And the Mixer Nears...

The Mary Kay sale is gearing up. Emails have gone out, letters have been mailed, and some orders have come in. Some haven't gotten their letters yet due to geography, and more's the pity for them because I'm already out of Sable Eyeliner, Microdermabrasion, some eye colors, and lip glosses, and I'm not sure what else. Maybe normal/dry Age-Fighting Moisturizer. I'm within hollering distance of my Mixer budget, and hope to order it this week! *near squeal of excitement here*

In other news, my Camry is the best car ever. Well, it's the best car for me, ever. I turned it in today to have her (her name is Mary Jane) makeover done (ok, some scratches and dings dealt with), and in exchange I got a silver Chevy Malibu. Now, I've really only ever heard decent things about the Malibu, but there is just no comparison. For one, the Malibu is an automatic, which is terrible for 90% of vehicles out there, in my opinion. I know someday if/when we get a van we won't have much choice about it, but there it is. Secondly, the Camry is FAR more comfortable to sit in and drive. Of course, I'm pregnant and "used" to my car, but I really think my back wouldn't like the Malibu anyway. The Camry accellerates much faster, drives more smoothly, more quietly, and has a more 'substantial' feel to it. I'm not sure the age of the Malibu, but it has 41,000 miles on it. Mary Jane is at 110,000 right now, and is 5 years old or so. We've had her 18 months. I assume paint shops don't buy brand new cars as loaners, and who knows how it's been treated, so that may have a lot to do with that odd noise that comes from the rear of the vehicle. Overall, it's a wonderful reminder of a tremendous blessing.

Speaking of blessings, I decided on a shingle color. And it went pretty much the way my choosing paint colors goes. I hem and haw and agonize about just the right choice, and end up throwing up my hands and just picking whatever. It's kinda gray. Or, excuse me, Weatheredwood. You can see it on a house here. That is not MY house, mind you. We'd have that thing ringed in motorcycle carcasses and chickens would be living under the porch. In any case, the shingles have been chosen, and I'm sure they'll clash terribly with the existing peeling-paint color, so that'll keep the taxes appropriate for another year, until we get a chance to paint. Wow, so many blessings wrapped up into one...

By way of pregnancy, I'm less than 6 weeks from The Estimated Date. Which means I have to take some really nasty stuff. Specifically these Blue Cohosh drops. Wow are they gross. Now don't freak out if you just googled it. Apparently nature-loving humanity-hating hippies like to OD on that for abortive purposes, but that's not the plan here. It stimulates and possibly strengthens the uterine muscles or something. It definitely stimulates the gag reflex. I gave a drop to Hubby, and wondered if it would find anywhere to land, him lacking in the whole uterine-muscle department and all. It didn't seem to have any affect. I'm taking some other drops too, "Birthing Preparation" or somesuch. Very responsible of me to know so much about it, huh? Ten drops of each of these, 3 times a day. Nasty ones on the back of the tongue, others under it. The Birthing Prep one is somewhat spicy, and they're both in alcohol, so THAT's good for me, right? :] I think I'm supposed to be taking daily baths (ha, right!) in ginger, but the fly tapes, fuses, and loaner car with an eighth a tank of gas has really messed up my cashflow for a couple days.

Who gives a pregnant lady with 2 kids and a pile of errands a car with 1/8 tank of gas?!? I almost went in and asked for a siphon tube, so as to borrow from my own 3/4 tank. Autobody Nazis.

Superman

I can't say I enjoy circumstances like this, but they up my gratitude (when they're over).

Hubby had promised to 'unload' the car before I take it in for the hood paint job. By unload, I mean remove from it all things which don't pertain to transportation. And those things probably weighed 150 lbs, I bet. It's not a huge car. I don't know how it all fits in there, but wow, does it. LOTS of kids shoes and slippers and socks. Laundry of various kinds; pajamas, coats, blankets, more socks, other surprising articles. I swear my kids don't leave the car naked, but you'd think so after seeing what's in there. Toys, of course, of all kinds. And the sippy cups which we assumed lost forever have been breeding under the seats. Little Monkey's penchant for tearing paper into bits is evident, and apparently she's been able to obtain several items of junk mail and advertisements since last we shoveled out the car. In any case, tomorrow morning I must take said car, and Hubby had decided to wait until this evening to begin. He got home exhausted at 7, and by 8 we were out working on it (yes, we. I can't just lay about feeling guilty). I did the trunk. So far. Eventually I brought the grubby girls in for a bath. And here the story really begins.

I got about an inch-and-a-half into the tub before the water stopped. It just plain turned off. Though it may have been a little weak to start with (it's hard to tell; with a well the pump and pressure tank seem to vary at times). Hubby was sent for, and discovered that all the household water spigots were inoperable. So he went to the front yard, in the fading light, and removed the well cap. I'll save my concerns about seeing spider nests and other creepy things hovering over what I drink for another post. He used his fancy little electro-meter-thingy (I think that's the technical term) and found no power in the wires somewhere. He replaced some of those twist-on wire-cap thingies because the old ones were corroded, but while the meter showed life in one aspect, it still wasn't working right. So he crawled into the freaky basement spider cave, and tinkered around a bit. He said things like "hm, the pressure switch has closed contacts and we have 45 lbs of pressure" and "well, here's a blown fuse" and other things which made even less sense to me. It is good that this happens. I started college at 16, and he squeaked by his GED at 20, but there is no comparison when it comes to things like electricity, pumps, mechanics in general, and things like that. In my world you just don't mess with electricty and water in the same boxing ring. He's utterly amazing, even aside from attacking innocent rattlesnakes for recreation.

So he ran to the grocery store, crossing his fingers that they had one of those little round 20 amp fuses (it was after 9 and the hardware store was closed). They didn't, but he got an idea. He came back with a package of those little things that screw into a lightbulb socket and let you plug in something. He then got a little two-prong plug, and to the wires he attached some little contact-things (more technical jargon - sorry). He plugged the prongs into the socket-adaptor and affixed the contacts to each side of a thing that holds a long cylindrical fuse. He only had a 10 amp one, but thought he'd give it a try. I need to get a picture of the contraption to post on here. And a picture of what it should've been. He installed it in the spider cave, and went to the garage to flip the circuit back on... And the kitchen faucet started running water! I ran out to exclaim "it works, it works!" and he soberly nodded. Later he came in to say, "that thing's amping right at 10, so I'm not sure how long this is gonna hold." I have been instructed to buy the proper fuses at the hardware store tomorrow.

Big Sister crawled out of bed to say, somewhat tragically, "I hope Daddy can get the water fixed, because by tomorrow I think I might be really thirsty." I assured her that if he couldn't, we would call someone who could.

Not only am I grateful for the wonderful talents and skills God has given my husband, but I am wondering if I need to take these things into account when buying life insurance. They usually ask you how much you'd need to live on, but if I didn't have my Hubby, I'd have had to call an expensive surrogate. This almost makes up for how expensive he is to feed, too... Though now I may need to call an expensive back-hoe operator to finish emptying the car.

Mary Kay Sale Event

Well, I've finally got the ball rolling. I went through all of my Mary Kay retail inventory and I actually know everything I have. And I have everything. Or very nearly. I am short a few colors, but loooong on the skin care. And what a deal it is! Everything on my shelf is going for 40% off, period. That will include tax, shipping/delivery, credit card processing, etc. Mostly I am making no money, but gaining valuable closet space that may shortly house cloth diapers. Then again, the closet is upstairs and the laundry is downstairs, so I might have to find a more reasonable place to keep them. Hmm...

In any case, I hope to make a dent in all this. And maybe make a bump in my mixer fund. I have sent out an email to my customers with email, and need to make some copies (yay for my new cost-effective printer!) for my snail-mail customers. I may not recoup the cost of stamps, but oh-well... Hopefully people will be blessed.

The hardest stuff to move will probably be the discontinued and/or seasonal items. Mostly because people may not be familiar with the items. That, or they're blowing their whole budget to stock up on the rest of it. :) And only a few trusted individuals are being offered the "Little Monkey-ed" products. These are exceptionally discounted, due to their encounters with Little Monkey. Of course, people not familiar with her might be bothered by/suspicious of products that lack their formerly pristine appearance, hence they are 'reserved'. Though any reader of THIS blog is familiar with the anomaly that is Little Monkey, and would understand it's results.

I also have tons of "gifts" that I may or may not add to some orders. Ordinarily I would keep such items for impromptu birthday gift-additions and such, but anyone whose birthday I am invited to is invariably closer-related to another consultant than to me. There are a lot of us in this family. And I haven't wanted to be seen as stepping on territory. Though I did notice at a recent birthday party that the birthday girl received Mary Kay products from at least 3 different people. Maybe I need to figure out the rules here... In any case, I may keep all these cute travel-size versions and specialty items, or I may add them to "qualifying" orders. :) They certainly take up less space than the full-size product.

I also have to be careful. I am offering this to my customers, but they're free to share the information with others. However, I don't want to undercut another consultant by selling to their clients either. I think 'that friend who has tried it, loved it, but never afforded it' would be ideal. This offer is good for products, not total makeovers for newbies. :) And, since I'm a consultant, and this product was purchased from The Company, the Mary Kay Guarantee applies, unlike garage sale/ebay-type sales.

Well, time to write that letter!

Circus Update

I took some pictures last night of some of the new family members (and pondered the wisdom of sending out a mass-email to friends and folks with "meet our newest family member!" in the subject line). They didn't cooperate much; The puppy was exceedingly tired and kept sleeping and yawning and looking like I felt.

I wish I could capture on a photo the whole feel of the front yard. A puppy at my feet, 2 kittens romping in the grass, hummingbirds going crazy through the air, the duck by the water-hydrant, the turkeys in their pen at the edge of the lawn, rogue chickens pecking about, and the bunny in it's cage in the background.

Following is one of the kittens. This is "Gilbert," so named by Little Monkey. He is a little boy, and looks much better in this picture than he does in real life, in my opinion... His sister is "Chrissy," so named by Big Sister, and she is a bit larger, and has very faint stripes within and on the edges of the siamese-coloring. She's a little prettier. A little.

Next is a picture of the Most Loved of the New Pets (choke, cough, I can't believe we have 'pets'!). It's not a good one, but I'll try to get a better shot later. I wanted a picture that showed her blue eyes. Are dogs like people? Are their eyes always blue for a while after birth? Or will they get brown like Hubby's and the girls'? The rest of her certainly is brown. And she really is the cutest thing. Now that I've removed her tick (side not: I have never even seen a tick in real life, though they are prolific in this area. I certainly never thought I'd have to remove one, but Hubby thought my hands would be more stable, so I did it. One Mixer, please). Hubby tossed around the idea of naming her Hershey, but that seemed a little obvious. He wasn't impressed with Cocoa or Mocha, and had me get online to look up words in different languages. He settled on "Buni" (BOO-nee), which is a Swahili word for coffee cherry. I know, I know, coffee cherries are green and red, not brown, but the other words just didn't work.

You can click on the picture above for a better look at Buni.

Oddly enough, I'm at a loss as to how to go about my day today. We've been in invited to a birthday party in Town (for a son of the very friend who foisted this critter upon us), and really don't know what to do with this roly-poly furball in the meantime. Hopefully she'll stay in the shade in the backyard till we return...?

Total Circus

This place is getting out of hand. I mean really. How many species of animal should one family have?

The roll call looks like this:

One Man

One Woman

Two Girls

One Unknown

Twenty-something chickens (they're never all where they belong, and it's hard to count them)

Five Turkeys

One Duck

One Rabbit

And as of 2 days ago, Two Kittens. Two little whitish critters that run away and hide. They're somewhat-siamese in coloring, so they're not all white. Thank Goodness.

And as of a few hours ago (as I type this, Thursday evening), One Chocolate Lab Puppy. I feel kinda like that poor lady who was driving on that bridge in Minneapolis, then felt it fall, then was swimming to shore. She had to wonder, "how did I get here? One minute I'm in traffic, the next I'm swimming for my life..." I feel a bit like that, albeit with less horror.

Oh, and the puppy came with (or acquired during it's first few minutes) a tick. But I don't count that as part of the roll call.

How did this happen? What would posess any family in it's right mind to acquire animals such as this? I certainly don't know. I adhere to the "If we can't eat it, we don't feed it" rule, but apparently I'm the only one.

On the upside, Hubby is thrilled. He's long wanted a dog, and I have always pointed out one or more of the following:

1 - We can't afford to feed a dog

2 - I'm busy enough trying to train kids, I can't be trusted to train a dog

3 - It'll eat the chickens

4 - It'll eat the turkeys

5 - It'll eat the duck

6 - It'll eat the bunny

7 - It'll pee on the neighbor's landscaping

8 - It'll do worse to the neighbor's landscaping

9 - It'll get fleas (I didn't think about ticks)

10 - It'll poop in the yard

11 - It'll need vet things, or baths

Well, a friend acquired it on behalf of another friend. The other friend failed to mention to his wife that he had requested this dog. Also, at 7 weeks, this pup could likely eat their existing (full grown) dogs. So the friend's wife laid down the law, and the first friend was in a real bind. The breeder wouldn't take the dog back, and the friend couldn't keep it. So he called.

"You like animals, right?"

"Uh, I like to eat animals..."

"Well, I have this really beautiful..."

Of course, being the submissive wife that I am, I went downstairs to find Hubby and let him know of this "offer." His eyes lit up, and I made him swear that he would take all responsibility for caretaking and training this dog. There is no way I'm adding to my already overwhelmed housekeeping with vacuuming dog hair from the floors and furniture, or, God forbid, Puppy Messes. I'll take care of Kid Messes, you know, eternal glory and all that, but there's not much motivation, eternally or otherwise for dealing with Puppy Ones. And really, until I can make some headway with the Training of Our Children, I can't take on the chore of Training the Dog too.

I am SO getting to pick out the roof shingle color, AND getting my mixer...

Curriculum overview

I've been perusing and ingesting the Robinson Curriculum CDs I got. They're quite the deal, really. He has a proven method (i.e. has 'fruit'), but it's a little bit out there (and I'm already so out there..). It will take some prayer and thought as to how "out" I get in this.

My version of the overview: Teach your little ones to read and memorize all math facts (addition, subtraction, division, etc) for all numbers thru 12. Do this by the time they're 7 or so. At that point, hand them Saxon's Math 54. The students will work approximately 2 hours on math, write 1 page (copywork for kids up to 10 or so), then read certain books from an ordered list. This should all take 5-6 hours per day. Do it 6 days per week, all year long. NO tv in the home, NO sugar/honey/etc in kids' diets. Oh, and don't help. At all. As a teacher, you DO mark their written pages for errors (make them correct them). Everything else is done exclusively by the kids. The math lessons, the checking and reworking of missed problems, etc. There are vocabulary lists to go with certain books, and some tests for some books too.

Now, we could so easily argue against this regimen, but his arguments are equally if not more persuasive. Of his six children, the "slowest" in math completed Calculus at age 16. Then and only then do they start science, which, by the way, are MIT-grade college textbooks in chemistry and physics. History is taught via the carefully-selected books, as are other 'side' subjects. Of course, their lives should be rounded out with Bible and music and work and recreation, but those, he says, aren't required to be part of the formal curriculum, and aside from Bible, most would likely take away from what is necessary. His kids have gotten Bachelor's degrees in heavy subjects at Caltech after only 2 years of study. That's a pretty conclusive track record, considering his kids are not genius.

So while I sit here comparing my own diluted public-school education with what could've been... [Pardon the rabbit trail: There are books in this list about wars I never heard about, people who shaped the world that weren't mentioned in school, books written by people who shaped the world, and I never knew they even existed. I still kind of don't. And as for calculus? The environment of my detested public school had me convinced I didn't like math, and I stopped my high-school classes after geometry, algebra II, and trig. Doggone their socialist educational agendas!]

In a section explaining why grammar isn't taught in itself (of course, reading such high quality books and writing daily takes care of that), I ran across some amusing phrases. Things like:

"...to purge from the home all sources of low-quality speech, especially television."

I concur. But what if it's another family member? Shall we purge them from the home?

"...does not associate with poorly educated children (including most in the public schools)..."

Perhaps we can administer an SAT at the door before friends are admitted?

I guess that last one isn't as funny as it is true. Learning to think is anathema in America's public schools today, and it wouldn't make sense to have peers from among such a class. That is, it wouldn't make sense if your ultimate purpose for your children was academic excellence. That is not our sole purpose for ours, though socializing with children immersed in public school and similar influences goes against our purposes too. But not based on mental development.

I am thrilled to have been able to print out a McGuffey's primer for my girl to read in. We keep Little Monkey involved with learning letters from the first page which sports the alphabet in large letters. I've printed out 34 pages of phonics flashcards, which gall me to death, so boring is such a routine, but I think they will be useful. I could even print out my own version of THE 1611 King James Bible, calligraphy and all, but I don't have reams of blank paper sitting about. I might print out select pages from the 1913 Encyclopedia Britannica when the reading skills are appropriate; that's good learning material there. :) How many youngsters get that chance?

Faithfulness Hatched

You know the proverb? I try very hard not to count my chickens before they hatch. That helps me to keep my expectations low, along with my disappointment if things don't work out accordingly.

Remember the roof issue? The bid for it was $6300. My deductible is $500.

It hatched.

Now, what I'd like to know is, how do they know I'm not going to run to the nearest casino with this while I let my roof rot? Or get new carpet for the house? I suppose it wouldn't make much sense to buy new carpet if the roof was rotting. But there are some people out there that would...

God is so faithful.

And surprisingly quick, this time. Hubby and I haven't even finished arguing over shingle colors yet.