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While Maggie and Nate went on their honeymoon, we were the guardians of Butters…….the Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disordered dog.

Butters has an affinity for underwear, garbage, toilet paper, cat food, and sleeping on my white sofa.  She barked at everything that walked by the front of the house and phantom sounds at 1:00 in the morning.  She harassed the cats, the dog and Mallie Bee.

I walked her twice a day and took her for play dates down the street.  You would think 100+ temps would do her in.  Instead it slowed her down until she got a second wind.

She wore on our nerves and wore us out, but in the end we prevailed.  On the last day of her visit, The Little Shit finally rested.

Soooooo…………….Tom Cruise got kicked to the curb by Katie Holmes.

Wow.  Never saw that one coming.  Said no one ever.

When he yanked that young one off the street and decided she was his fresh, new “love interest”, all I could think of were her parents……..normal, low-key, average people who sent all their kids to Catholic schools.  Along comes Mr. Celebrity married twice before for all of five years each time and a Scientologist to boot.

The conversations those two must have had lying in bed and wondering how to come to terms with their daughter’s new manfriend.  Before long, he was visiting Oprah and jumping up and down on her custom leather sofa declaring his love for this woman nearly twenty years his junior.

Oprah said she could tell this one was someone special.

Go figure.

Through the magic of television and hundreds of miles away in front of my Samsung in Kansas, I thought it all seemed bat-shit crazy. 

In the planning of this wedding, it was my thought that I would be the hit girl for stress so that Maggie wouldn’t feel overwhelmed and worn out by the time the big day came.

As someone who gets anxious when I have to go to a different ATM or gas pump, who was I kidding?

In reality, the coolest girl in the room was always the bride.  I, on the other hand, was freaking out daily.  I was not sleeping or eating very well worrying about the details, and repeatedly asked about the logistics like I had short-term amnesia.  When any of those details got changed, which by the way happens constantly in Weddingville, I got the vapors.

The night before the wedding the kids were chatting and Will mentioned that he was meeting Nate in the morning.  MEETING NATE?  YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE HELPING DAD SET UP!  NO.  ABSOLUTELY NOT.  NO, YOU TELL HIM YOU CAN’T BE THERE.

The Bride said the groomsmen were going to Panera for breakfast.  Panera?  Seriously?  I’ll buy Panera for all of you, but nobody AND I MEAN NOBODY can leave this house.  To which I was told that there are certain responsibilities involved in standing up in a wedding and apparently danish is one of them.

I paced.  I called The Big Daddy into a consult behind closed doors and he agreed with everything I said.  I might have been shrieking.

Later on, Will came in to tell me that Nate wanted the groomsmen to deliver roses to Maggie in the morning, and so they were going to meet at his apartment, get the roses, bring them by the house and then go about the rest of their day.

Oh.

When you act like an idiot, sooner or later you will look like one.

Maggie and Nate did things a little differently when it came to their first dance.  It was top secret and required lots and lots of practice.

Every friend I have that has had a son or daughter get married has told me I would be knocked flat when it was over.  They were right.  I’m exhausted, my house is trashed, I’m not sure if I paid all the bills, and today wandered down the street looking for room in my neighbor’s recycling bins as mine runneth over.

This wedding was beyond our expectations.  Maggie and Nathan know how to throw one awesome party.  I will write when I can gather my many, many thoughts.  While our BELOVED hairdresser came to our house to do the girls hair, Nate arranged for the groomsmen to come one by one to deliver roses to his soon-to-be bride.  He’s a keeper.  For sure.

Until I can sit down and process all my thoughts, this will have to do.  It was perfect.

There’s nothing like having a WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE AT YOUR HOUSE to light a fire under you to accomplish something instead of just yakking about it.  For instance……………………..

Ripping the gross carpet off the stairs and painting them.   Cream w/a faux runner up the middle.  The green paint is called Granny Smith.  It is my favorite apple which is why I picked it. 

When those were finished, I came across this turquoise tin ceiling panel for $22.00.  Yep.

I finally got around to repainting the front door.  The red wasn’t doing it any more.  Or ever.

I have had plans for this project for years and it was in Martha Stewart’s magazine this month.  Why does she keep copying me?  I have/or have had friends collect sand for me wherever they’ve been.  This is my collection, bottled and labeled.  Even though there’s no beach in the forecast for us this summer (or for many more years until the last tuition payment is made), I get to look at sand every single day.

The clock is fixed and not near the couch so Turd One and Turd Two can’t get close and bat at the hands with their naughty paws.

Ready or not, here comes a wedding, and Mallie Bee knows what one of her cats is going to wear.

When The Big Daddy and I bought this house, there were thirty kids that lived on this street.  Thirty.  My kids were lucky enough to get included in the pack and their memories of growing up here include kick the can, forts, haunted houses, block parties, a remake of the Blair Witch Project, freeze pops, ghost, sprinklers, slip-n-slide, cicadas and lightning bugs.

In time, most families moved out to bigger homes in other neighborhoods and it became a lonesome, little street with no signs of kids.  It was a sad thing to watch, especially knowing how it used to be.

A few years ago, a family with four kids moved in, and now all of a sudden there are probably fifteen kids living on this street.  When the weather is nice and the windows are open, I can hear them outside and it makes me happy……..this sound of play.

At the top of the street is a widow who has been a lovely neighbor all these years.  She can also be a pill.  As in why do all these houses have all this crap in front of them?  She stopped me the other day to ask me if I thought these things being left out were going to attract burglars.  Well, tike bikes and plastic pools don’t usually bring much at the pawn shop.  It doesn’t stop her from walking up and down the street in plastic gloves picking up trash and giving the stinkeye to young parents who are doing their best and likely too exhausted by day’s end to care about what’s been left out.

This was left in my yard last week.  I’m sure the necktie snake will find his way home one of these days, but for now he is the mascot for the young at heart.

The Big Daddy has never been what you’d call “handy.”  He says handy words like torque, stud, and molly bolt, or screams for A PHILLIPS…….I NEED A PHILLIPS, but he pretty much is faking any repair he attempts.  In his efforts, he often uses too much force causing something that was slightly screwed up to becoming permanently screwed up.  That results in me yelling at him and him yelling back about goddamn plastic Chinese parts.

We have a storm door with a retractable screen.  The screen wasn’t locking into place so every time somebody would go in or out, the screen would start to slide down.  I asked him to take a look at it since it wasn’t doing the AC bill any good.

Aw geez, I don’t know, he said.  I’m thinking the house has settled and that door has shifted.  I don’t know,  I mean if it’s that…………geez it could be the foundation.  Always the dark side when it comes to repairs.  Let’s give it a try, I said and while he pushed up, I tried locking it into place.  Let me just jimmy this door he said and oh dear God, here he goes, I thought.  Pretty soon The Boy Child came along and together they got it up and locked into place.

An hour later, Mallie Bee decided to call her kittens home, unlocked the screen and pulled it down to which The Big Daddy bellowed…………WHAT ARE YOU DOING????  I WORKED ON THAT ALL DAY!!!!!!  Or thirty minutes.

Well, she wasn’t aware that Mr. Fix-It had made a fix, so she went into the kitchen and got a fork out of the drawer and jammed up on the track with it while she locked the screen into place.  It took her about thirty seconds start to finish………….

……………..and the children shall lead us.  Especially around this cluster.

I am not a crier.  This has a lot to do with The Queen Mum being as strong as they come and having three older brothers.  If you were to cry in front of them growing up it would have been like wading into a school of sharks when your period started.   

That’s not to say that I’m not emotional because I am.  I just don’t cry like a girl very often.

This weekend when we were at church, I let my mind wander to this wedding that is days away.  I saw Maggie and her dad walking down the aisle.  I saw Nathan waiting at the altar for her.  I saw my mom and Mark’s mom next to us, and Nate’s parents on the other side of the aisle.  I saw my kids and Joe and Lynn’s kids standing beside their sibling.  I saw my sisters who have helped me enormously and my brothers who ended up being my biggest cheerleaders.  I saw friends who listened to my worries and my dreams about this girl of ours, and neighbors who ran from every direction when ambulances were screaming down the road because she had been knocked unconscious in the creek.

I also saw this church that welcomed me many years ago when I had one foot out the door of this faith, with the second close behind..

It was worth a good cry.