All Things Anne

I’m going to write a book. Yes, another. Besides NaNoWriMo. This one is going to be about the people I know most about…my family!! Y’all know how everyone is interested in large families! Well, I need your help, too. Do you have any questions about large families? I want some ideas about things to post about, because my blog posts will be in the book, next year. Yep, y’all are gonna get the hot-off-the-press as-it-happens sneak previews! How cool is that?

So. Yeah. Please please please ask me questions!

Dad suggested I should do this as a way to make money from home–sell books about us! He suggested I should be more narrative, more descriptive. I decided I needed a notebook. Right as we were sitting down for dinner, I ran to my computer and got the notebook from the desk, and a pen.
“Whatcha gonna do, take notes?” Mom asked.
“Yeah!” I said. Once before, when Mom was in the hospital having Rase, I’d brought out my journal and written down what was going on. It turned out pretty funny! Maybe sometime I’ll post about that, but not right now. I don’t want to go to my room and dig that journal out of the box it’s residing in.
What I will say though, is that Joe is a ham. He hams in front of a camera. He hams behind a camera. So when I got out my notebook and pen, Eric said, “Joe, don’t goof off in front of the pen!”

Earlier, I was doing some legitimate for-money work, and Abby came up to Mom with the present she is giving Ben for his birthday. It was wrapped very nicely, obviously she’d had help. “Mom, can you write on dis for me?” she asked Mom.
“Ask someone else, I can’t right now,” Mom said. So she came over to me.
“Anne, can you write on dis for me?” she asked.
I looked down at her and smiled and said “I can’t right now, I’m working.”
She looked up at me with those big blue eyes and a little smile and said, “You can stop!”

People say homeschoolers are unsocialized. What they (the people who say that) don’t know is how to have fun. They haven’t ever played baseball (without knowing the rules, mind you) with walnuts and sticks; or made their own “VBS”, or played big leaves were money (we had two money trees at our old house, we were quite rich!). Or watched a toilet being taken out and a new one put in for fun. They’ve never had to make up their own entertainment. They are SO missing out.

The girls’ bathroom toilet just up and quit again. No, it’s not because of…of…um, no, it’s not our fault, it’s the toilet’s fault. Well, yesterday Mom bought a new toilet, and the boys (well, just Joe and Eric, bribed with leftover Mississippi Mud…but they’d had to have done it anyway!) exchanged toilets. Dad didn’t want to be apart of the process. Well, last time he took out a toilet, it was so stuck he took a sledgehammer to it and took the thing out in three pieces. Or how about the time he replaced the kitchen sink and earned himself a nice scar on his wrist that looks like he tried to kill himself? Well, plumbing and Dad don’t agree, you see.

Yesterday I cleaned the toilet (funny how I have to clean it for them to take it out!), so today Joe and Eric went in to take it out.

There’s this guy, whose name I shall not mention for fear someone would find my blog while searching for him, but anyway, he has a really expensive video camera, and Joe wants me to marry him. Well, there’s this video he has about…well, a guy. Austin. In this video, this guy, Austin C., comes to town, and he’s…kind of strange. He goes up to someone’s house, rings the doorbell, and says, “Hi, my name’s Austin, do you need your toilet plunged?” and he waves a toilet plunger. Well, we all had seen that and thought the Austin video was very funny, so, Joe said, “Hi, my name’s Joe, do you need your toilet plunged?” as he went into the girls’ bathroom.

Anyway. Joe and Eric went into the bathroom, and of course all the little kids followed and started getting in the way. So Eric came up with a bright idea.
“Do you want me to use my ear-grabbers?” he’d say, reaching for vise grips. The little kids all believed him, that he would use them, so they backed off. He tried that line on me, and I believed it too.

They got a big black garbage sack and put the old toilet in it to take it out. I thought it was a good idea, so it wouldn’t drip all over the carpet! They hauled it out and put it…somewhere. Hopefully not in the front yard. Anyways. Then they hauled the new one in. It happened to be in a box, and they brought it through the garage door, into the kitchen. Beth and I were at the sink counter; she was cutting up ham and I was cutting up potatoes for scalloped potatoes, when the boys came barging through with this…box full of toilet. They bumped into Beth first, then because I was opposite the island, they pinned me against the counter. You know how sometimes you think something is going to hurt so you say “ow”? Well, I thought it was going to hurt so I went “OWWWWWW!!!” But it didn’t really hurt. But don’t tell them that! They just laughed, anyway!

Of course, everyone wanted to see the new toilet, so once more all the little kids crowded into the hall.
“Mom? This toilet has a cracked bowl!” Eric yelled.
“Is it really???” Mom yelled back. See, she knows these boys. After living with them all their lives, she can’t help it!
“No,” Eric yelled back.

I’m happy to say the toilet was successfully installed, and works great! In the store, this particular toilet was advertised by this paper boy with his arms full of toilet paper. So, what do the boys do the first time? Stick the end of the toilet paper roll in the toilet and try to make it all unravel when they flushed! (By the way, it didn’t work.)

Then, of course, everyone wanted to be the first one to use the new toilet. But that’s another story!

Today is Ben’s birthday. He is now 19. Can you believe it?? Me either. You know, parents and grandparents…well, honest-to-goodness grownups always say about how “Oh, it seems like only yesterday when he turned one!” Well, it seems like only yesterday we were little kids playing at the old house in the tractor tires, jumping on wire bales and old mattresses, racing through our “Oregon Trail”, looking for “double” daffodils, sliding down the haybale slide, eating sour pie cherries, playing baseball with sticks and walnuts, and all the other things we did. Now he is a man.

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” 1 Corinthians 13:11

Posted on October 5th, 2007 @ 11:18 am | Filed under: Family, Special Occasions |

« Previous Post — Next Post »