Magoo has stepped up her SAVE PETE campaign.  She’s brought in reinforcements.

Magoo’s dressed in a party dress, Emmy has a yellow feather boa, and DustMeister is poised to fight.  This should do the trick, clearly.

Huh?

Knock, knock, anybody in there?

I haven’t actually talked to these kids about what they were trying to accomplish by dressing up and taking pictures with Pete, but seeing as the pictures are on my camera, I’ll take a stab at what I believe transpired:

“Oh, Pete… Petey…  Peter… Petah-mooski,  Petety-Pete-Pete, you handsome devil you.”

“Hush, my widdle Petey-Pie, don’t fret, Magoo is here to save you.”

“No, my darling Pete.  Don’t give up.  Don’t sit there and take it like a plant.  We must fight.  We must never give in.  Look, I’ve put on a skimpy dress and done funny things with my eye makeup for you.  We SHALL NEVER BE DEFEATED.”

“Ah, pardon me, Miss.  Are you aware you are going all Braveheart on a plant?”

“Oh, no, not a plant.  A SOUL.  A living, breathing, thinking being.  Pete has dreams and aspirations.  He hopes to block the entire sidewalk someday.  And, if allowed to live and flourish, perhaps, just perhaps we can be blessed with little Pete-letts in our future.  Oh, if only.”

“Why, Peter, I do believe you are blushing.”

 ”CUT.  Can we do Take Two on this?  Pete CAN NOT keep a straight face.” 

There’s a popular book from a few years ago titled “Who Moved my Cheese.”  It’s a work/life help book dealing with change in the workplace and life, and the best ways of dealing with inevitable change.

Magoo needs to read this book.  She recoils at change.  Particularly if it is a change SweetGuy or I suggest.

The latest object of her do-not-change-a-thing affection is a bush.  Yes, a large plant.  One of literally thousands of such plants we have on our property.  I want it gone.  She has launched a campaign to keep it.  Even going so far as to name said plant PETE in hopes of humanizing it, in hopes of prolonging its life.

Let me introduce you to Pete and show you why we want to kill (politically more correct = remove) it:

That’s Pete there on the right.  (Please ignore the broken hose reel, and subsequent littered hose.)  Can you see why we want to get rid of Pete?  If not, I’ve created a complex graphic to explain the situation better:

It’s obvious now, isn’t it?  Pete is one of those dreaded invaders of personal space.  Pete leaves us approximately 6 inches to walk past him on the sidewalk.  And, even if we try to squeeze past, he always reaches out and touches us.  Pete hasn’t learned proper social graces.  He’s awkward and is only getting worse with age.

After informing Magoo of our plans to remove Pete (he’s also interloping on our gutter, and dryer vent, he MUST go), she set on a course to save Pete from his impending fate.  In Magoo’s feeble desperation to save said plant, she named him.  She named it.  IT IS AN IT, not a him.

She named the little bugger and now everyone knows him… it… as Pete.

Tomorrow, episode II in the ongoing demise saga of Pete the bush.

I thought about Dad all weekend.  I thought about him because he died a year ago today.  I thought about him because his birthday was this week.  I thought about him because Mom and Dad’s anniversary is tomorrow. 

But, those are just dates.

I also thought about him as I McGivered our zero-turn mower yesterday.  It’s not suppose pull attachments behind it, but I needed it to.  So after a quick trip to the hardware store, I made it happen.  This is so something Dad would have done.  And, something I would have talked to him about after I did it.

I thought about him because I was on the mower for the first time this year.  Dad loved to mow, and he especially loved the zero-turn mower.  So much so, in fact, that he mowed FavoriteChild’s yard for him.  He never did that for me.  See why I call him favorite child?

I thought about him because SweetGuy and I spent large parts of the weekend trimming trees for the express purpose of making our mowing easier.  Dad was always working to make his mowing easier.  I teased him about it often, and here I am doing the same thing.

Simple things I’m sorry I can’t talk to him about.  It made me sad.  Knowing that Mom is driving back the long trek from Florida by herself made me sad.  It’s OK to be sad.

I thought about him one more time.  When we trim trees, we aren’t talking lopping off a few small branches.  We are basically sawing off limbs the size of small trees.  Once we cut the limb, we drag it to the burn pile with our tractor.  I was dragging one of these trees behind me.  I was perched in the seat of the John Deere with the cruise control on.  (Yes, it has cruise control!)  I was swiveled around concentrating on the monstrosity I was dragging, making sure I didn’t lose it, and making sure it wasn’t going to hit anything on either side of me. 

In my concentration on what was behind me, I very nearly slammed into a tree directly in front of me.

It’s OK to look back.  But, we also can’t forget to focus on what’s ahead.  There’s a lot of mowing to be done.

Could it actually be Spring?  We have somewhere around 750 trees on our land.  (Yes, I’ve counted, what of it?)  A single tree, a plum, is always the very first to bloom, signaling my official start of Spring.  

Hello, Spring, welcome back.

It’s about dad-gummed time.

Magoo’s always been an excellent student.  But, she doesn’t necessarily always attack her school work with enthusiasm.  It’s a bit ironic, because SweetGuy and I very rarely push her, and she always gets it done, but she tends to argue within herself about tackling the work.

She’ll pass on doing something more fun because she “has to do homework” then pull out the work and sit there glassy eyed doing nothing.  A few minutes later, she’ll shake herself out of her funk and start to do her homework.  Then, a few moments after that, she’ll slump over to the side and take a nap.  There’s a battle raging inside that head, but nap almost always claims victory.

I saw a rare site a few weeks ago.  Magoo discovered a project that kept her excited and enthused for hours.  A project that even included an element that normally paralyzes her — artwork.  She giddily began the project in the morning, and worked on it for hours, even taking it with her when we had to run an errand so she wouldn’t lose her momentum.  It was impressive.

Well, until you realize what she was so excited about:

A paper chain.  Each link decorated and representing one school day left in her high school career.  There are thirty plus links, all with different decorations and color.  The artistry is astounding.  The chain now proudly hangs above our kitchen table and Magoo joyously removes a link at the end of each school day.  She’s down to 23.

I could get a bit melencholy about how sad it is to see the visual representation of the shortening of the chain bit by obvious bit every day.  And, how it signifies a huge, and for SweetGuy and I, a bittersweet change.  But, I’ll save that for another day. 

For now, I will just applaud Magoo for her perseverence, ingenuity, and artistic ability.  It is obvious to everyone that this chain is something special!!

We bought a $4.99 PAAS Easter Egg Decorating kit and had hours of enjoyment.  Take that, recession!

Specifically, we decorated eggs because this one CLAIMED she has “Never in all my life!!!” decorated eggs:

Poor, poor deprived Emmy.  Actually, poor Singing Sally, who I am POSITIVE helped her kids decorate eggs once upon a time.  Oh, why do we Mom’s bother? 

I boiled 3 dozen Easter eggs and we set out decorating.  By the way, did you know you can mess up boiling eggs?  I, apparently, did not know this.  I did something wrong, because the eggs do not peel well at all.  I might be a worse mother than Singing Sally.  Just maybe.

Even Bud and SweetGuy joined in the fun.  They did have to put their manly spin on the eggs.  Bud was most proud of his egg that he decorated with fake cracks.  Yes, it did look just like a cracked egg.  Oh, the artistry.  And SweetGuy decided to make a Rambo egg.  Here he is showing off and impersonating his creation.  This is either very funny, or creepy.  You decide:

Shocking resemblence, eh?

So, to wrap it up, here are the things we learned from this eggsperience:

Emmy has no memory.

Do not color eggs with the White Rose.  She will put your eggs to shame.  Mine are still hiding in the corner because they look so bad.

Bud creates violence themed eggs. 

SweetGuy looks a lot like a violence themed egg.

According to the message on one of Magoo’s eggs, Magoo ***giant blob of glue and glitter****’s Da Kaff.  For shame.

It is absolutely imperitive that we do this every year.  This was even more fun than I remember.

Do you remember The White Rose? 

To our complete delight, she was able to visit us for a few days this past week.  We haven’t seen her since last summer and it was WAY overdue.  She and her family have lived in Texas for like four or five years now and we still miss them and resent them leaving us.  I just don’t get why they’d want to live in Texas when they could enjoy loveliness similar to this Illinois Winter that has lasted for the last 47 months:

Senseless, really.  But, I digress.

The White Rose was here.  And it was good.

We all reveled in being around her.  Easter services, egg hunts, Rock Band, dEGGorating eggs, coffee shops, and much more were crammed into a few all too short days.  She was a people magnet.  Everyone congregated at our house to spend some time with The White Rose.  Bud expressly came home from school to see his cousin. 

It’s an interesting era in these kids’ lives.  They are adult — she flew from Texas completely on her own — yet still young enough to be tied very closely to their families.  Will that all change in the next few years?  College is here, or on the horizon for most of the cousins, and soon after they will be writing their own grown up stories with jobs, and families, and far off places.  I still cherish every moment we have together, and every moment my children have with their cousins.  We look particularly forward to a Christmas in July with the whole Texas clan!

Oh, and I’m going to put her and Magoo in charge of all baking from now on.  She and Magoo made a shweeet cake!

Thanks for brightening our home, girl!!!