Confessions of a Three-Year-Old

After a long sebatical, Confessions of a Three-Year-Old is back this week. We begin with a bit of my own advice making its way back to me.



Kaydn Rye has a habit of becoming overwhelmed, frustrated and angry when he isn't able to complete a task the way he envisioned or when circumstances just don't go his way. He starts freaking out, stomping around, and then he goes off and hides his face in his blanket.

Who wouldn't want to stomp around and then hide under a blanket?

Well, I have begun to start off each day discussing how we will take a deep breath and talk about how we feel when we begin to feel frustrated or angry. And we include a prayer for patience in our mid-afternoon prayer time before naptime.

He's making some progress, but some days I feel like locking him in his room for the entire afternoon. But of course, his door doesn't lock, so there goes that plan.

Anyway, just the other day hubby and I were in the middle of a shouting match over something, who knows, and Kaydn Rye came up to me, put his hand on my leg and said, "Just take a deep breath mom." Apparently I also need some help in the anger management department.

I think it was probably later on that same evening, about an hour after his bed time, that I heard what sounded like a herd of elephants running around in his room. I went up there to see what in the world was going on and and I walked in to find him on his scooter, in the dark, riding around. I asked him what in the world he was doing riding his scooter around in the dark when he should have had his little butt in bed an hour ago.

He replied with this: "Well mom, I needed you to come up here and bring my blanky upstairs for me."

"So you started riding your scooter around so I would hear you and come upstairs?"

"Yep."

And he was right. As long as I was making the trip upstairs, I had a hair clip in tow, a rogue sock, a few little toy horses I had found downstairs that somehow were left out of the before bed toy pickup and of course, his blanky that I had found on the floor of the sunroom.

So, he accomplished his mission I guess.

Speaking of cleaning up, apparently one of the things Kaydn Rye loves about me most is that I clean. On Friday night I actually stayed home from a few things I was supposed to go to that night just to clean. As you may know, cleaning is one of the things I do best, but March was definitely not one of my cleanest months. With the flu and work and life and Kaydn Rye's birthday party which resulted in flalling children demolishing my home, it was a little hairy around here for awhile. Literally. Like have you ever seen that movie Cloverfield where the military guy tells the kids in the movie that in the military's quest to gun down the evil monster, they are about to declare the Hammer Down protocol on Manhattan, letting the entire area go. Well, that's kind of what happened here. I had completely given up on the bedrooms, the dining room and the upstairs bathroom. So I spent every evening last week cleaning like a banshee until everything was in its usual order.

And on Friday night, just before Kaydn Rye went to bed he said to me, "Thanks for cleaning the bathroom. Very nicely done."



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Flooding and Blizzarding and Explosives, Oh My...

Uffda, we've got some weather going on here in the middle of nowhere this week. We've got massive flooding, thunderstorms and a massive blizzard that just let up. The other day it was actually thundering while it snowed.

I think I need to go back to Memphis. I don't know, it's a toss up, drowning in massive flood waters, freezing to death in 50 below zero windchills here in the middle of nowhere or getting gunned down and pillaged in the streets of Memphis. I don't know, it's a toss-up.

The craziest part of this whole thing is that for the last couple of years there has been absolutely no moisture here. Last year, the summer right after we moved back here to NoDak, we went and camped out at the lake we used to go to with my grandparents when I was little, and there was a road leading to a beach where the beach used to be. In the ten years I was away, the lake had become a pond. And now, there's water everywhere.

Apparently in South Dakota they are evacuating as well because of floods. We lived in SD for a little more than a year while I wrote for the Pierre Capital Journal, and I remember covering a meeting with the United States Sec. of Agriculture and the governor because they were trying to get SD declared a disaster area because of drought. What in the world?

And just last year we lived in Minot, which will most likely see some days of massive flooding when all this record snowfall melts around here. Until September, when we purchased our house here in Kenmare, 55 miles from Minot, we lived in one of the lowest valleys in Minot with the river almost in our backyard. And with the massive winds in ND, I am definitely a valley dweller. You'd come out of the neighborhood in the real world though, and man the wind would about blow you over on the sidewalk.

Anyway, I remember when we were considering buying the house we were living in and my grandpa would always tell us, "Nope, don't wanna buy that house. You'll be flooded out." I kept saying, there's like an inch of water in that river right now, do you know how much moisture it would require for it to reach flood stage???

Apparently living in NoDak for almost 90 years has taught him a few things about how you can go from drought to flood in a matter of a year.

Well, we took his advice and purchased a house on the highest hill in Kenmare. So no worries for us, but I'm sure whoever lives in our old house has cleared out their entire basement by now.

The problem with flooding in NoDak is that while your home is being flooded, you'll probably end up freezing in a blizzard on the street. No where else does it flood and blizzard at the same time.



And no where else do you need to use explosives to clear ice jams in the river to get the water flowing again.



Amber over at Squash Cakes can better tell ya about the flooding I'm sure, because she actually lives in Bismarck, so pray that she's alright. And she just lost her little Goby, her hedgehog, so I feel for her.

Well, I guess I'll end this very uplifting post with a little clip of a lady from FOX News reporting on the blizzard and the flooding in Fargo while standing on snow covered sandbags.



Seriously, I thought this morning that I should drive the six hours to Fargo and help out the sandbagging effort, but uffda, the roads all the way there are either water covered or ice and snow covered! Uffda. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Keep everyone in your prayers.



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Everyone's Doing It...

I just heard about the start of 5 Minute For Mom's Ultimate Blog Party and thought I'd join the fun. Ah, the memories of last year's Ultimate Blog Party have come streaming back to me. Last year at this time I had just started my blog and was maybe posting about once a week. I seriously didn't know what in the heck I was doing. I was like, "What in the heck is a Mr. Linky? And what in the heck is a sticky post?" I only just recently found out what that was. So, needless to say, I was a rookie.

So for those of you just visiting from the blog party, I'll give you just a little sampling of the wonderfulness you'll find here at FromADesperateHousewife.

You'll find me, a very non-happy-go-lucky compulsively afraid of toilet germs mother of one little 4-year-old OCD child whose has an obsession with lining things up in rows. Seriously, we go into the toy store, and in about five minutes you'll find rows upon rows of toy cars in the aisle. It's kind of like in that movie The Sixth Sense when the mother turns around and all the cupboard doors are opened.

And then there's also hubby. He is definitely NOT obsessive about anything. He keeps the house just dirty enough so that our obsessive germ killing does not lead to a super germ-virus strain.

He goes off to work everyday and I stay here, working my investigations business and writing for the Jury Verdict Review and Analysis from my home office. I know, exciting stuff. (Please humor me here.) Kaydn Rye and I manage to work in some home pre-school lessons here and there in preparation for when we reach the "big time" with homeschooling and for when my life will probably pretty much revolve around, you guessed it, homeschool.

We all just moved back to my tiny little hometown in the middle of nowhere North Dakota after living in South Dakota where I began my journalism career as a government/politcal writer at a small newspaper. (I know, exciting stuff, right?)

Before that, we lived in the absolute wonderfulness of the Mid-South - Memphis. Umm, I can just smell the 80 degree, 100 percent humidity air they're probably loving right now. Me, I now live in a place where you have to wear a space suit half the year just to walk out the door. But I'm not bitter about that or anything. Dude, as far as I see it, if you can't wear flip flops year round, you may as well be in prison.

And of course, we are Jesus-seekers who celebrate the Feasts of the Bible, you know, like Passover, Feast of Tabernacles.

NOW FOR THE GIVEAWAY.......

So anyway, that about wraps us up right there. Oh, and just for stopping by my little blog, make sure you enter yourself into my wonderful little giveaway brought to you by C28.com.

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That's it. Happy Blog Partying.....






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It's Either Us or Them.....

So I have a little problem, and to rectify the problem, someone will die. That someone being a cat. See, when we moved to our little town, who knew that we'd find a cat population that is roughly double the human population.

And you know, I love cats just as much as the next guy, I do. I really do. And heck, my hubby calls me Miss Humane Society. (Is there such a thing??)

Hmm...



Seriously though, I am Miss Humane Society. I am a lover of all creatures great and small. I break for salamanders for pete's sake.

So, I am not a killer of animals.

Unless they poop, pee, puke on or wreck my stuff.

Like when we first moved in, we just so happened to have purchased a house from one those people you see on Animal Planet, you know, the cat horders. Oh, and they just happened to have moved next door. When we moved in and pretty much every week since, I have scrubbed the entire house from floor to ceiling getting rid of an cat residue. Thank you to G-d that we don't have carpeted floors or we'd probably be walking on plywood right now.

So, the cats sit on my porch day and night looking in the windows wondering, "Who in the heck are you people are where are my people?"

But I was fine and dandy with living in a house surrounded by a million and two cats just planning for the day they'll organize a coup, attack and take over.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures
(I'm not falling for it.)

That is, until they started sharpening their claws on the window screens and peeing on absolutely every square inch of the outside of the house.

That's when the war began.

We had a similar situation, oh about five years ago. I was about six months pregnant and living in our brand new house in a subdivision built in the middle of a bean field in Mississippi. Everyone forgot to mention that mice can apparently come into the house through the little holes in between the brick exterior.

Yeah, we missed that part.

The problem began with one tiny little mouse. I went out, bought a nice little humane mouse motel and was prepared to free my little friend into the wild vastness of the field behind our house.

That was exactly how it all went down, until a few days later when I'm pretty sure I saw the exact same mouse scurry across the kitchen floor. I saw him and thought, "What in the heck is that mouse doing back in my kitchen?????????????"

So, I again purchased a wonderful little mouse motel and set him free to enjoy the wonderfulness of the vast outdoors.

All was good, until a few days later when another mouse emerged. And another. And another. By this time I was getting pretty darn angry. So I went out and bought a real mouse trap. I was out for blood this time. I didn't really want to buy a snap trap as Gertie, the dog, would almost for sure get some part of her body snapped in the mouse trap. So I bought some sticky traps.

Of course the inevitable happened and the dog got her back paw stuck on the trap. And by this time the mice were so wonderfully settled into our house that they could be found pretty much scampering across my feet in the kitchen. And by this time, there were so many mouse droppings behind the stove, the washer and dryer, even the entertainment center, that I was performing daily deep cleanings of the entire house, top to bottom, in my pregnant-ness. Not a good situation.

And I was getting really, really, really, really mad. Somebody was going to pay and they were going to pay with blood.

My vengeance came soon enough. The next mouse I found in the sticky trap had only one foot on the trap. And I was not letting this one go.

So in all my pregnant-ness I proceeded out to the field with the mouse, the trap and a hammer in tow. I beat that mouse with the hammer until there was nothing left of it.

I beat every single mouse I found still alive on the sticky trap with a hammer until I found no more. And until the exterminator finally revealed the secret to the weep holes in the brick. That was a nice little tidbit.

So, long story short, I am a lover of all animals. Really, I am. But once pee, poop or any other bodily function becomes involved, I get my hammer.

We are losing the battle with the cats though. Hubby has now resorted to shooting at them until we can find a good trap. The score is currently 142-1 in favor of the cats. The one being the cat my hubby shot in the leg the other day as it proceeded to pee on the porch railing.

Seriously, this is life or death around here. Kaydn Rye and I have had some serious sinus problem since we moved in, and his pediatrician thinks it could be an allergy to the cats. It's either us or them. And Gertie isn't really a whole lot of help. Sure, she'll sit in the sunroom just waiting to bark at the next cat she spots, but by now they all realize she's just a figure head. She's like the Queen of England.



I am the Prime Minister and she's the queen. Which means that I am in charge of national security.




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