Drawbacks of Organization

Just finished getting rid of anything and everything we don't have to have. (Seven hours? My back is saying eight.) Absolutely dismayed to find out that it is still too much for our still quite small apartment, rife with storage & closet space though it may be. Even got rid of four or six (my back says six) bins of baby clothing, in the wake of my decision to be (until further notice) done with pregnancies. The boys' future clothing supply is condensed to a tidy two bins. Savanna's clothing is in one bin and one of those hideous plastic-drawer dressers (that we have so many of) that I managed--by some pregnant magic--to fit into my closet. Because right now it's all a magic trick, and probably will be for some time, to fit these things called Necessities into this thing called an Apartment. I'm trying to quiet the part of me that's itching to throw a tantrum over it all. (So far, I'm only achieving minimal success.)

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To make note of a rare (but sweet) five-star moment:
The house is clean. I managed to shower before nightfall, so my hair is clean. My clothes are absent of boogers, drool, peanut butter, and poo. Reed and I made cupcakes together. Jaxon just finished a two-hour nap. Phill is coming home hours early from drill. Basking in the glow....

Names

I saw a commercial (don't remember what for) where a man was actually a huge piece of charcoal with legs. It made me think of my brother-in-law, Cole. So then I wondered:
What if those of us who had names that are also nouns actually looked like the noun? Reed would be a blade of grass in swampy water. Melissa would be an herb. Savanna (daughter in-utero) would be an open plain. Abby could be an abbey. Or what if those of us who don't have noun-convertible names looked instead like the meanings of our names? I'm thinking this would be an intriguing photo project....

The mystery is solved!

I was wondering where our ants have been coming from, as I've been absolutely scrupulous about cleaning the leftovers Jaxon flings from his high chair. Well, today, the mystery is solved. I found tiny bits of food behind my darling 4-year-old's bed, with countless black ants feasting. And during dinner tonight, he was setting little bits of dinner on the linoleum and watching them eat....when I asked him why he had fed the ants, he had a somewhat logical reason. Apparently, it's a fascination/fear thing. It turns out he was feeding the ants to pacify them so that they wouldn't bite him!

It's all about the pheromones, baby!!

As I was peeing for the thousandth time today, I saw four tiny ants on the bathroom floor. I bent to squash two with my pointer fingers. Then one of the ants that had been heading towards the (now dead) two turned and tried to get under the bathmat. And the fourth one just completely turned direction and tried to hurry away. Don't ants have some sort of way to communicate danger? It was a little eerie how quickly the still-alive ants tried to get away. Anyway, I googled "communication of ants" and got this:

Communication between members of a colony is almost entirely chemical, with some tactile communication.
Ants use pheromones to:
* recognise colony members
* mark trails to food/water sources
* determine caste
* signal attack and defence
Tactile communication is mainly used as requests for food between adults.

So pheromones from dying ants made one ant run under my bathmat, the other hurrying in the opposite direction along the baseboard. Creepy and fascinating, hm?

congratulations to q

I spent the bigger half of Saturday photographing my little sister's wedding. It's a good thing I had the camera pressed to my eyes most of the time, or I think I might have cried endlessly. (Although I did cry when it was time to take pictures of their first dance....I had to hand the camera to Phill.) Only one left to go: our little Madelyn....I hope she takes her sweet time, because I don't know if I can handle the pace that is so far unbroken by us Boatright girls. (Once a Boatright, always a Boatright.) Liz left the nest at 21? Yes, yes, I think so. And Abby at 19. I did at 18 (guess I was setting a record?) and Just-Married-Stars-in-Her-Eyes is 19. In my opinion, we've all married very well. I don't think that we've rushed into it, necessarily--but it sure was awfully fast that we all found our someones. And I'm feeling a little like the mommy, watching her birdies fly far, far away. And sometimes the pace just startles me. Maybe I'm a little out of the loop? After all, there are five years between my marriage and Younger Lovely's. So why does the pace seem so frantic? Am I just never going to be ready? Am I always going to be shocked into seeing another go? I still have this little childish hope that one day we'll all live close together in the same state or--dare I imagine!--in the same city....Melissa and Abby, my blog-writing sisters, I miss you. You're both too faraway.

I am immeasurably blessed to have Phill for my husband. I just deleted a huge post that listed individually several things he has done for me lately that have sent me over the moon, but decided that I would just hold those things close and post this instead, saying just what I need to say: That I'm so grateful to have been paired with him (by God, by circumstances, by our own volition, by fate). He treats me in a way that is rare and sweet, and I just felt the need to say how thankful I am to have him.

nourishment

I need to re-pattern my eating. I'm way too in love with sugar, although I'm not so in love with the effect it has on me. And still I go for it? Makes no sense, except that sugar is addictive. Sometimes I think how nice it would be to do a Survivor-like fast for a few days, only eating very necessary, very simple un-messed-with foods, and then just re-start my entire way of eating. I don't want a complicated "diet" plan....diets are ridiculous. I want something more permanent, therefore something with more subtle changes. For a start, shouldn't I be more terrified of fast food? Anyone read the book Fast Food Nation? (Pardon the italics in place of the more-correct underlining, which blogger mysteriously leaves out....) And shouldn't I be more wary of sugar?--the kind that is present in donuts and ice cream, as opposed to what's present in fruit? It isn't enough just to master the art of eating. I want to master the art of eating well.