Could it really be? The sun?

This morning, after turning out of the middle school, I was blinded by this ginormous, bright, blazing light coming straight at me. "Whoa! What tha? Where are my sunglasses?!" Then I remembered they had fallen under my seat yesterday, but seeing as how it was pouring down rain for what seemed like the 10,567th consecutive day, I didn't bother fishing them out. But now I needed them in the worst way and although I was wearing my normal glasses, I finally managed (while at a stoplight) to get them out and on, over my glasses, and began singing all the sunshine-y songs I could think of....

Here comes the sun, little darlin'! Here comes the sun...it's alright....Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. Sunshine almost always makes me high...I think I can make it now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way...

Yes, I am a dork but the sun is back! The sun is back!

In other telling-on-myself news, I was sitting in the waiting room waiting for my mom at her physical therapy appointment (she had knee replacement surgery in September) yesterday morning when the phone rang. It was the middle school. DEEP Breath. Breathe, breathe...Just breathe, Diane, breathe. One more time...

Exhale...

"Hello?"

Dracen: "Mom, can you bring my clothes for basketball tryouts after school? But I really need them for p.e. this afternoon too so could you just bring them earlier?" 

Me: "But I thought tryouts were tomorrow?"

Dracen: "They are but they are today too so can you just bring them?"

Me: Sigh. "Yep. I'll bring them." 

Apparently, I had not heard the whole message the school had left Sunday afternoon with all the week's happenings. So, after taking my mom home and getting back home in the monsoon, getting a bite to eat, and pep-talking physically carrying all the dogs out with an umbrella and sitting them in the dry, under the porch, to do their business in the POURING DOWN RAIN  (Well, all except my Darling Big Boy, Brisco, who will trot his little longhaired wiener self around in the rain all day long because he is just that awesome) I got ready to head back across town in the POURING DOWN RAIN. Did I mention it's been raining a lot around here?

I had already packed his bright, fluorescent yellow drawstring bag with his clothes and shoes and carried them into the kitchen before I got something to eat. I was gathering up my things (keys, phone, purse...) when of course, the three little dogs all came running to the door to go with me like they knew I was just riding to the school to drop something off, so I let them all out into the garage,  hoisted them up into the car and we were off. 

Despite all the pouring down rain and having to go yet again to drop something off at the middle school office, I was in a surprisingly good mood and singing along to my new playlist that includes the likes of Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, the Pointer Sisters, Prince and Guns N' Roses (November Rain much?). I pulled into the tiny parking lot at the office side of the school and even managed to back that thing up into a tight parking space when I realized what I had done.

Son of a... 

Yes. Yes, I had just gone off and left that fluorescent yellow bag with the clothes and shoes I had just put inside it, sitting right there on the kitchen counter so back across town my riding-with-a-carload-of-dogs-November-Rain-singing self went to retrieve it. 

The kid gets it honest is all I can say. 

It's gonna be a bright, briiight sun shiny day...

Catching Up

Since I took such a ridiculously long hiatus from blogging, 

I thought it'd be fun to look back through my photos and pick out a few highlights from the past nine months...

Back in February...

I finally found a slipcovered sectional sofa at the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams outlet to replace the two big, bulky leather recliner sofas I'd grown to despise. And, as you can see, the dachshunds wasted no time whatsoever breaking it in. The whole point was to get something I could take the covers off and wash on a regular basis because I'd heard such great things about them. Well. I washed it once and nearly ended up crying in the floor because (for the love!) they did NOT want to go back on. They finally did but it took some serious man (and woman) power and they have not been off again since. 

At the end of March...

Dracen was confirmed in the church after weeks of confirmation class.

Yep, the boy is officially bonafide.

April brought turkey hunting season and Dracen went

for the first time ever and shot this thing, which Momaw Pat was kind enough to cook up for him. 

(A wild game cooker I am not)

 With early May came prom. 

I didn't expect that yet since Devin was only a sophomore but he was asked to go by a junior.We took them out to the meeting place where the limo would pick them and several of their friends up. I have to say that I was completely clueless as to the HUGE deal that  prom has become in the many years since I attended one. We didn't take that many photos at our wedding! There were hoards of parents and professional photographers following these kids around like the Paparazzi. I recall my mom snapping a couple of shots with the disc camera (remember those?) on the front porch and maybe a couple at the car and we were on our way. The times they have 'a changed. 

As Charlie and I were coming back into our neighborhood that afternoon (after dropping the celebrities off) we came upon this beautiful, scared and lost-looking dog so I, being the extreme dog lover that y'all know I am, pulled the car over and she wasted no time whatsoever jumping right up into the car onto my lap. And this was no lap-dog-sized dog. So what are you gonna do but take her home?We tried for weeks to find who she belonged to (no collar, tags or chip) so I contacted a local rescue and we became her foster family until she was adopted. It took a little over a month to find her forever home. I still miss her adorable, sweet self but she was a lot of dog to handle with the three we already had.

(Leeza)

With June came Dracen's 6th grade/elementary school graduation and there were a few tears (mine, not his).

The week after graduation/ the first week of summer break, I felt confident in my ability to foster a dog temporarily without becoming so attached that I could never part with her/him. So...on that first Tuesday afternoon of summer break, Dracen and I found ourselves driving way out to a kill shelter in a rural county to save this little chihuahua who ended up being called Eli (also Dracen's middle name). Well, Eli didn't get any adoption applications for four whole months so guess who decided there was no way, no how she could part with him after that much time? Yep. So that's how we now have four dogs. I will do a whole post on this soon but let's just say that my life has quite literally gone to the dogs, but I always secretly knew that it would. 

(Eli aka Tidbit)

July is always a big month around here since the boys have their birthdays on the 17th and 18th. Dracen turned 12 and Devin, 16. I  just don't get it because I still feel 28 most days. Okay, 32. 

Devin with his birthday persimmon pudding, made my Momaw Pat.

Dracen with his requested three layer cake, made by me,

the non-baker. 

The end of July we took a week's vacation to St. Helena Island. It is a non-touristy little place off the coast of South Carolina, near Beaufort, where the air is salty, the tea is sweet and the majestic oak trees are dripping with spanish moss. In other words, my kind of place. We did take a day trip to Savannah and a couple of trips to the beach just up the road at Hunting Island State Park. I had been there once with Darin and Devin, when he was just an infant, and it was just as amazing as I remembered it. It feels like you have left the country when you drive down into that park (they filmed many of the Forrest Gump Vietnam scenes there).

The end of August brought back to school. This was a big year since Dracen started middle school (only 7th & 8th grades here) and Devin became an upperclassman. Again...HOW?!

I know these are the worst first-day-of-school pics ever but when boys get to be 12 and 16, you just take what you can get and let it go.

On September 8th Devin was eligible to take his driving test and he passed, so I now have a licensed "child". I've always been a praying woman but me and God have gotten even closer over the past couple of months. You know that quote by Elizabeth Stone about how having a child is like having your heart go walking around outside your body? Well. It gets way harder once that heart goes driving around outside your body. 

He is driving my old Saturn. I told him we could trade it for something else but he was all about it because there is plenty

of room in the back for the ginormous subwoofer he requested for his birthday in July. Because these days it is apparently all about that BASS. For realz.

October, sweet October. The older I get, the more I love it. This year, along with this first week of November, it has brought us way more than our fair share of rainfall but we've had a few pretty days and got in a Sunday day trip up to the mountains a few weeks ago. Devin decided he'd stay home and catch up on sleep because he's a teenager and what could possibly be more boring than riding around with your parents and little brother looking at leaves? 

This was the second year of not having a trick-or-treater at Halloween so I got nostalgic and dug up these old photos of their toddler days...

This was Devin as Batman in 2002 (the costume was too big but the smallest one we could find and he wanted to be Batman that year more than anything in the entire world) and Dracen as my little monkey in 2004. "Monkey" was once my nickname for him but shh...keep that on the down low. Everyone kept calling him a mouse and I finally gave up correcting them. 

And because there were no kids to dress up, the dogs got decorated. I think they are just relieved I didn't put costumes on them this year. But there is always next year... 

And I think that pretty much brings us to the present, aside from the train ride we took to Charlottesville, Virginia last Sunday but more on that later. 

Happy Friday!

Writing It Down

I can't say why I just flat out stopped writing this blog. Sometimes these things just happen, I suppose. There seem to be fewer and fewer hobby bloggers around these days. Almost all the blogs I once read daily have long since up and died, much like this one. Leaving it to rest in peace has mostly seemed like the best option for the past several months but something whispered to me in the car on my second trip back home from the middle school this morning. 

So here I am.

That something most certainly sprang from my frustrated state with that youngest boy of mine (a 7th grade middle-schooler now) who is still testing our parenting skills and all-around patience on a daily basis. Time management is a concept he still seems to be completely unfamiliar with and although middle school starts 30 minutes later than the elementary school (8 as opposed to 7:30), I'm still squealing tires pulling out of the driveway most mornings. 

The school secretary already knows my face since I am regularly dropping forgotten items off with her. Sometimes it's athletic clothes or shoes, sometimes a lunchbox, sometimes a notebook... But this morning? It was the whole dang book bag. How do you not realize that you have left for school without your forty pound backpack is beyond my comprehension but I suppose it had something to do with the fact that he was scanning the car for his shoes (which he always kicks off on the way home from anywhere) just before getting in. 

So of course, being the sucker good mother that I am, I came home, threw on something resembling actual clothes, and headed back across town to deliver a book bag. And about halfway back to the house, it just hit me how much I missed writing all this craziness down. Not just the frustrating crazy, but the good crazy too. Because as time has been seemingly speeding up with each passing year, I'm being constantly reminded of just how very quickly these days will be gone and no matter how frustrating they can be, I know well enough by now to just appreciate them for what they are because I'm gonna miss them like the dickens when they're gone.

Devin is a man-sized driving junior in high school, a fact which often still seems more surreal to me than not. In less than a mere two years from now, he will be a high school graduate and Dracen will be a high school freshman. Two.years! Time is a sneaky little beast and while none of us can pause it, halt it, or slow it down, we can, at the very least, document it.