Bucket Fun

An excess of sheet rock mud buckets, due to a son-in-law, still stuck in El Salvador, who likes to make his mother-in-law happy. Not a difficult task, as the buckets alone thrill me. There are two garden areas up by the pool, within the fence, that theoretically I could be working on, and still maintain law and order while the kids swim, therefore I have weed buckets available for use in the pool area.

We have no dearth of reasons why a rowdy family like mine wouldn't be welcome in a public pool. We're too loud, too rough, too emotionally difficult, not to mention, at times, just too dangerous.

Last night though even Yolie remarked how good it was to hear the kids laughing and the Bubbas literally playing like kids. Now ages 12-15, JoJo, Allen, Chuy, Tony, CW, Martin and Javy round out the group that once ran our property in their Superhero underwear, now a bunch of vain guys, but without an outside potential audience of teeny bopper girls, such as on the soccer fields, here at home, they're simply childish and silly. Farting to spray for mosquitos.

In top form, they kept me rolling in laughter until dark last night, no fights, no skirmishes, no nothing. Reminding me that life has gotten a whole lot better as some of them have grown up, left home and taken their issues with them.

I have to go to court this morning with Fabian on yet another charge, summer school starts for Mayra, Martin and Jonathan who just informed me, "I'm not going," just as he did yesterday for church.

It's going to be a ninety degree day today, my various varieties of leaf lettuce just now getting that slightly bitter tang to them before they bolt in the heat, me trying to drag out the harvest, loving my humongous salads with the spring onions that are to die for. CJ fell slap in love with raspberries, even more so than he did with strawberries, and I've watched myself fall farther and farther behind in gardening chores, which is a word that I probably shouldn't even use in the garden. There are no chores, maybe only opportunities.

Because I wake up at night and wander around, checking on everyone, because I monitor Facebook and computer history, it became glaringly obvious to me that some yoyos here had gotten up in the middle of the night to chat on Facebook. Chuck obligingly came over and set all the family room computers on internet timers, shut down from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sucks to be y'all, kids.

A reader in Seattle, invited me to someday come over for a cup of coffee. Yolie and I talked about the places I'll go someday, the limitless opportunities I'll then have and deservedly so. The preacher yesterday, so inspiring, nearly made me wanna run out and get a job for God. "Uh, Mom, you already have one," Yolie reminded me.

Oh yeah, well now I'm inspired enough to not submit my resignation here, see it to completion, knowing that my golden years will be grandchild oriented, a million percent less responsibility on me, and I can follow after John Jeavons if I get a wild hair. Run off and join the Peace Corps and teach folks in some Spanish-speaking isolated enclave how to grow more food efficiently. Oh, the places I'll go.

Or I'll just stay here and grown a ton or two for my rapidly multiplying, extended family, traveling in December each year, cruises to garden show areas, horticultural adventures, time alone at the beach, or whatever I want to do. Now there's an unexplored concept for a woman who's been a mother her entire life.