Work to Do, Ere the Sun Goes Down

Mr. Graff used to work at BYU Groundskeeping. True story. When we were engaged, he drove around on a tractor repairing sprinklers. One day, I got to ride around with him on his tractor, meet his boss, meet the crew. I loved it. Mr. Graff misses his tractor. 

I think his tractor's sexy. 

Ah well… we've moved away and Mr. Graff's gotten a big-people-career-like job. 

Power drills are nice, too. 

We've spent the better part of a week taking down our old closet hardware, patching, priming, painting, and putting new closet hardware back in. And like any good home improvement project, we ran into hiccups (directions, you need to read those?) (a random metal box where we wanted to drill) and other such stuff. It could be a metaphor for life, but the ending would be: WHO CARES ABOUT PERFECTION; JUST GET THE CLOSET BACK TOGETHER. 

The end. 

It's back together. And now I want to do laundry. 

Because now I have some place to put it. 

We're all about adventures here at the Graff house. 

Adventures in eating: 

I let Caleb teethe on my apple. I think there was a time when other people's spit bothered me---and maybe it still does, but my own kids' spit? Not at all. I am routinely covered in so much of their bodily fluids (and not so fluids) that spit seems … tame. Normal. A non-issue. Yeah, I finished eating that apple after Caleb chewed on it. 

I also gave Caleb some Thin Mints. He loved these and kept begging for more, only to be given ranch or falafel. He felt a little cheated after the gloriousness of the Thin Mint. 

And we fed falafel to our niece. 

She loved it, particularly the ranch… licked that stuff off first. 

I know why the only pictures of her are when she is eating. That's the only time she stays still enough to take a picture! 

Which is a lot like Rae, except when he gets stuck… in Caleb's walker. 

"Mom, don't take a picture!" he told me. 

Of course I took it anyway. 

Some things you just gotta record for posterity. 

More adventures at the library. 

Adventures planting flowers. 

 And, adventures taking apart our cabinet doors and getting them set up to paint. 

We used child labor to get the hardware off the doors. 

Here he's taking off door handles. 

I like the tongue-sticking-out thing. 

And here he's taking off hinges. 

He was pretty quick about this. I turned around and four door handles were already done. 

Maybe I should be concerned... 

The cabinets are a little intense on the eyes without doors to hide our stuff, but I really like open shelving and the kids are not into the things as much as I thought they might be. Hallelujah! 

I put screw hooks into two 2x4s and laid them across two ladders. Then I put eye screws into the blind side of the cabinets doors. (The blind side is the edge that no one sees.) And put the doors on the 2x4s like a card file. Most people when painting kitchen cabinet doors use a garage and lay all of the doors out flat. They take a week painting one side and then another week painting the other side. We have no garage and about 20 doors and I want to get it done in a week, so the eye screw system will hopefully work. 

I plan on painting and reinstalling them next week. 

Yeehaw. Party at my house. Whoop--whoop! 

And now for some cuteness: 

He's pushing up with extended arms now! And he's figuring out how to roll from his tummy to his back. Woohoo!

And now for some quirk-i-ness: 

Joe has loved my shoes for forever. Now, I catch him walking around sporting them. And most recently, I've watched him line the up like this: 

It's quirky. And I'm hoping this is not a marker for autism. 

We had a handyman come and install our countertops recently and he does fundraising for autism. He took a particular liking to Joe and asked me if he had autism. Joe's super social, so I don't think so, but what do I know? 

And lastly for some seriousness: 

I plowed over a stop sign. 

Let's back up. Joe has not slept well for a couple weeks. Then Rae has not slept well for the last four or five nights. And of course, Caleb's sleep has been weird, too. Which means, no one has slept much. It turns out that three hours of sleep is a lot like seven, ...except I have to keep moving or I'd fall asleep. 

…Or run over a stop sign.  

Luckily, all I did was bend our license plate and minorly dent the bumper. Luckily. Oh, so luckily. 

I didn't expect the cars in front of me to be stopped so far back from the light. I was watching the road, not fiddling with my phone or the radio. Not eating or digging in my purse. But, I just didn't see it. I didn't see it. I was looking at the road, but I didn't see it. And by the time I did, I knew that I couldn't brake fast enough without slamming into the back of the little white car ahead of me. 

So, I swerved. Not into pedestrians. Not into a car heading for that particular stop sign. Just went over a curb, left some skid marks and took out the stop sign like it was nothing. 

No one was hurt. And the damage was minor. 

And, I don't even have to pay to replace the stop sign. 

Can we say grace? 

It really should not have gone down like that. Just like my home really should have had damage from the fire in February. Or it really should have had damage from the burst pipe. 

Sometimes I feel acutely the words, "…their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less.." (D&C 122:9) I'm alive! I didn't hurt anyone and hardly hurt anything. And it really could have been different. In a blink of an eye. 

I feel that each day is a testimony that the Lord wants me here, that's it's not my time yet. My work is not yet finished. 

And I've got a lot of work to do. 

(Someone put my stop sign back up. The dent is where my bumper hit it. You can vaguely see the skid marks.)