perusing the selection of my garden and its fallen tomatoes and was selecting her breakfast from bugs under the oak tree. 

Our chicken reminds me of the hen from the children’s book Rosie’s Walk.  Our dog is the fox.  In the book Rosie takes quite a perilous walk about the farm with the fox always hiding in the bushes watching the chicken. 

Our chicken is brave.

And bold. 

And perhaps a little oblivious.
 

Just like Rosie...  So that shall be her name. 

RA, TP, and Hydrocortisone Cream

“Keep your love for one another at full strength, because love covers a multitude of sins.”  1 Peter 4:8

 

In celebration of Mother’s Day this week, and a lack of progress in my book writing endeavor, I have decided to reactivate my blogging in hopes my writing will bring enjoyment to someone.  Me.  You.  Anyone??  Plus, I need to chronicle these stories in case I forget in my old age.  

Anyway, as stated before, I grew up thinking I never wanted children.  And some days I’m still right.  There was no lovey dovey feeling when they handed me my first writhing child, but as luck would have it they’ve grown on me.  Good thing, huh?  I blame endless entertainment as the bond that holds us all together.  

About a month ago, one of my children, who will remain nameless to protect the innocent, had a serious case of the RA*.  In babies, they call it diaper rash, but since he hasn’t seen a diaper in eons, I’m calling it the adult version:  red, chapped, whatever you want to call it, it’s not good! 

This was not the first time inadequate wiping had reared its ugly head, so I had showed him previously my face wipes that he could use to help clean himself up if he suspected the job was too much for toilet paper to handle.  They’re the cheap face wipes from the dollar store, but they contain aloe and are better than dry paper on an already tender crack.  And they won’t set you on fire like baby wipes. 

Not that I know personally.

Okay, maybe I do…

Maybe RA runs in the family. 

Said child had complained at bedtime of pain, burning, overall agitation, and restlessness due to the RA.  I tried everything I knew to help make him comfortable, but nothing was working.  I finally suspected stalling tactics to keep from going to bed, but when he came to me the third time flopping around and actually crying real tears, I knew there was more to the story. 

I asked him what he’d done.  He said he’d used some wipes.  Which wipes?  I asked. 

These…. 

Clorox wipes. 

So child ended up taking a shower about 11PM, got reslathered with the A+D ointment, and finally stopped being hysterical and went to bed. 

Nobody died. 

But good advice would be not to use Clorox wipes as butt wipes.  Just saying.

*****

We went out of town last weekend and stayed in a hotel for two nights.  On the morning after our first hotel stay, I have this conversation with the same child:

“Boy, that new toothpaste of yours really works!  My teeth even feel clean this morning!” he says.

“I know.  I got a whitening one this time and it really cleans your teeth good.”

“I don’t think I even need to brush my teeth this morning, they’re so clean!” he says.

“You still have to brush your teeth.”

“But they’re still clean!” he says.

“No, really, you still have to brush your teeth.”

(Goes into bathroom where father is brushing his own teeth.)

Overheard from father, “Hey, let me see that….  That’s NOT toothpaste!!” 

And what was it? 

Hydrocortisone cream.

That’s why I love them.  Because they make me laugh!

 *Red ass.  That’s what we call it in my house, although we usually use the abbreviation.

It Happens!

“What goes in must come out.” – motherhood proverb

 

Today we’re going to talk about poop.  (Sorry if the lovely photo distracted you into thinking this would be a lovely post, but I thought a picture of the subject would be totally tacky.)  So if you don’t like talking about poop or reading about poop, read no further. 

Sorry you had to read poop three times already. 

Wait, that makes four….

Anyway, I consider myself the undocumented Poop Queen.  With a husband, two children, four cats, one dog, twelve chickens, three ducks, a horse, a pony, two hamsters, two fish, two geese, and a regularly irritable bowel, I’m surrounded by it every day. 

No, really...

My yard is full of it!! 

And there are things you learn about it over the years.  Like “Don’t lick your lips while mowing the pasture.”  Things like that. 

I actually think I could write a whole book containing nothing but poop stories.  Any publishers willing to take me up on that out there?  Let me know.  I’ll start writing it in the bathroom.  It would probably be a blowout!! 

Sorry… 

So, last night we had a funny poop story involving a complete stranger.  Well, he’s not now, as we have sufficiently bonded over poop, but I’m still laughing about the whole incident today.  So here it is:

We were at the YMCA and a new guy was working the desk.  I’d seen him once before but hadn’t talked to him yet, but he seemed like a jovial kind of guy.  One that borders on hilarity.  My soccer team was finished swimming and after getting dressed in the men’s locker room, my son comes out and tells us that someone has pooped on the floor!  He proceeds to describe the evidence in terms of length and girth.  I tell him to just go and tell the new guy at the front desk and he’ll take care of it.  I add that describing the evidence was NOT necessary! 

So I watch as my son goes to the new guy and tells him what’s wrong, complete with hand gestures like he’s measuring off his latest catch at the lake.  I’m mortified that my kid is describing the turd, but I notice a slight look of panic on the new guy’s face.  And it makes me laugh.

After all the kids are carted off by their parents, I go up to the new guy and say, “Hey, good luck with that turd,” and give him a wink and a smile.  Yeah, that’s the kind of person I am.  In case you didn’t know by now.

The new guy launches into an ADHD frenzy about how he’s new and the other guy is new and they have no idea how to handle the situation.  They don’t know where the cleaning products are, they don’t know what to do……

So I say, “Here’s what you do:  Just go tell the lifeguards there is a turd in the men’s locker room.  They’re used to it.  They fish those things out of the pool all the time!”  I told him it was called Turd Alert.

A look of relief came over new guy’s face.  It was obvious he was NOT a parent.  He would have never been so terrified of such a bodily product if he were.

Things I’m laughing about today:  What is the new guy’s name?  I figure we are now poop buddies or something.  Did the lifeguards have to clean it up for him, or did the cleaning crew walk in to find a “present”?  Have I started an official title for such an incident at the Y?  And, what kind of person just poops on the floor and doesn’t tell anyone? 

Oh wait, that’s another story…...

One day, many moons ago, we were all outside having a grand old time doing something.  One of our kids disappeared into the house for an inordinately long period of time.  I thought I should go check on him. 

I hear a yell from the bathroom the minute I enter the house:  “Be careful!!!!  Don’t step on it!!” 

“What??!!??” I say as I walk closer to the bathroom. 

And then I see it.  There on the kitchen floor. 

“I prayed that Jesus would come and take away my mess!!” he said.  “But Jesus didn’t come!!”

I don’t think I’ve ever been so disgusted or on the verge of busting out laughing so bad before or since.

I told him Jesus wanted me to know he was having trouble with that and that’s why Jesus didn’t clean up his mess. 

But really, maybe he should have called for a lifeguard!

May all your bodily functions make someone else’s day today!


PS - this is my second blog post under nearly the same name.  Sorry, but I can't think of a better one for it.  I'm open to suggestions.  Here's the other 'It Happens!   
  

CSI: The Holey Shower Curtain

"No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes."  Psalm 101:7

 

Occasionally we have an unsolved mystery here at the house.  Real whodunits since no one ever fesses up to committing the crime.  I told you of how I’d become the Toothpaste Detective a while back and now I’ve had to broaden my scope.  I’m now Captain Bathroom!

You see, most of our crimes occur in the bathroom.  From mystery pee spots on the wall, to walking in hours after someone has been in the bathroom to the water in the sink still running, to the child in the bathtub who has no towel to use when he gets out because someone stole it, we have a litany of bathroom offenses.  Most punishment for noticeable offenses falls back to the known repeated offender, who admittedly may not be the offender at the time, but I think it sends a message.  Plus it evens out the workload in case they might be in cahoots.  And they clean the toilets for me. 

Our most recent bathroom crime: The Case of the Holey Shower Curtain. 

I have one child that showers and one child that bathes, so when I stepped into the shower one morning and found the plastic curtain had finger shaped protrusions all over it, it wasn’t hard to discern a culprit.  Said culprit was brought to the crime scene, asked to confess, and told to never do that again or suffer the wrath of Captain Bathroom.  Said culprit was agreeable to all terms of his verdict and we’ve lived with protrusions on the shower curtain for weeks without further incidents. 

Yes, I could have replaced said shower curtain, but I thought leaving it for a while might be a visual reminder to his conscience in case boredom strikes in the shower again.  Wash yourself and GET OUT!!  How many times do I have to say it?

So last week, after a late night at soccer practice and a messy bathtub from bathing baby ducks, I commanded my usual bather to shower after his brother.  All was fine and dandy and it was business as usual until I stepped in the shower the next morning. 

Here’s what I found:

 

Now where the simple protrusion had once been there was a distinct hole.  I called the two primary suspects to the crime scene.  Both entered a plea of not guilty.  But since I have one showerer and one bather, and one honest-to-a-fault and one liar, I could pretty much tell you who did it without even asking them.

The incriminating evidence was as follows:  

• The showerer had already been read the riot act on poking the shower curtain and swore he’d change his ways. 

• We’d not had any repeat occurrence of a maimed shower curtain until the appearance of the bather.

• And bather just happens to have a history of innocence when all fingers point to him.

I sent them to their room to decide between the two of them who had poked the hole in the shower curtain.  After much deliberation, the prime suspect comes in with the verdict.

“Since your finger fits in the hole, YOU must have done it!” 

I had flashbacks of the OJ Simpson trial:  If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit! 

 

And so the mystery of The Holey Shower Curtain remains just that, and Captain Bathroom is still on the case.  From the looks of things, my investigations may never cease!

Cat Attack

“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”  Romans 12:15

 

Remember the orange cat?  He’s grown up nicely into a very sweet loving kitty cat that I love despite his color and has provided us loads of entertainment with his sweet gestures of flopping down in front of where ever we may walk wanting us to rub his belly.  He’s also started a little game with us called “Sneak into the House”. 

It all started about a month ago when we had a little cold snap.  The kids wanted to bring him in. 

Okay, it was me.  I thought his little kitty paws might be cold. 

Anyway, I let him wander around the house and he found a wonderful spot called “Under the Bed”.  He could hide just behind the dust ruffle and then when he noticed I sat down on the floor right on the other side of the dust ruffle to play with him, he could sink his claws right into my bottom causing me to holler and my son to almost wet his pants from laughter.  It was quite the little game we had going.  Ha ha, hee hee. 

Then he found that if he moved to the exact center of Under the Bed, no human arm could reach him.  Well, it had been so long since we’d had a cat in the house, I’d forgotten about flushing them out from Under the Bed with the broom handle, so we just let him be, thinking he’d come out when he was ready. 

We thought he’d come to us.  But he decided to go out the other way and see what adventures he could find in the rest of the house.  What he found was the Hamster Cage!! 

We found him with front paws wrapped completely around the hamster cage, and his kitty nose pressed in desperation up against the thin bars that separated him from his prey, and a look of unfathomable luck upon his face.  We had to practically pry his claws off of the cage and sent him back outside. 

And then he had to live with the fact that we keep tasty cat treats in a cage in a nice warm house. 

And it was just too much for him to live with. 

So, for the past several weeks we’ve occasionally found Sunny hiding under the bed waiting for the right moment in which to unleash his Master Plan.  Lying in wait, I believe it is called.

He’d only made it into the room with the hamsters a couple of times, but was quickly discovered and ushered back to his natural outdoor habitat.  Sunny practiced his murderous skills several times in the past few weeks, picking off several birds that have visited my bird feeders.  He’s left their lifeless bodies on my front porch as a sign of things to come. 

Or maybe affection.  Depends on who you ask.

And so it was tonight that Sunny decided to finally unleash his Master Plan for either liberating the hamsters or having a tasty treat. 

I had left with the children to return two friends to their home, and the hub sat at the kitchen table working a Sudoku puzzle and reading the newspaper.  Sunny apparently sneaked in the laundry room door when one of the four children was exiting the house to get into the car.  In my mind, he probably went straight for the center of Under the Bed to wait for the perfect moment. 

So while the hub was enjoying an otherwise uneventful quiet moment to himself, Sunny pounced.  He jumped on the top of the hamster cage, ripping it from its perch on a stand by the window, knocking a hamster bedroom insert completely away from the cage itself, and exposing a large gaping hole through which he would retrieve his snack.  Unfortunately his plan did not include the hub grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, spanking his bottom, and depositing him back outdoors so quickly. 

Pine pellets and hamster bedding slung all over the floor, it wasn’t surprising that the hamsters had escaped.  The elder of the hamsters has been out at least on one other occasion since we’ve had her and she tends to run in a circle around the cage until the humans show up, but the other hamster is young and new and really doesn’t care for humans that much in the first place, so she decided to make a run for it. 

The hub said he could see her hiding behind the cabinet peeking at him, but as soon as she noticed he saw her, she would run to another spot.  The hamsters are robo dwarf hamsters, which the lady at PetSmart said meant “fast”.  The hub confirmed this definition after having several misses in catching the baby hamster before snagging her back into her cage. 

I returned after depositing the excess children at their home and found the hub at the table reading the newspaper and working a Sudoku puzzle.  He told me of all his action while I was out and I thought I would die laughing.  He didn’t find the experience as funny as I did. 

Probably a classic case of:  “Guess you (didn’t have) to be there!” 

The pine pellets and hamster bedding still remain on the floor.


He’ll probably laugh tomorrow when I have to clean them up! 

Being Related

..."Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."  Mark 5:19

We took a trip to Portland, Oregon over the summer.  I was amazed at their greenness.  I was wowed by snow in July.  I was aghast when I returned home to 111 degree temperature.  But, what has stuck with me, besides a secret longing to move there and never have 100 degree summers again, was how me and my distant cousins were definitely all RELATED.

My great-aunt Norma (my mom’s dad’s sister) had come to Oklahoma to visit several times throughout my life, as had my great-uncle Don, my cousin Kari, and my cousin Erik.  But, they have another “kid” I’d never met.  His name is Mark, and he’s 50, so he’s hardly a kid, but the last time he’d stepped foot in Oklahoma was in 1973 before I was born.

He told stories of putting a toad in my grandma’s drinking water and how she was going to beat his butt.  We exchanged grandma stories and related quite well, right off the bat.

Did I mention that I run a small toad farm here, and that my kids love toads?

Mark’s family and mine took a trip out to Multnomah Falls and hiked all the way to the top.  On the way through the pedestrian tunnel we bought bags of rainier cherries that we stowed away in the minivan and then returned to after our hike.  We all sat out in the parking lot with the windows down blowing seeds out our mouths like uncouth cannons into the parking lot the exact same way.  I said it was like we were all related or something!

And then he said those fateful words that led me to believe that some ties must be genetic.  He told my kids, “You betta check yourself, before you wreck yourself.”  I tell my kids this all the time, but I hadn’t yet said it in front of the Oregon folks.  I told Mark that I tell them that all the time.  He said, “Those exact same words?” and I said yes.  Funny how an affinity for Ice Cube quotes could be common halfway across the country.  Coincidence?  I think not!

So then the other day, I was out rinsing off the crystals we got at the Great Salt Plain with the hub and I wondered if they’d lost their saltiness.  So I licked one.  Yep.  Tasted just like a rock.  My husband looked at me like I was nuts. 

A few weeks later, I was sitting out at the picnic table with the hub going through the crystals and our youngest son came over to see what we were doing.  He picked up one of the crystals and licked it.  Again my husband rolled his eyes and looked at us both like we were nuts. 

Then a couple of weeks ago, my dad came to visit.  We were sitting at my kitchen table showing him the crystals we’d dug up when he picked one up and licked it!  I died laughing because that made three generations of rock lickers!  Good grief!  My stepmother was quick to note that SHE did not lick the rock.  I said it must be a Taylor thing.

So the next time you’re thinking “why did I do that?” you might look no further than the people you’re related to. 

And for the record, I don’t lick ALL rocks.  I think that’s an entirely different syndrome altogether and I am (so far) undiagnosed.

Hug your family today.  You’ll need them to blame later!

Necklaces and Joyce Meyer

“Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.”  1 Peter 4:10

Ok, so I made this necklace.  We have a lot of selenite crystals (as you can imagine) from our days at the Great Salt Plains, so I’m trying to figure out what I could do with them.  We also had some nice rocks that were picked up by my children at the Gem Dig at the Tulsa Zoo and even more from the panning station at Silver Dollar City.  We have a rock habit that we just can’t shake! 

I caught a show on PBS the other day about wire wrapping and hammering wire and such, and like with all shows I watch on TV, I thought “I could do that.”  So I tried it.  It almost killed my fingers, but it worked out pretty nice, I think.  Even the hub was impressed. 

And like all good Facebook friends who try something new and succeed, I posted a picture of my accomplishment.

My friend from church said, “I need that…. Seriously.” 

I thought okay, I can do that.  It’s my first try, and if she likes it that much, then it’s hers!

So then I’m flipping through the channels last Friday night and I run across Joyce Meyer.  Now I’m not a regular watcher, but I occasionally try to keep up on my televangelists to dispel rumors and such.  I’ve watched her a few times and found her to be an interesting subject.  I need to read up on her and figure out more about her. 

Anyway, moments into my running across her on TV, she says, “If God tells you to give something away, it is no longer anointed for you!” 

I said, “Holy cow!  I think she’s talking about my necklace!” 

Then she tells a story of how she had a bracelet that she really liked and felt compelled to give it to a friend, but then she had remorse over giving it away and hounded the friend about how much she liked it until the friend said that God was telling her to give it back to Joyce.  And then she never wore it again because it had lost its luster to her.  She said she kept it as a reminder that God had used that bracelet to teach her a lesson. 

So then I was thinking that I for sure had to give that necklace to my friend at church!!

I wore the necklace to church on Sunday and everyone gushed over it and I told them I made it and yada yada yada.  But then I ran into my friend and told her it was really her necklace because Joyce Meyer had told me that I had to give it to her! 

She was confused. 

I’m sometimes confusing. 

I told her the whole story and she thought it as bizarre as I did, but said I should wear the necklace until the end of the service, and then she would get it from me.  She hugged me, and thanked me, and then we took our respective places – me in my pew, and she as a song leader.

And that would be the end of the story, except for the fact that our church has all sorts of fascinating little tidbits of information in the bulletins.  They list the elders and upcoming events and ushers for the week and such, and they also list the week’s birthdays. 

And guess whose birthday it was?  My friend’s. 

I gave her the necklace at the end of the service and told her I couldn’t believe it was her birthday!!  I told her THAT was even a little bit too weird for me even! 

And I think I heard God laughing…

Again!

Brotherly Love

“Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.  Honor one another above yourselves.”  Romans 12:10

We always say the above bible verse is my 7YO’s verse.  His name is Roman and his birthday is December 10^th.  So Romans 12:10 is HIS verse.  And he does a pretty good job of loving his brother. 

For the most part.

I told you about Mitten’s kittens, and how the orange one showed up straight from Jesus, so it was only fate that we should have to keep that one.  But now we have this other ginormous kitten that is older than all the others, who plays, and jumps, and eats cat food in a horribly cute way the others cannot.  The kids have named him Max and have started petitioning for his adoption as a “family cat” as well.

We do not need to keep two kittens.

I repeat. 

We do not need to keep two kittens. 

We’re full up on cats.

No room at the Cat Inn.

The litter box runneth over. 

Which is a whole other issue entirely since they are all outside cats and refuse to potty anywhere but the litter box in the garage so that I have to clean it out!!  

We like to think we’re good parents, but we also like to give our kids a hard time.  It’s part of our master plan of not making it too easy here, so that they will one day want to move out!  So we told each of the children individually that they could keep both kittens, but they had to give up their brother.

The 9YO quickly recounted and said that he didn’t want to keep the kitten. 

The 7YO thought about it for half a second and said, “OKAY!!”

Brotherly love. 

A beautiful thing!

Foreign Language

“The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’”  Genesis 11:6-7

Okay, so my husband is Russian, but I took a lot of Spanish in school.  In fact, I almost came out of college with a minor in it.  But I think I would have had to take one more semester and it didn’t really seem worth going to school any longer for.  What good would it have done me anyway, since I married the Russian? 

Anyway, in college I had had so much Spanish that I had to give presentations in front of the class in Español.  I was always self-conscious when speaking Spanish because of my accent – read, hick from Oklahoma – and felt kind of like Sean Penn’s character on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  “Dude… Cómo está usted?” 

We had a lady in my class from El Salvador, whom I asked if she could even understand me, and she said yes, but maybe she was just being nice.  Oh, and my college Spanish classes were taught by a Cuban who’d gone to school in Russia and married a Russian lady and spoke Spanish, English, and Russian.  Fate, I tell you! 

So, I am the authority on Spanish in my household, even though I don’t speak it, read it, write it, or even understand it anymore. 

Here was the conversation at breakfast this morning:

9YO: “What does español mean?”

Me: “It means Spanish.”

9YO: “No, what does it MEAN?”

Me:  “It means Spanish in Spanish.”

9YO: “That’s not what I MEAN!  What does español mean?”

Me:  “Español is the Spanish word for Spanish.”

9YO: “So what does it mean?”

Me: “It means SPANISH!  It is the Spanish word for Spanish!”

9YO:  “So how do you say English?”

Me: “Inglés.”

9YO: “Ohhhhhhhh!!!  Now I get it.”

And to think that conversations like this would have never existed if the tower of Babel had never been attempted!  What would the world be like if we all understood each other?  Who would we assume was talking about us just because we don’t understand what they are saying?  What word would I use for “You got me?” besides capisci to sound like a mobster mother? 

Thank God for differences, and children, and laughter, and entertainment that stems from us all trying to understand each other for thousands and thousands of years! 

The Orange Kitten

"Happy is the home with at least one cat." - Italian Proverb

I am not a fan of orange cats.  It’s not that I think they are any different from any other color of cat.  I just don’t care for orange ones.  And I believe there are enough stray cats in the world, that should I go to choose another cat, I should be able to find one that is not orange in color.  Orange cats are also known as “blonde” by my 7YO. 

Second in line on my Cat Color Hating Scale is a calico cat.  Not a fan.  Probably because of a black and orange calico cat name Kiki that would not let me pet her when I was a child. 

So the 7YO’s cat, Mittens, had been killed by a car late last summer and a cute little mostly gray kitten had shown up at the neighbors.  (She undeniably had peach colored calico mixed in with her gray fur, but I was willing to ignore it because she was a nice kitten.)  The neighbor didn’t want her, so I said I would take her home with me.  The 7YO promptly named her Mittens and she became his own. 

Fast forward to about a month ago.

I’d thought about getting Mittens fixed, knowing she was borderline on the preferred age of six months to have her spayed.  But was she getting fatter?

The 7YO noticed first that she had “milk suckers”.  Great!  Maybe I could still take her in…

Let me just say that nothing riles up the pro-choice/pro-lifers at this house like an unexpected teenaged cat pregnancy.

How could we not let her have the kittens? 

And so, our ignorably calico Mittens has been ballooning up over the past several weeks.  The kids couldn’t wait until she “pooped out her kittens”.  They had already begun petitioning to keep one of the kittens as a “family cat”. 

“If there is a blonde one, can we keep it?” my 7YO asked. 

“I don’t really like orange cats,” I told him.

“Why would you say that?  When they grow up, they get all shiny and nice, and they look professional!” he told me. 

Professional cats. 

What will they think of next?

And so the days had been accomplished that the cat was either to have her kittens or explode. 

Yesterday morning, she wasn’t waiting at the front door to be let into the garage for breakfast.  She wasn’t in the garage at lunchtime.  I got to thinking that I hadn’t seen her all day and I’d been home for most of the day.

I checked with the neighbor lady who said she hadn’t seen her either. 

I decided to check the barn.  On my way out to the barn, I peeked my head under the roof of the well house.  There was Mittens and her kittens.  Four little dark blobs. 

But wait…. 

She moved her front paw.  And there… what did I see?  ...but another blob that was undeniably ORANGE!

I could almost hear God laughing!

I kept the secret until the kids got home from school.  My 7YO was so excited that he “happy cried”.  We relocated Mittens and her kittens to our back porch so they would be protected, and the kids could pet the kittens every day to keep them tame so that their fate of leaving this house to go to a new one will be as expeditious as possible.    

My 7YO then prayed, “Dear Jesus, thank you for my blonde kitten.  It is just want I wanted.  It’s my FAVORITE!  In Jesus' name we pray, amen.”

It looks like we’ll be keeping a kitten, doesn’t it?

CSI: Special Dental Unit

"A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will not go free."  Proverbs 19:5

Click! 

I’d sent my 7YO to go brush his teeth and after he shut the door, I heard the click of the door lock. 

Now it might not be weird for people to lock bathroom doors in your house, but it is around here.  In fact, with my boys, it is weird if they even shut the door at all.  Just be prepared, should you ever come to visit. 

So, I knew something was up. 

I hear water running and all the usuals of teeth brushing.  But, that click… 

He comes out. 

“Did you brush your teeth?” I ask. 

“Yes.”

“Did you use toothpaste?”

“Yes.”  Shifty eyes. 

“Let me smell your breath.”

He uses watermelon toothpaste so sometimes it can be difficult to discern whether or not he’s brushed his teeth or eaten a piece of candy. 

He breathes in my face.  Hmm…

“You didn’t use toothpaste!  Now get back in there and brush your teeth again.”

“Yes, I did!  You just couldn’t smell it!”

A retort!  Not his usual defense.  Must employ elevated tactics. 

“Well, let me smell your toothbrush!”  Evil mother eyes.

Busted!

His mouth turns up into that little upside down grin that says, “She knows!” 

“Uh huh!  Now get back in there and brush your teeth!  And do it RIGHT this time!”

Often I feel like my own private investigator.  I feel like I’m both the good cop and bad cop.  I feel like I live with a bunch of criminals just waiting to break Mommy Law.  And now it seems they do so and then lie to me about it. 

Will they proceed from not using toothpaste and on to a life of organized crime? 

Or will my detective work moments serve to build a conscience that will speak to them when I’m retired? 

Will I ever be able to retire?? 

Just another day in the life of the Toothpaste Detective.

Hope your pearly whites are minty (or at least watermelony) fresh today!