Things that we need

We need lots of things around our house.

I need to put up some hooks near the front door for the kids to hang their jackets on. I actually bought the hooks already at Home Depot. But they came on a black mounting board, which I felt would not merge well with our pink walls, that we need to paint but haven't gotten around to it yet. So I had to paint them white. I've painted them white now, but I don't like the way that they came out, so I need to sand them down a bit and repaint them. I'm beginning to think that I should have looked around some more.

We need to clean out our garage. We only moved in 47 months ago. It's when the month count gets into triple digits that I think that we can admit to having a problem. Why is it that people count in months when they should be counting in years? "Jessi's only 26 months." Or they count in weeks when they should be counting in months? "Billy Bob here's only 28 weeks."

I desperately need to clean out my office. I periodically go through it and make a mild effort at cleaning. Just this week I've been on a cleaning binge. Would you like to see the progress that I've made on my desk?















You probably get the impression that we are a slovenly bunch. Not really. I am just horrible at making decisions, so I choose to make no decision, which results in unseemly piles upon piles of stuff. It is not uncommon for me to find an item that has been on my desk top for over 2 years. I have also developed the ability to ignore things. Theresa could probably tell you that I've been doing a pretty good job of ignoring her for years! Which is not really true. I just don't listen all the time.

You know, this post started out as just a little blurb about why we don't have a new kitchen table. By the way, that is one of the things that we need. But I decided to document why we're not going to get a new kitchen table anytime soon.


All of those little marks that you see in the wood are gouges placed there by one or the other, or more likely, both of our two male offspring. You know, I don't remember Mattea ever damaging anything by pounding on it. Sure... she did her share of damage by drawing on things with markers, but she was not nearly as destructive as the two boys seem to be. And those dents were placed on the table top with spoons. Just think of the damage they could manage with knives!

But when I decided to call the post "Things that we need", I started thinking about other things that we need. I'm a very tangential thinker if you haven't figured that out about me by now. Occasionally I actually make it back to the idea that I started to present in the beginning, but often I don't. But that's when I'm speaking. The advantage of the written word is that I can go back again and again, until I have connected various random bits.

Earlier I mentioned documentation. The photo of the kitchen table. And I thought to myself, that my dedicated readers (and you know who you are) would probably like to see documentation of the other things that we need as well. Which led me to the thought that if I actually took pictures of this stuff, and put it out there for the world to see, that it may in fact provide some kind of motivational factor to take care of these things. (Knowing myself as I do, not very likely, but one never knows)

I hear Theresa trying to mediate a disagreement between the boys downstairs. "Who had it first?" "Me" says one. "Me" says the other. Theresa threatens to take whatever it is away, and somehow the noise level subsides, and it's back to boys bantering and Mattea playing Chutes and Ladders with her mom.

Speaking of tangential thinking. Theresa took Mattea to a lunch with the teachers that we bid on to help raise money for the school. One of the teachers ran out to pick up the pizza, and the other was asking questions of the kids. "What's your favorite movie?" Many of the other kids (all kindergartners, some boys) responded with action flicks or fighting movies. Mattea's response - 101 Dalmations. "What's your favorite game?" X-Box this, Playstation that - Mattea "Chutes and Ladders". Theresa said that Mrs. Johnson was beaming with each answer provided by our little girl. I'll live with the messes for that kind of development for our children.