Of Broyles and beans

It's business as usual in the Broyles household. All last week a full moon's yellow glow faced me from the west in the morning as I tore down the first descent out of the driveway on Powhatan, and leaves like red, gold, and orange Doritos have been falling from off our Maples. Our nice chain-link fenced in yard works to keep every felled leaf contained inside it so they won't go on and bother any of our neighbors. I'm certain under the wind blown drifts of dried up papery leaves is a veritable parking lot full of Hot Wheels cars stuck poised in the grass below at stark angles wondering if those nice little boys will remember them and come searching for them, or if they'll be forgotten and the unthinkable happen; to be raked up along with the other 3 metric tons of foliage debris to be deposited onto the compost pile or heaped into the back of my old pickup truck through the winter until it's spring again and I take a full load to the county dump, never to be seen or played with again.

Good things still do happen.  Mare and I celebrated our first 10 years of marriage yesterday. The boys helped me make a two layer cake when I arrived home from school. We enjoyed a nice roast supper with potatoes and carrots I started in the crock-pot that morning before leaving for school. I love when I'm hungry to smell that wholesome smell when I walk in the door in the afternoon. It is like fresh baked bread smell when to a hungry person, only beef-roastier. Slather on some of the gravy I make with the drippings and cornstarch, and apply a liberal dousing of Woeber's brand horseradish cream sauce over everything and I don't care what your background is, that's good eating!

The doctor tells Mare though the due date is still a couple weeks away at this point, the newest baby Broyles could come any day, "So be prepared!" Well, we're in the last straightaway of checking things off our lists of "things to get done before newest baby Broyles arrives," but, some things remain to be done. At last check I was responsible for

• raising the crib to maximum height
• removing adhesive residue from nursery walls
• install new Venetian blinds on one window in nursery
• install new decorations on wall in nursery

On both our lists is this big one:

• choose baby name

Jack is attending a preschool three days a week for two and a half hours at a time. He loves it. He went on his first field trip on Tuesday, to the pumpkin patch. The rule their teacher gave them was they could pick out any pumpkin they could carry all by themselves. He found one about as big as him and wrestled it around, but did manage to get it on and off the bus all by himself. Mare found a pattern for cutting out a jack-o-lantern in the likeness of Frosty the snowman, so it was like hitting double paydirt for Jack.

Leo passed a milestone yesterday in that he went all day without having an accident of either kind. He's been successful for a few weeks now about not having the #1 accident; even sleeping through his naps and going out into public with Mare in just his big boy underwear. Then, yesterday he let her know it was time to follow suit with #2. That's a big relief to Mare (and to me, but more for her since she had to directly deal with it firsthand more often) to make progress in that area. It's just in the nick of time for a new one to come into our lives who will genuinely have no control over that. 

Despite eating almost four consecutive suppers of them, we finally had to freeze the remaining approximately five gallons of Biblesta beans we were sent home with from mom and dad and my grandma Bonnie a couple Saturdays ago. Here's a hint: if you have a husband who is afflicted with excessive gas from consuming such food items as things with either salt or pepper or sugar or seasoning, or from water based products like drinking water, ice cubes, tea and coffee; for heaven's sake don't fee him Biblesta beans four consecutive suppers in a row. He may like ham and beans and eat two bowls of them with onions and salt (red flag!) and yellow banana peppers and conrbread, but you, dear devoted wife, will suffer more than anyone else. Except possibly the husband himself while he's at school and holding it in, in front of dozens of impressionable kids just waiting for a slip up of that nature to occur so they can post it all over facebook and humiliate him, earning himself a nickname like "tooty", or "stinky"  for several generations of students yet to come. Get him some Beano!

It's Friday here (and I presume it is where you are as well), so get off the dang computer you geek, and get out there and make some real connections with real people and feel their warmth and smell their flatulence and groom their body hair, or whatever strange custom you all do in your household. But, turn this thing off and check back again at a later date. Chances are I'll not have updated it, because I'm a slacker that way, but you never know. One can always hope.