When you're on the road often, you come to terms with the fact that you're going to be using public restrooms more often than you'd like (and we'd all like to NEVER use them). Because I'm often driving in remote areas between large cities, and because I also have standards... until the emergency takes precedence over said standards, that is, I will pass many a hole-in-the-wall/sketchy-looking places doing the peepee dance in my seat... or, ahem, the "other" dance... the sweatier one, figuring I'll just eventually have to pull off into a wooded area if I don't come across something in the acceptable range : urgency ratio. 
I've had many years worth of practice perfecting my "hover", and when I see evidence that a careless or poorly skilled hoverer has been to a place before I arrived, I just shake my head at their incompetence or laziness... at a minimum, I wish they'd clean up after themselves. But while that is merely annoying, the real problem lies here...
Like any sport, you can tell right away if your form is off or spot on and your mind and body connect in either jubilation as you await the crushing of the ball into the net, into the basket, into the hole, into the back field, etc... OR with utter disappointment as you watch it go too high, too low, too far left, too far right. It is with sheer horror that you react similarly when your hover form is off and you feel the public toilet water splash back up and hit you where the sun don't shine... and you still have an hour left of your drive back to your hotel and shower. Such was my day... form was off... and then... no toilet paper in the vicinity. Total rookie move not checking first.
#roadwarriorconfessions #howwasYOURday

I've been driving up from Dallas, Texas, to Stilwell, Oklahoma, for work meetings for the better part of a decade, and I have ALWAYS said, "Man! This place needs a coffee shop." 
After my decaf disappointment at my hotel this morning, I was dragging when I rolled into town, and I asked a local lady if she knew of any place with good coffee. She told me about this new coffee shop just down from the Walmart in a small strip mall that also has an H&R Block in it. She couldn't remember the name. Well, I found it, and I'm here to tell you about one of my new favorite places!! 
This is Lisa, and this is her place: Stomping Grounds Coffee & Cakery. 
Everything is fresh and made from scratch, including her syrups!! What?!? Because she's a great conversationalist, and I'm nosey, I found out that she personally worked with local roasters to find her perfect taste, and she gets regular deliveries to ensure freshness. What a bright spot in Stilwell, OK!! 
Oh! And she's been baking for 10 years... I picked up some goodies for my afternoon meeting, and I'm over here making yummy noises over the latte and brownie cookie thing I got for myself. 
This is a new, regular stop for me when I'm in town! Go see Lisa!! She opens at 5:30am, people!! And she offers discounts on bulk orders like mine!

#StompingGroundsCoffee&Cakery #StilwellOklahoma #Lattes #Organic #MadeFromScratch
​#FindHerOnFacebook #FindHerOnInstagram

Dominic is home today with Jose to make sure he's ok to go back to school tomorrow following his concussion yesterday. Dominic cannot have any screen time, bright lights, physical exertion, etc.
Soooo...
This is an actual assessment made by yours truly this morning while I was packing up for a trip to Oklahoma...
Dominic + Boredom =
"Mommy, can we get a butler?"
"Mommy, when can we go see Paul Revere's house?"
"Aaaand... Do you know about the Red Coats?"
"Are bean chips really just beans made into chips?"
"I think Justin Bieber weighs about 154 pounds."
"Hey Mommy, what if you run out of water on your trip?"
"Do tsunamis happen in Oklahoma? I'm worried you might get caught in one and not make it home."
"How do you make Kombucha?"
"Mommy, when is something drugs and when is it medicine?"
"Mommy, take a picture with me so you can look at it on your trip."
That last one was the easiest... Done. 
Jose may need some positive energy blown his way, because Dominic has nothing but time and curiosity on his hands today. 😂
#ilovethismonkey #thesequestionsthough 🤣

I've been trying to pull each boy away for short occasions so that they can each have some special time away from the rest of our rowdy group. I was doing better about this until this last year, and I really wanted to make a point of making it happen regularly again starting this month. So, to get back on track, instead of cutting each of the boys' overgrown hair last week myself, I took each of the older 3 one at a time, 1 evening at a time, to get their hair cut at a "guys' place" as Javi calls it and then out for an ice cream cone afterwards. Santi isn't one to appreciate a barber shop yet, but he HAS been telling me a lot lately about how badly he wants chocolate cake.  I had asked Sol to stay late tonight, and, when I got finished with meetings this evening, I picked up Santi from extended care at pre-school. I took him to the place for the best chocolate cake on the planet as far as I'm concerned: Platia... a Greek restaurant in Frisco, Texas. We LOVE all of their food, but their chocolate sponge cake, the  sokolatopita, is, well... HEAVEN. So I pulled up, and we went inside. Santi ran over to the dessert counter and pointed to it as I knew (HOPED!!?) he would, and we asked for a table for 2. He had milk; I had Greek coffee. We had two forks and one huge slice of sokolatopita, and we talked about life (who he played with at recess), about love (that he really wants a play date with Brooklyn and napped next to Dresden), and about mistakes (like falling off the restaurant chair 3 times in a span of 20 minutes, hurting his knee, his ankle, and then his fingers, respectively). Then we got down to business:

Santi: "Mommy, is this their fork, or did you let them use our fork?"
Me: "That is their fork, baby."
Santi: "So do they wash it after someone's done with it so they can let someone else use it?"
Me: "Yes, they do. They have a lot of plates, cups, and silverware that people use, and then they wash it and then somebody else uses it." 

(This conversation has me thinking more about how people should probably be more disgusted about this than about whether Jose feeds Max off of a fork that I know for a fact we sterilize afterwards, but, anyway, Santi continued...)

Santi: "But what about if there's a booger on the fork or spoon?"

Me: "That is pretty yucky, but, when they wash it, I'm sure it comes clean."

Santi: "But what if it is the really sticky kind that doesn't come off with water?"

Me: "Hmmm good thinking... I hope you checked your fork before you started eating your cake."

Santi: *eyes bulging* *lips pouting* 

After further thought, I think the utensils at our house are definitely safer than using any restaurants' that were probably washed by a bored teenager. So don't give me crap about feeding our dog off our fork if you're still gonna eat out and eat off of sticky booger forks. But, anyway, by all means, let's all go back to eating out without thinking about what may have previously been on the fork we are putting into our mouths. Deal???

Dear Husband, we need to talk…

...it’s about our youngest child. Your eyes are full of apples, I know; the one to which I’m referring is the long, skinny, light-haired one. You’ve been leaving for work before anyone is up and then not getting home until they’re in bed and I’ve got a mere millimeter of light seeping into my own eyes as I surrender to the zzz monster that’s been chasing me since my alarm went off in the wee hours of that morning. So we don’t have a lot of time to talk, and I don’t expect you to know all of the contributing factors of my own exhaustion even as spreadsheets and auditors and long hours contribute to yours. It’s true that for the most part every day is like the one before… I get up early to get lunches and snacks prepared, and it’s important that this is done before the boys get up so that they don’t come in and start nitpicking and complaining and making special requests… out of sight out of mind, so time is of the essence. My sanity depends on it. Then it’s time for the boys to get up, and I am digging through piles of clean laundry in and around baskets in the living room to find something they can wear to school once I’ve checked the weather for the day. While they’re eating breakfast, I’m wrestling with our beloved, geriatric Tobey Cat to get exactly 1 1/2 pills down his throat while dodging Mrs. Robert’s claws as she sits next to us and tries to attack a curious Max who has come over to sniff Tobey who is lying on my lap while I repeatedly blow on his face and rub his throat, alternatively holding my finger over his nose to force him to open his mouth, which never works. Then as I’m wiping blood from the cat scratches on Max’s snout, I’m also filling his stinky pill pocket with his allergy pills, because, as though life isn’t complex enough, we have a dog who is ALLERGIC TO GRASS… for the love…


The boys will come down from brushing their teeth, and I'll make a mental note that one of them yelled about cat puke somewhere up there. I will remind them dozens of times to put on their shoes and socks, and I’ll remind them for the 3 millionth time that if their shoes were put back where they belong the day before they’d be right there this morning. And, no, Dominic; I allow you to express yourself in many fantastically fashionable ways and even encourage it, but you WILL wear matching shoes, so keep looking. I’m fixing their hair and arguing with Adrian about how I will not style his bangs to cover one eye, because he needs to be able to see out of both eyes. I’m asking Javi to PLEASE tie those shoelaces… and why is it the same shoe every day that is left untied, laces flying around with every step as I visualize myself having to take another trip to the store to get more laces after he wears these ones out again. Always the right shoe. Always. He doesn’t mind tying the left one but the right one is…? …what? … too much trouble? It’s baffling.


Everyone is just about ready, so I head out to start the truck and warm it up. I come back in and hear much splashing… it’s the telltale sound of cats playing in Max’s water bowl. Nose actually dips each of her paws in his water over and over and then licks them dry. Alice and Ears try to slap out the dog food that Max dropped in there while eating, and there are actual waves in the bowl. I know I’ll need to get a towel to put down over there before we leave.


Eventually, we will have 4 bodies with their jackets and backpacks on standing near the door, and we will be walking to the truck and headed to school where we will argue all the way there about who is touching whom and who snuck whose Pokemon cards into their pockets. We will kiss and hug and (gently) nudge kids out the back door of the truck so we can get Santiago to pre-school, and I’ll listen as Santi tells me me a dozen times before we even get to Preston Rd that he is hungry and didn’t know he should finish his breakfast before we left. 


Now I have to get to work, and depending on the day it could look like anything. All I know is that I have a hard stop at 5:45pm, and so I don’t have time to mess around. I’m the most efficient, overloaded mess you’ve ever seen, I’m sure of it.


I’ll come home at some point, and I’ll be getting dinner ready. We have probably already been to a practice for one or more of the kids, and so it might be earlier or later in the evening, but I’m in a hurry anyway, since bedtime is important for the next morning’s flow. And as I’m hurrying around the kitchen, I may hear Santi in the distance saying, “Mommmmmmy! I’m cleaning the bathroom! I’m doing chores!” And I’ll hear him and an alarm bell will go off somewhere in my head, but there are many other sources of input coming at me all at once, and that is only one of them. Plus the boys are giving Alexa a playlist, and having a conversation across the house is too much competition for my voice which lacks sufficient force and depth even at my highest volume. So I make a mental note that I’m probably going to need to look in on him with squinted eyes at some point… but I forget… until I’ve got them all in bed, and I walk into the bathroom only to find the floor very wet, and things sort of strewn around soaking in the… water?  I go back upstairs and ask Santi who is not yet asleep what he used to clean the bathroom with, and he says he used water from the sink (whew) and that he used wet wipes (ok) and… “that scrubber thing with the stick”. I thank him for “helping” and without even being asked, and I offer to clean it with him together the next time so he can learn how to use the cleaning supplies. He’s very happy, smiles, hugs me, and says, “Yay!”. I go back downstairs and look in the bathroom to see what cleaning stick he was talking about, and I see the toilet scrubber lying on its side under the small table. Yay! Ugh. The entire bathroom has been “cleaned” with the toilet bowl scrubber doused in water. Let that sink in a minute… it’s a germ party of the worst kind… escherichia coli, staphylococcus, streptococcus, gardnerella, shigella… all these bacteria just living it up, multiplying, using my bathroom floor as a slip n slide right now. I’m going to have to deal with this, which means the dishwasher will not be unloaded and reloaded tonight since I feel the last of my energy expiring quickly. It is for this reason, Dear Husband, that I REALLY appreciate it when you don’t show a reaction when you come home and walk into the kitchen… or the rest of the house, for that matter. Trust me, I feel the same reaction as you… deep in my bones. I just know it’s a lost cause at this point. One day we will have the cleanest house. That day is not this decade.


We are all in bed, the boys and I, and at some point you come home… I have vague memories of you lying down next to me, hugging me, and kissing my cheek. But I’m out.


The next thing I know, I’ve hit snooze for a good 30 minutes, and at 5am I drag myself out of bed. I have a text from you at 4:57am telling me you’ve left for work and you love me. I go downstairs and see you have ground up some coffee beans for me to make a fresh cup of coffee… thank you. I love you. I look around at the picture of destruction and just put my head down and get started on lunches and snacks. A while later, the boys come down and they’re getting dressed. Because Santi gets distracted and will eventually come down wearing a backwards, inside out shirt that is NOT a school shirt along with some swimming trunks, 2 different flip-flops, and a panda hat, I get his clothes out of the pile and help him get dressed. As he is taking off his jamas, he informs me that he “was having a dream that he was looking at girl boobies” and he gets red cheeks, starts giggling, and his dimples pop. I smile and say, “Wow, really? Well, I dreamed about lots of ice cream…” Really, I just dreamed about nothing… it was a deep, black hole of doing nothing, which was ahhhmazing, but I feel like ice cream is something he can relate to more, and I really just don’t want to elaborate on looking at girl boobies right now. It feels too early in the morning to try to come up with an acceptable response. If I'm honest, I'm glad he sprang that on me and not you, because I'm not sure I would have wanted to hear your response to that (I love you!). I take him to the bathroom to brush his teeth and note the new bottle of mouthwash that replace the one he wasted by pouring hand sanitizer into it, and I’m happy for Adrian that he won’t get a mouthful of soap again today.


And then later, after the older 3 have been dropped off, and I’ve driven Santi to pre-school 20 minutes away, we pull into his school parking lot, and I turn around to look at him, his face covered in sharpie marks that he made on himself last night, and I ask him where his backpack is, and he looks around confused before he says, “Oh, I’m sorry, Mommy. I took it off and forgot to put it back on.” And I will count to 10 inside my head, take a deep breath, and I’ll say, “Let’s go.” And I’ll take him inside while I count to 10 in my head again.  Hugs, kisses, “see you later”’s, “have a good day”’s… 


And then we do it all over again… every. single. blissful. day.


And so when you call me later and say, “What are you doing?” and I say, “Working” or “Sitting here staring at my eyeball skin” or “Making dinner” or “Herding cats while so&so has basketball practice” or whatever it is at that moment… just know that you’re asking me a loaded question and any answer feels unsubstantial and severely lacking context. I know one day it’s going to be VERY quiet around here. Our house will be clean, we won’t be missing any drywall or have sharpie drawings on the hallway walls (or faces, for that matter), there will be no laundry of this magnitude, we will actually have to converse with each other, and I just can’t even picture it because it seems impossible that you can go from this RPM to that. But this little, blonde, Dennis the Menace one… the baby of the family… I will blame the majority of my gray hairs and wrinkles on this one. And I just realized that maybe the reason I can’t picture us sitting alone in a clean home one day is possibly because he accidentally brought the roof down around us trying to “help” and we are actually living in a shack or at a campsite or something. But he will have said, “Oops, sorry, Mommy” and those dimples will have popped, and we will have just started counting…

Ahhh we share a wonderful, messy life, my love.