Thursday

I am decidedly worse for wear this morning. As in- I can barely move and OMG I have five more days before I get a break yikes how on earth am I going to manage...

I took a hot soaky bath last night and ibuprofen before bed... I may need the bottle of advil to get through the day. I am doing some stretches this morning- so once the initial beat to death feeling passes, I will do fine.

Benny put in a couple of online applications yesterday. He doesn't have any 'restrictions' on what hours and days he can/cannot work- but I would sure feel better if someone were home with Dan and Sam every day. Tom and I have that covered except for Thursdays.

Once again, I have to remind myself that they are TWELVE- not 'babies'. I am wondering if two twelve year olds should add up to one twenty-four year old, or divide into four six year olds. Even if we end up with Ben working Thursdays- I don't go in until 10 (9:45). Tom comes home for lunch about noon, for an hour. I can come home for lunch about 2:15. (Stay half an hour). Then Tom gets home at 5:45, me at 7:15. That gives them their longest stretch of time alone at 3 hours. Tom and I are both 8 miles away, though opposite directions.

It is hard not to think of the twins as "little", even though they are close to being taller than I am. I have told about me at their age- I was the oldest of a blended family with 6 kids. At age 11, I was "in charge" from 4:45 in the morning until 6:45 at night, five days a week. Breakfast and supper, getting kids up and ready for school, to school on time, feeding and watering all the animals. Housekeeping, laundry, and homework was in there too. My Dad and (former) step mom worked an hour and a half away. I survived and so did the siblings. (That was only for a year or 18 months or so.)

Obviously, I am bothered by leaving them alone at all, or I wouldn't have to keep telling myself they will be fine. And perhaps Ben will be here Thursdays...

As usual, I start fretting long before I have any cause.

Maybe I worry due to all of the 'close calls' my older kids had while I worked "part time" when they were growing up. Bill Joe messing with the shotgun- shooting a hole in the wall- comes to mind. Not that I learned about it at the time- I didn't learn about this until YEARS later. He was fooling around in my bedroom, accidentally fired the gun and shot a hole in the wall! Chris happened to be on the other side of the wall- an outer wall. The shot missed him, but left a chunk of stucco missing from the outer wall, as well as the hole in the bedroom wall.

What did these two boys do that kept their parental units from finding out about this for YEARS? They cleaned the house spotless. They apologised for the hole in the bedroom wall, where *Bill accidentally hit the wall with the mop handle while cleaning*. That explained the inside... so what about the outside? Like I said, we never knew anything about the incident until years later.
OUTSIDE, the boys used plaster of paris to fill in the hole. They approximated the texture. They then went around the perimeter of the house (which was old and decrepit anyway) and found flaked off bits of stucco. They glued these over the plaster of paris, and then used a waterproof sealant over the whole patch job.

Knowing how smart the twins are, I have no doubt that they could pull off a cover-up if they found it necessary. When they were about two- a bit under- it took them 45 minutes to defeat a new deadbolt that Tom and I had installed during their nap. They worked together to locate the problem (why they could no longer get the door open): Then they had to REACH the problem. Once they found a way to reach the deadbolt- turning it was no big deal. Keeping those two corralled as toddlers was no easy task! Al the chairs and stools had to be put up out of their reach. The trashcans as well. Who would have THOUGHT about pulling the liner from a trashcan, turning the can over, and standing on the bottom to reach forbidden stuff? Daniel and Sam- that's who. They dragged the can to the door, and surrounded it with couch cushions to enable them to get up on the overturned can.

Oops... there are THREE bits of ancient history in the blog today- making it pretty long. Thanks for reading!