The Barn Comes A Tumblin' Down

Our farm is in a sad state of affairs.  A couple of years ago, one of our big sheds collapsed under a pile of snow.  Our other shed is leaning precariously.  And our poor barn, I'm sad to say, has finally collapsed.

(Wah wah waaaaahhhh)

Not that we didn't know it was coming.  From the day VikingDad bought the place, 8ish years ago, it has been crumbling slowly into an inevitable state of entropy.  Too broken to be worth fixing, we slowly watched its structural integrity dwindle until this summer.  A couple of years ago, the upper level became too unsafe to store hay in anymore.  Last year, the interior began to crumble.  Early this summer, the roof caved in.  And, finally, the whole barn collapsed (in either August or September.  I have a piss poor memory.  I have it written down someplace but I'm too lazy to look it up.)  Thankfully, no animals were harmed!  But now we have a huge wreck on our hands that we have to clean up.

(What a mess!)

VikingDad has to clean most of it up, the farm being his pet project and all.  But, last night he lured me into helping him with the tantalizing tidbit that I could "make boards explode by hitting them with a giant axe."
Whaaaaat?  Why did no one tell me you could do that?  I love explosions!  I love giant axes!  I love hitting things!

(Boom, baby)

So I decided to go out there and help him make boards explode.  WildBoy and WildGirl wanted to come too because VikingDad was burning the non-salvageable boards, which meant fire (and where there's fire, there's roasted marshmallows).  So I got them dressed (WildBoy was, of course, nekkid), got the marshmallows, and tromped out to help VikingDad.

OK, so the boards didn't exactly explode like I pictured it.  It's more like, if you hit rotten wood hard enough with a giant axe, the pieces go flying everywhere.  It was still really fun.

The first time I tried to make the boards explode, VikingDad had me hit one of the thicker, less rotten boards, so when I tried to make it explode, what actually happened was I nicked it slightly.

(This was my expression.)

VikingDad just laughed.  Soon, though, I found a couple of thinner, more rotten boards, and went to town on them.  It was very therapeutic!  I have to say, nothing beats the feeling of making things fly apart as you hit them.  We had a great system.  VikingDad climbed on the roof and threw down the boards.  I chopped the boards into manageable pieces, and the kids ran amok. 

(I love big axes and I cannot lie.)

WildBoy and WildGirl helped too, by carrying the broken boards over to the burn pile and occasionally feeding the fire.  (And, of course, they ate marshmallows, climbed on the wreckage, climbed on the hay bale, pretended that some of the board pieces were guns, and played tag.  All perfectly healthy activities for Barbarian children.)

 (Pretty much a jungle gym.  With the added risk of tetanus.)

We were visited by some of the inhabitants of the farm on occasion.  Pot belly pigs, goats, chickens, and cats all wandered by to watch our activities.

(A couple of pigs by the burn pile.  Surprisingly, they left the marshmallows alone and just wandered around.)

 (A particularly ornery Angora goat named Misty.)

We only went back in the house after it was too dark to see.  What a fun Sunday night!

Barbarians Hate Underwear

One morning I was trying to get the little kids off to the bus.  WildBoy was being difficult.  He wouldn't get dressed.  Finally, I yelled at him enough that he went downstairs to put on some clothes. 
"Remember to put on underwear!"  I shouted down after him.
"Awww!" He complained.  "WHY?"

("Underwear is for losers, Mom.")

I don't really have a good answer for that.  To be honest, I don't give a shit whether WildBoy (or anyone) wears underwear, or even clothes.  Although he accepted my, "Everyone needs to wear underwear to school, honey" answer, what I really wanted to tell him is, "The world is stupid.  Underwear is stupid.  Wear (or don't wear) what you want, and don't listen to anyone who thinks it's weird!"  But, I didn't, because sending WildBoy to school without clothes would have gotten me arrested. 

You may attribute this hatred of underwear to his liberal upbringing.  And maybe that's partially true.  Since I don't give a shit whether my kids wear clothes at home or not, WildBoy spent the first 4 years of his life mostly sans clothes.  When clothes were practical (or on outings), we would wear clothes.  At home, we mostly wouldn't.  So when he finally went to preschool, WildBoy had a bit of a difficulty understanding why he couldn't just take off his pants when he was uncomfortable or hot.  Surprisingly, I only got 2 calls from the teacher about it before he learned that clothes have to stay on in school.

But his upbringing alone doesn't account for it.  As a child, I was raised in a strictly clothing-required household, and I hated underwear.  I hated underwear with a passion.

("Guess who's wearing underwear, Mom?  Not me!")

One day, my parents took me to church.  This was not surprising, since I grew up in a family that went to church every Sunday (and on Wednesdays during Lent and Advent).  They sat in the front pew (for an unknown reason- possibly so I could see what's going on), but soon realized that was a mistake.  I started bouncing up and down on the pew, and, since I was wearing a cute little Sunday dress, they soon got a horrible realization.  I wasn't wearing any underwear!  And I was jumping up and down on the front pew at church... My cute little dress swishing up and swishing down as I jumped... and when it swished up, the pastor got a very surprising view!

("I don't know about you guys, but I'm having fun.")
On another occasion, our family decided to go on a picnic.  I absolutely refused to wear underwear to the picnic.  Getting fed up with it, my mom finally asked me, "Do you want to wear your underwear on your bottom, or on your head?"  I just pouted in reply, so my mom put underwear on my head.  How humiliating!  To have to put the hated garment on my head! 

 ("This is the worst torture ever!")




So, I pouted with underwear on my head for a long time before I finally consented to put it on my bottom.  My exasperated mother won that battle, and we went on the picnic fully clothed.

That was my childhood in a nutshell.

Fast forward to that fateful day when WildBoy refused to wear underwear.  I told him he had to wear underwear, so he went down to get dressed.  A minute later, he came upstairs... with the underwear on his head!  Unlike me, he wasn't pouting, but grinning ear to ear.

 (Maybe he saw Misha Collins doing it and thought it was cool.)




"I have the underwear on, Mama!"  He said in his sing-song "I'm playing a joke on you" tone.  Then he proceeded to jump on the bed, sans clothes, except for the underwear on his head.

Sigh.

My children are just like me.  HELP!

A Shit-tastic Day

This is the first of a couple shit-tastic days I've had recently. 

Gather 'round children, as I relate a tale of horror and sorrow!

The date was October 5th.  I rushed frantically about the house, as I usually do, getting the children ready for school, little knowing the horror that would be unleashed as soon as I got the children on their school bus.  Going back to the house, I tried to start some laundry, but lo! and behold! the washer filled up with water, but alas! would not drain.

So I called my faithful husband to go down and fix it.  Foolishly, I thought to myself that the drain was probably just clogged.

Instead, the whole washer had to be taken apart.  That day, I was supposed to meet with Dreyaka's case worker to discuss her therapy benefits, so I was rushing around trying to get the kitchen table cleared off so we would have a place to sit and talk without having to shout to each other over a heaping mound of debris.

(It looked like this, only worse.)

Also, VikingDad had to rush off to work soon, so he was understandably frustrated with how this was going.  He asked me to help him, nicely, in a very polite and considerate tone. 
Just kidding. 
He yelled, "COME AND HELP ME."  And, as an afterthought, "PLEASE!"

(VikingDad yelling "PLEASE!")

So I went to help him, and we discovered the inside of the washer was full of.... SLUDGE!  (Dun dun duuunnnnn)  Not more sludge!  I had thought we cleaned and scrubbed the last of it from our house.  Alas!  It was invading the washer.  So I got out my cleaning gloves and got to work while VikingDad rushed off to his place of employment.  I cleaned and I scrubbed, scooped handfuls of sludge out, and also cleaned the floor in the laundry room because it was filthy and I can't get to that part of the house with the washer in the way.  With the washer out of the way, I was able to see exactly how filthy it had become.  (Far too filthy to take a picture.  It would burn out your eyeballs.)

After I had bleached everything (including myself- that stung a bit), I went out to the kitchen to get a snack, only to be met with this.

(Just kidding- it wasn't quite that bad, but it was alarmingly flooded.)

So, I grabbed our last remaining towels and sopped up the huge mess, putting the towels in the laundry basket that I had to put on the treadmill because the washer was in pieces in the laundry room.  At this point, this was my expression:

(Grrrrrr!)

It turns out one of the pipes under the sink came completely off while the dishwasher was running (it's a portable one so it uses the sink to run).  Hence, flooded kitchen. 

At that point, the social worker was going to be at the house in 40 minutes, and I was covered in sludge and bleach and the whole house smelled like sludge and bleach.

So I rushed off to take a shower, light some incense to clear out the smell, and do my best to make a bad, rushed situation look presentable.  When the social worker drove up, I met her like this:

("I'm fine!  No really, I am!")

Thankfully, she was a very understanding person.  We had a good meeting, and then I had to rush off to get WildGirl to therapy, get groceries, and get livestock feed.  It was super hectic, but the good news is that I ended the day with Jujitsu class, which always makes me happy.

(Yay!)