The Milk Spilled and I Cried.

Awhile back, Shannah went to get some bags and containers from a wholesaler in town.  When she presented my credit card to pay for the items, the lady behind the counter eyed her in a mock suspicious way and told her to tell her how many siblings she (Shannah) had.  Shannah, of course, said she had twelve.  The lady laughed and told her she'd passed the verification process for the use of my credit card.

Whenever I go to that place of business, they always ask me how the family is, sometimes joking there are twenty-five of us, sometimes randomly selecting another number.  It's all in fun.  They've called me the local Michelle Duggar.

But no.  I'm not.  On so many levels.

Well, one time one of them suggested that I must be a very organized person.  No.  Actually, that is a jump in logic to suppose that because one has many children that they must be uber organized.  I'm proof positive.

Anyway, yesterday was "one of those days".  The evening before, some of my darlings were watching a movie on my official laptop---you know, the one with my farm order program and Quickbooks. What I realized a nano-second too late was that one of the darlings hadn't quite finished drinking the milk  in the cup that was sitting on the desk right next to my laptop.

All I wanted to do was tidy up a little.  I was just collecting stray dishes to take to the kitchen to wash.  Having to do it over again, I would've at least taken that stupid cup on another path away from the desk.  You know, like not right over the top of my laptop.

Who knew that a tablespoon or two of milk sloshed out of a cup could create such a big problem? Trust me.  Don't try this at home.  You will be sorry.

I immediately freaked out and grabbed the nearest towel to attempt to dab up what I could.  It was too late, I knew, as I saw the last of the little white droplets disappear into the cracks beside my keys. Oh brother.  The keyboard was thus rendered useless.

Let's just say that the whole episode has caused me to question whether God answers prayers after tantrums.  As Brady so sagely summed it up, "Mom, even if you did know who left the milk in that cup, would it really change anything?"

Long story short, I found a place to take my computer to.  It felt weird handing my laptop off to some guy I don't know who looked to be about the twins' age.  But...so it goes.

I should've been more forward thinking when the guy asked me if there were any other files besides Quickbooks that I needed him to copy onto my second laptop.  It had briefly crossed my mind that I would also be needing the order program that I use for the farm as well, but I dismissed it thinking I could get what I needed online.

Hey, don't blame me.  I never claimed to be a computer whiz.  I just use computers, and half the time I can't even find the files I save.

So, I get home and finish loading Quickbooks onto my auxiliary laptop, which takes a r-e-a-l-l-y long time.  I decided to go clean up the butcher shop in the meantime.

I guess I got a little carried away with the pressure washing and everything, because the next thing I knew it was after 6 o'clock and Shannah was home from work and had come to the shop asking me where the laptop was so she could fill customer orders.  Oh yeah.  That. She obviously hadn't gotten any distressed texts from her siblings who might've alerted her that Mother was not in good sorts about the spoiled laptop.

 I told her I would have to download the order program and that she shouldn't worry about the orders, so she left to go see a friend.

I was about as soaked as I could get as I aimed the pressure washer hither and thither to give the butcher shop a thorough washing.  About that time a car drove in.  I greeted my visitors like a drowned rat.  I gave my sopping wet t-shirt a couple of hopeless tugs to make it droop less off my shoulders.

I didn't get to spend much time with said visitors as I had to tend to the order program thing.  I called up our friend Don so he could coach me through putting it on my computer.  Uh oh.  It was then that the realization struck that I was hung.  I actually needed a file off my milky laptop after all!!  I could've been spared the dread call to the computer fixer people had Paul not taken a certain flash drive to Pennsylvania with him for the weekend.

The guy on the phone wondered if I realized that I would be charged the emergency rate for doing that for me, after hours and all.  I told him I didn't even know what his usual rate was, but I guess I would be paying the emergency rate if he was willing to help me out.   I was supposing whatever they were going to charge me was going to be cheaper time/money wise than driving 16 hours round trip to get the flashdrive from my husband. I had somewhere around 60 families depending on me having the proper order program for today's orders.  I told him I would jump into my car and be there as fast as I could.

I slogged into the computer place with my wet shoes desperately hoping I wasn't going to leave puddles.  My face probably had spatters of dirt and stray chicken feathers plastered on it from pressure washing. I had at least changed my shirt and skirt, but there had been no time for primping.

Twenty-eight mile round trip later, I was in business by 8:30PM.  Only by then, the children (you know, the children that I have???) needed their mother.  The littlest ones were flung on the couches watching Sue Thomas FBI dvds.  I boiled up some hot dogs, read them a story, and we all went to bed.

I did manage, with some help, to pull off the orders (mostly) on time this morning, even taking a brief break to lead the new Jersey cow home from the neighbor's.  That silly cow was a pet of the family we got her from.  She doesn't associate with the likes of our other cows, but she will go walk down the road and stand politely outside the neighbor's fence to"talk" to his cows.  Go figure.

Well, I've learned a few things.

1. Don't let children eat or drink near expensive pieces of office equipment.  
2. It really doesn't matter who did it.  Get over it.  
3. God still does loves us even if we mess up and get all mad at everybody. 
4. My children are very gracious.  It doesn't kill a parent to be the one to say, "I'm sorry."
5. Back up all computer files.  Always.

~Colleen

Out of the Blue

No offense intended to anyone who might've told me something incredible lately, but I've been sitting here wondering if I've become the clearing house for all things odd and interesting.

Like last night.  I was in our (mechanic) shop sitting on a chair attempting to calculate just how many more hours it was going to take me to finish cleaning that monstrosity of a warehouse (and wishing that by just thinking of it it would commute my sentence of actually doing it).  I heard a truck rattle into the lane and stop.  After a few moments of inactivity on the truck's part, I obliged the driver by checking to see what he wanted.

Chickens.  He wanted chickens. We have chickens, but none to spare.  He assaulted me with some vocabulary I am not partial to, but my discomfort was lost on him as he meandered through some pretty far flung (and--- might I add---unrelated) topics.  Hereby I learned that cancer is not caused, as some say, by GMOs in grains.  No.  It's caused by drinking water that has stood overnight in pipes.  Toxic water he called it.  Unsuspecting mothers mix this stuff with formula and give it to their innocent little babies.  That's why, he opined, there are so many bald two year olds in hospitals getting chemo treatments.  He has advised the National Cancer Institute about this, but they are hiding this information from you, ya'll.

There's more, but I'll leave that for now because it would be hard to tie in the stuff about parachute jumps to blow up bridges during the war, cows with milk fever, urinals, and corrupt local government officials.  You had to be there really.

This is but one slice of life.  I have an amazing swath of people and experiences in my life that I don't know if I could tell you about believably.

Another thing that has haunted my thoughts and literally kept me up at night is the idea presented to me by a friend that the Earth isn't, as I've always thought, spherical but flat.

We were driving down the road, heading off into the sunset, when my friend volunteered something about the supposed distance and size of the sun as opposed to what it really is.  Huh?  I'm not a science girl, but I was mentally scratching my head.  What did she just say?

She told me more, and after she left I sat mesmerized at the keyboard for quite some time trying to make sense of it.  Out of respect for my friend, I wanted to at least try to understand what she was trying to tell me.

Like I said, I am not a sciencey person (at all) but:  my oh my.  This is really a geocentric universe with a very small sun and a moon of an equivalent size, neither of which are hardly further away than California is from Ohio???  Have we been as duped by "them" as they (the other they....not to be confused by the evil "they") are saying?  Oh have mercy.  I might as well box up the science books I bought for my children and rid my kitchen wall of the maps that have been hanging there for years.

I feel like pulling a Vinnie Barbarino: "I'm so confused!!!"

I'm not really confused in the sense of not knowing what I believe or think.  I'm baffled that the topic came up.  I guess I thought "The Flat Earth Society" was sorta just a joke.  It's all been an unexpected twist.

But back to the shop clean up thing I mentioned earlier.  I have this whole big life staring at me in the face.  I am having trouble keeping the kitchen floor swept, the customers all happy, and orchestrating huge building rearrangement projects.  I wake up with a dread some days, my first waking thoughts going to whether I should first clear a spot in this building for that huge pile of stuff or should I start some other huge thing instead.....all the while realizing that none of the ginormous outside cleanup projects is laundry, dishes, and food for my children (all of which scream for my attention as well).

Life looms large. Then I have people randomly suggesting I might want to rethink drinking water and telling me the Earth is flat.  I don't have time for the Earth to be flat.  If it's just the way it's always been to me, I don't have to give it another thought.  It can just keep turning and I can just keep doing what I was doing. I don't have to really know or care about Agartha or whatever else popped up while I was trying to get a rudimentary grasp of "flat earth" (because just googling "flat earth" doesn't just give you a strict set of factoids....no, you wind up hearing about secret diaries of dead men, spooky new worlds and conspiracies galore).

I really just don't want to be astonished with anything Earth stopping right now. Does that make sense?  I want to just trudge to the house after a long day and cook supper.  And eat it. And go to bed.  And read bedtime stories to my children.  And thoughtlessly drink of glass of water.  One of these days I want to just be in the house and not have to trudge back to it after a long, hard day of doing all that "other" stuff.

Some day.....some day....

~Colleen