Sometimes Teepees are replaced with Tents, but not in MoTown

When you live in Canada, you live in 'winter-mode' for approximately 6 months of the year. For another 2, you live in 'flood-mode'. And for another 2, you live in 'smells like poop, with pretty colours'.

But, for a lovely 2 months, July and August, we live in a place where mosquitos and fruit flies multiply like Octomom. We live in a place where BBQs can last with one tank of propane ALL year, where our igloos and dogsleds are replaced with teepees and tractors. (only in Motown-- MoTown has a large population of native Indians, so powwows and teepees are quite honestly celebrated. It's very rich in native culture, which is cool.) Where snowplows are swapped for construction crews.

We ask our neighbours for their cow manure so we can spend hours growing a garden in rock-hard soil. We manage to burn our skin to a wonderful shade of 'fire engine'. We realize that water sometimes isn't in solid form!

We spend a weekend like this, at my Gramma's cabin just a short distance away:

(and, check this photo out-- it's like my head turned around like Poltergeist!! Will and I had to look at it twice to see which way my knees were turned! We just laughed. I'm sure he said something smart-alec-y about the truth behind it, but whatever. Too funny)

Six Word Saturday- Drugged kids are funny.

Ever played Six Word Saturday? Well, play along in the comments below, or join Cate at showmyface.com and play there.
Todays SWS:

"I can hear my finger bopping."

Mimi had a fun day last week--

We were all finished family prayer, and Will and I sent the kids to bed, saying we'd be there in a few seconds to tuck them in. Still on our knees, Will and I started chatting about our day or something.

Until Mimi starts crying. Not a screiking cry-- just a cry. Bear starts yelling at LL, and there's a bunch of commotion in the other room. All I hear is Bear state to LL, "No! Don't touch her- She's hurt!!! She's hurt!!"

Will and I look at each other. Annoyed. Aren't they in bed YET?!

We walk into Bear's room, where Mimi is sitting on the floor. Attached to her shirt is his brand-new, two-sided fishing hook. Attached to the other end of the fishing hook, is her finger.

The hook being the whole way in!!!!


As Will removes the hook from her shirt, we realize that we can't take the hook out without seriously damaging her finger, so we head to the emergency room.
Where the on-call Doctor wonders what the heck to do.

They didn't have wire cutters, so Will's Dad, Grandpa Paint, decides to come by the hospital with some.

After a really good drink of some sort of drug (for Mimi, of course), she and I recited our ABCs while Will and Grandpa Paint pushed the hook THROUGH the other side of her finger, exposing the barb and snipping it off.

Poor Mimi screamed a banshee scream, her eyes popping out!!!! Then I heard *snip*. And then she giggled. The hook was out. Daddy and Grandpa were heros!

Lucky for us, she remembers NOTHING.

But we got her home, and our loopy little girl was quite entertaining. She raved about her Dora bandaid, and then, turning to Em, stated "I can hear my finger bopping."

"you can hear it?? Or feel it?"
*puts finger to her ear* "Hear it.".


mmmmkay, kiddo!

I Just Freaking Love My Awesomeness

I was laying in bed last night with Will, and I had an AMAZING moment. No, my perved friends, I'm totally not oversharing.

No, I mean a moment where I actually said something SO not Mom-ish and wifey...something, kinda, sorta, ridiculously awesome. To the point that I actually said out loud, "wow. I'm sooo gonna blog that!"

Will laughed. Probably AT me...no....SURELY *AT* me, since I wasn't laughing and was dead serious. I'm gonna say it was because I had toothpaste on my face and NOT because I sounded like the biggest nerd ever. And the toothpaste on my face-- TOTALLY a blog for another day on "Stupid things you remember from childhood: how to get rid of fat, ugly zits on your face" that your BFF, MC, taught you in highschool. And how, as a nearly 30-year-old Mom of 7, you keep trying it...only to remember that the last time you tried it, it didn't work either. And then you remember it was for hickeys. 'nuff said. And then you remember it worked on hickeys.

TOTALLY ANOTHER BLOG, clearly.

And, as I laid there in my self-inflicted euphoria, I vowed to remember that totally awesome, WONDERFULLY intelligent thing that I said so I could post it. And wouldn'tyaknowit, here I am, with *gasp* time to blog, and frig, trying to remember what it was is like Justin Bieber trying to grow pubic hair..

just sayin....

And, for the record, my brainwave had NOTHING to do with my super-awesome attempt at turning myself into a delicious pastry.. like, for example, um, a muffin or something. Psht, muffin-tops are the best part of the muffins, so I'm going with "I'm the super awesome part of a muffin and if you can't handle it, you can bite me."
No. I would never put a picture of myself in that condition on the web. If you know me, I'm all about making OTHER people the source of my humour. ;)

But, I sit here, afraid to death to sneeze, as I have another bestest friend whom I hate to pieces I love so much! Yep, my OTHER BFF, Becka, decided to show up in town the other day with her sister (whom I also adore) and take some friends out for a quick run and a workout. Which was totally up my alley of "I enjoy being a lazy bum lately". I had gone for an 8k walk the night before, and that morning was the Motown Marathon. (No, it's not ACTUALLY called that, although, it totally works. Although---I think I'm gonna patent that and inflict it on all southern-Alberta towns *who are all MoTowns too* and be really cool like that!) And during the marathon, my little 4-year old Mimi decided she wanted to run the.whole.way. Um, yah, SO not prepared for that.

Sure, I've been running lately. Once or twice a blue moon. And I can run a mile-- seriously. But I just wasn't really that ready.

So, here's Becka. Taking me through the worst workout of "what the fetch happened to my upper arms?!" and then yesterday I spent the day walking and biking with Will.

I.
AM.
SO.
FRIGGEN.
SORE!!

And it's just not right that my woman bits are hurting from biking. What the Kiew???? Will loves biking- wants me to join him more. I'm a walking/running/rollerblading/ripsticking kind of wife. See? Bikes are meant for ages 4-14. After that, it's just not 'cool' anymore. That's why we have cars!!!!
And so what if rollerblades might be sooooo 1990, I don't care. I'm giving them the same comeback that Justin Timberlake gave to sexy. Unfortunately, I think Will's bum on a bike is toooo superb and easy to follow, so I shall don my super-sexy helmet again and follow him. ;)

Pardon the french, but this pussy is driving us nuts!

So, you know how we have the most awesome cat?


......

Actually, seriously, WHO STARTS A CONVERSATION LIKE THAT?! Unless you're 40 years old and never been married, wearing a flowered moomoo and feeding 10 cats pre-chewed food from your mouth,who honestly is THAT much of a cat person?!

Anywhoozle, we have this cat, Mitzy, who pretty much adopted US. When we moved here, we had no pets. And, would have LIKELY gotten a dog. But this one cat decided that it was going to live with us, even if is would have to die on the front porch to prove it. After a WEEK of ignoring this cat-- not feeding it, not playing with it, not letting it in-- I caved and let her come in. She walked right over to the couch, and took a nap! From then, I figured the kids would drive her away-- Mimi is NOT a 'small lover' to cats. She embodies the whole, "I wanna Love You! And SQUEEZE YOU!! And call you George. "

Since then, Mitzy's been a GREAT cat. We didn't know anything about her, where she came from or why such a nice, gentle cat was homeless. And soon enough, we figured out that she REALLLLLY likes boy cats.

Now we have two little ADORABLE kittens. One that looks just like her, and one that looks just like Dad-- black with a white nose and paws. Thankfully, they also have two little ADORABLE homes to go to!

However...

Our prized cat?

Well, love her to pieces, but the little tramp is trying yet again to find herself some playmates. I come home daily to find two big black cats fighting on my front step, trying to be the lucky babydaddy of the next litter. And we all KNOW she goes for the black dudes. I mean, once you go black....

just sayin'.

AND so, we've kept her and her hormonal self inside.

UNTIL YESTERDAY!!!! Will, love him to pieces too, but he unknowingly left a door open, and the cranky pussy walked right outside with her cranky...self.

To her waiting 'friend'. Stupid little thing with her butt up in the air, whining incessantly for him to "oooooh, look at my bum". He and she managed to find a piece of DIRT in my yard to do the DIRTY.

I walk outside, looking for her. All I see his his big black eyes, and her tiny head underneath him. And a piece of him wagging his tail, while he gets a piece of HER... um...backside.

SO unimpressed!!!

We don't mind having kittens, truth be told. But FREAK-- these ones are still at home, Mitzy! Stop being so Ghetto and get back to the babies you already HAVE in the house.

ug. Teenagers.

In with the new.

OOOH, it's sooo exciting round these parts!!!!

Today my cupboards are being installed. The very same cupboards that have been sitting in my sunroom and kitchen/laundry/dining room for MONTHS. He tells me that it won't be DONE today, but hey, I'm okay with the majority of it getting started. Because without the cupboards, I can't finish the rest of the house. Without the kitchen cupboards, I can't get to my sunroom. Without the sunroom, I can't get the front room couches out of the front room. Without moving those couches, I can't get the ceiling scraped and textured. Without the ceiling, we can't finish the floors, and without the floors we can't put baseboards and trim up. And without the baseboards and trim......

nope. that's it. Will tells me it'll be mostly done by October, when my brother is getting married and the family will all be together again. So let's hope. We probably won't have ALL the renovations done-- let's be serious, our house needs a MAJOR overhaul in EVERY room. But the main parts should be finished. :) The floor will be a HUGE one.

I'll post pictures soon. Eeeeee.

Six Word Saturday-

All the kids are shipped off!

(for more 6WS, visit Cate at www.showmyface.com and play along)


Em is at a graduation party that started last night and went ALL the way through the night. Good thing I am related to the hosts, as I wasn't worried about her moral safety! She only fell asleep a few minutes ago (maybe 6 in the morning?) so she's pretty much done for the day. And, it's a Saturday. And she's 15. So, the likelihood of her accomplishing much more than sleeping today wasn't really EVER in the plans, was it?

LL is in a parade with her Brownie/Guide group today down in Warner. She won't be back until dinnertime. I have never seen a girl SOOOO excited to be walking in a parade of a town of LESS people than here in Mo-town! No matter, it's giving her something to do. Maybe she's more excited that I spent hours last night sewing on all of her newly-aquired badges (patches, for all you Americans) and she's thrilled to SHOWOFF her fully-bejewelled sash!

Bear is doing his usual Saturday thing- fishing with "Grandpa Paint." The two of them LOVE fishing, and are found on the lake EVERY week. Like usual, Bear catches something. He's a good fisherman and always has been.

And Mimi? She's here. But she was up so late last night, watching movies and then sleeping in the fort-o-blankets the kids made that her and Em will be content to just chill on the couch all day.

So... that leaves Will and I.
We may go for a 10k run.
We may go gopher hunting (don't knock the country girl in me- I tried it for the first time just recently, and have a GREAT shot. So, if you mock me, prepare for me to shot you and cut your tail off! :) )
We may head off to 'the big city' to shop.
We may head to the USofA to pick up appliances for the kitchen reno.
We may head off to the mountains to fish.
We may not even leave the bedroom, ifyouknowwhatImean! ;)

But never fear, we WILL be enjoying the day sans kids!

What's Really In Our Heads

*disclaimer- this is a long one.*

The biggest thing to deal with in a new/second/subsequent marriage isn't the blending of families. It's not traditions, or menu planning differences. It isn't which side of the bed you sleep on, or which sink is yours in the bathroom. And when you argue, it isn't even walking away to save yourself from delivering an unwarranted tongue-lashing or staying put and planting your feet while you yell it out. No talking to death. No silent treatments. The biggest issue isn't about how to parent your children, or how to parent THEIR children. These are all variables in every relationship.

But in EVERY relationship, there is always one constant. In some way or another, everyone has 'the other'.


The Ex Factor,
or The One Who Stole Your True Love Away,
or perhaps The One Who WANTS To Steal Your True Love Away.



Don't we all have at least one of those? But what do you do when both partners in the relationship realize that ONE outside person embodies ALL of those people above?

I had determined not to talk about Sarah on this blog. THIS blog was for my new life. Daisyhalos had to deal with it, but NinePeas did not. Truth is, NinePeas is a blog about *MY* life with Will. And by having Will as part of that equation, Sarah comes with it. She is The Ex Factor. Not because we invite her in, or because we need her there, or because we want her there. The simple truth is that she *IS* there... in person...or in remnant... or in shadows of our children's hearts.

You see, after everything that happened last year, Will and I both took a step back, and realized how much pain she had caused us individually. In his case, there was love once. But the prominent feeling leftover from his relationship with her is not joy. It is not peace. It is hurt and manipulation and deceit and mistrust. This is something that, as a couple, we've had to work through because those traits in past relationships sometimes carry over-- even when they are uninvited. I have my own trust issues leftover from my relationship with Chris, and Will has to deal with that too. And so, because I am somewhat dealing with 'retraining' Will on how to have a productive argument, how to deal with disagreements reasonably, and how to express yourself without resorting to name-calling and such, this is where we feel Sarah fits the description of The One Who Stole Your True Love Away. Will had been broken before meeting Sarah, and we kinda feel like she then stole further parts of him that she shouldn't have. And I'm lucky enough to be in a position to be able to 'steal back' the real Will while leaving the hurt Will behind.

It isn't, and hasn't been, an easy road. We were both so hurt. And we only know one surefire way to deal with that hurt; by giving it over to someone else. So, we've done what we thought is best- from the moment we were married, we have spent every night on our knees, together holding hands, praying to love her. Praying for her happiness. Praying for ourselves to forgive.

It's tough for me to write things like this, because, in spite of her promise to me that she would stop reading the blog, she has never stopped. She currently reads it on a nearly daily basis. Which, believe it or not, is fine with me. I don't talk about you on this blog, Sarah, because I don't want you to think we hate you. Or that we spend hours thinking about how we can hurt you back. Sure, I want to vent sometimes, and the natural instinct in a defensive being is to attack back, but that's not who I want to be.

The other problem with this situation is that we believe that she also fits a bit of The One Who WANTS To Steal Your True Love Away. We don't fear of her achieving this, but we are aware of it. In fact, apart from Sarah, there are no other people who know her, who do NOT believe this to be the case. Well, the people we talk to, anyways. She has no further ties with Will. No children, no property, no necessary connection. Will walked away from their relationship when she kicked him out for the umpteenth time, leaving everything, and everyone behind, in pieces. He is passed done. So, she is the only one who sees a need to stay in his life. And she does this through his children, using them as a way to get him to communicate with her. She sent a message recently to Will that asked if he would let her take the kids for a week or so in the summer. WITHOUT Will. And, obviously, without me. The answer, understandably, was no.

If she had only realized that Will comes as a package deal with those children. If you can't love the father, then you don't get the kids. (by love, I mean in the Christlike way) And as of last September, Will is now a package deal with me and my children. The NINE PEAS IN THE POD are just that-- together, and as one. WE are the package. And Will and I would honestly love to have a friendship with Sarah that is new and respectful- and, surprisingly to some perhaps, we would have seriously considered her invitation were it for the entire family.

The thing is, Will's children loved her dearly. She was a GREAT friend to them. But even they admit that she was not a 'mother' to them. She had the title, but did not claim the role. They did not live with her. They did not see her at her worst. She complimented them. She made them feel like she loved them. But she didn't discipline them. She didn't put their needs above her own. She chose to stay close to her Ex's family over moving closer to her NEW family, where her import-children were. She chose her Ex over her spouse under the guise of her daughter's needs. And in doing that, the import-kids felt less important to her than her own biological children... something that mirrors what our daughter Em is realizing with her new StepDad: blending families doesn't work when you pick some children over others. There is no "MY kids are going to be like this, even if you guys aren't!"

In conversations lately, Em is also realizing that Sarah has not finished grieving her past relationship with Will, and possibly her other 3 husbands. And she is still hurting. And, for what it's worth, our hearts grieve for Sarah's pain. We understand it. We were there once. We were sooooooo blessed to have the chance to heal faster than we expected. We found a love unlike ANYTHING else we've ever felt. I honestly can't be anything but somewhat thankful to her, even though it meant that my happiness came at her expense.

The kids of ours didn't get closure. They didn't get to say goodbye to Sarah. It is like a death to them. Only, the ghost isn't gone. And, once again, Sarah has chosen her own needs over the needs of these children-- they need closure.

Closure (klo'zhur)

1. The act of closing or the state of being closed: closure of an incision.


2. Something that closes or shuts.


3. A bringing to an end; a conclusion: finally brought the project to closure.


4. A feeling of finality or resolution, especially after a traumatic experience.

I have encouraged Em specifically to contact Sarah if that made her happy, but we have all witnessed how much more UNhappy Em has become since doing so. Sarah claims to love her, and I think she truly does. But, real love is unselfish. And Sarah continues, perhaps unaware, to twist the dagger in Em's heart. Having contact has not brought her closure- not in ANY sense of the above definition. And it pains us to watch Em stuck in a teenagers mind, unable to figure out how to get rid of the pain without losing the love.

In this, I am reminded of EF, from my previous blog. (EF was the 'estranged friend' who had the affair with Chris). I LOVED EF. I really did. And, truthfully, I still do. But I realized that moving on in my life meant I would have to release that pain completely. Sadly, there are times when you need to remove the good along with the bad- like when a weed is wrapped around a flower. Sometimes they both have to go. I had to say goodbye to someone I loved, so that I could feel TRUE love again. Not that I don't still think of her, or wonder where she is or how she's doing... But I am now able to feel JUST the love, and the pain, slowly but surely, fades away.

And so, we teach these lessons to our children. Because, as we've been taught by OUR goodly parents, and by our ecclesiastical leaders, and by our own hearts, we know that being a teacher is our biggest role as a TRUE parent. As a mother, it is my job to love, nurture and teach. And, just as a mother bird sometimes has to watch her chick endure some pain as he is learning how to fly, sometimes we will have to be there to watch our own children deal with their pain, if it simply means we're giving them the power to use the wings they already possess.