stop and smell summer.......

The last couple of weeks have been totally nuts. I feel like a dog chasing its tail....getting use to 3 hours of sending kids off to school in the a.m., then spending 3 hours in the p.m. with kids coming home. 6 hours of the day! Several times my daughter, who is the first home, and I have run to the store before the boys get home. She and I can do the shopping in a tenth of the time by ourselves versus having the boys with us. I am in the middle of eleventy quadzillion projects around the house, my hubby has been working 12 hour days (or should I say nights) this last week, so he sleeps all day and has not been able to help. Next week though he says he is only working his normal shift so that he can help me with stuff. We built our house 17 years ago and now everything is at that age where is it suffering from old age and it seems like we are having to replace all of the expensive stuff, and I am always 'redoing' something........I have never lived in one place this long my whole life, so I am also discovering how much junk you can accumulate in that time and trying to rid my house of stuff. Today my hubby 'only' worked 11 hours, we ran to Redlead to catch a demo and a few great things on sale. We ran him home so he could literally crash into bed. I nursed a 3 day old headache by trying to take a quick nap for just an hour after popping 3 tylenol. (one for each kid! ha just kidding) I hate tylenol, but that is all I can take with my other meds. My RLS (restless leg syndrome) kicked in which made napping almost impossible, during my hour nap my oldest son informed me several times what time it was and how much longer it would be until we picked up his DS (nintendo ds that is) from the layaway department at Wallyworld. My sister called to say her hubby had been admitted back into the hospital. At 4:00 we all hopped in the Flinstone mobile, ugh I can not wait until our dually is running again, we ran to return movies, ran to Michaels to purchase supplies to make a brain model, my daughter got a call on the cell from a friend wanting her to go to the mall in an hour. We ran out of Michaels, drove to Wallyworld did 15 minutes of shopping in and hour, during this time all 3 kids talking to me at once, and I remebered half way through that the reason I could not hear them was because I had turned my hearing aids down earlier, duh! I really did not want to turn them back up, but I did! My head started pounding again. We got the DS out of layaway, swiped the ATM card, went and bought my youngest son a new earring in the jewelry department, he lost his other one in the pool and we had to discuss again that he could not buy the c.z. bling bling earring that was almost the size of his head, that he needed to go with the smaller size, swiped the ATM card again, went and payed for the other stuff, swiped that ATM card again. Loaded up the Flinstone mobile, peddled the boys home, the daughter touched up the make up and we picked up her friend and drove them to the mall. I have never heard 2 people talk so fast and be able to understand each other. I thought about how I can not believe my baby is in high school. My head was pounding again, ugh I can not wait to put my comfy clothes on, pee, and take out my hearing aids! The air does not work in the Flinstone mobile, so my hair keeps blowing all over my face and I spent the whole drive to the mall thinking I must be losing my eyesight because I cleaned my sunglasses before I left the house and my vision is all blurry.....maybe it is a brain tumor......or my eyeballs are getting ready to pop out of my head from stress like some disgusting cheap horror movie effect........after I dropped the girls off I pulled over and took my glasses off and discovered I did not have a brain tumor, I just apparently cleaned my glasses with a towel that was dirtier than my glasses! ewwwwww! For the first time today I was alone............................................mmmmm imagine that ! I could breathe for a second. I started thinking about all of the things I planned to do when I got home......I don't wanna be a grown up I wanna play in my studio and put some really neat piece of eye candy on my blog............all of the sudden I realized I was smelling fresh mulch, not a smell many people like, but I do, then I could smell fresh cut grass, as I pulled up to a stop light I could hear the locusty buggy critters that make that loud noise, ohhh that was so relaxing......and peaceful to listen to the sounds, to smell the smells, and to watch as the sun was starting to set and the sky was so many beautiful colors blending together perfectly, and those colors were muted by just a touch of August haze...........I got home and checked to make sure the boys were not hanging from the ceiling fan trying to fly or that they had not tied each other up (their daddy was home but he thinks when 2 boys are quiet that is a good thing......silly man!) I stepped back outside and caught a quick lightning show off in the distance, the smells outside had changed to that smell that can not be described. It is like the soil and the concrete and plants are cooling off from the heat of the day that is now cooling because the sun has gone down......now the locusty buggy thingys had gone to sleep and the crickets and frogs are chirping.............then I remember how important it is to take the time to stop and take in what the season has to offer, soon it will be fall and there will be new smells, sounds......and summer will be a memory.......and I remember this just in time for reality to come back into focus and the phone rings, the puppy is barking, and the boys are running through the house making noise and my hubby is yelling his good byes as he is walking out the door..................