It may sound very odd, but I have a hard time telling people I know about this blog. For the first few weeks, I told only Theodore. After a while, I told my mom, my sisters, my nieces, and my best friend. And that’s about it.

A lot of it has to do with how old this blog is. Four years ago, people often didn’t know what a blog was, and by the time you were finished explaining it all you were so embarrassed you were very close to bursting into flames. Or perhaps that’s just me.

Gradually, more and more people found out. Theodore tells people all the time. ALL the time. If he tells someone about the blog in my presence, I still collapse in a heap of embarrassment, but it hasn’t stopped him. But I have largely gotten over it.

I have never told any of my co-workers. At first it was intentional, then I just didn’t think about it, then it got to where so much time has passed that it feels ridiculous to bring it up now. So I’ve never mentioned it.

So yesterday I went to work and told my friends there that I had been painting, and one co-worker said something about the pretty color of lavender I had picked for my daughter’s room. I thought it was odd. How did she know that my daughter’s room was lavender? And how on earth could she know if it was pretty or not? For a panicked moment I thought everyone at work had been lurking on the blog and not telling me. Because I certainly don’t mind if they are reading, but if they haven’t mentioned it that could mean that they think it’s silly and they don’t want to hurt my feelings. Because I’m paranoid like that.

When I asked how she had known I had painted the room lavender, she pointed to my arm. I have lavender paint all over me.

And blue paint. And white paint.

I am a walking paint sample.

When I ran out of paint on Saturday, Theodore helpfully suggested that if I had not gotten so much paint on myself, perhaps I would have had enough for the walls. Those are brave words from a man who had just returned from playing golf. If Theodore wasn’t so exceptionally easy on the eyes, I might have gotten upset.

After he seeing the white streaks in my hair on Monday night and suggesting that he didn’t know if he could walk into Ruby Tuesday’s with me, I was too tired to care. And since my kids had been throwing the term “Bride of Frankenstein” around all afternoon, the sting was largely gone.

But it did come in handy. When my best friend and her daughter came into my work yesterday, the explaining of the paint colors was much simplified. Camellia’s room? This paint on my arm. The trim? The white streaks in my hair. I still have plenty of blue paint on my legs, but I would have had to lift up my pant leg and I was afraid that would appear unprofessional. Not that I have any hope of preserving my dignity with a friend who has seen the state of my laundry room, but there were other people around, so I didn’t.

I’m very discreet that way. I just come home and write about it on the Internet.

You don’t need to point out the irony in that.

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Since inquiring minds want to know, yes, I did go get more paint. I went and got a whole gallon, since I realized halfway through that I was really cutting it close, and therefore tried to stretch it out. In other words, the whole room needs another coat.

I painted the boys’ room yesterday. It’s now a lovely shade of blue. Close inspection of the ceiling confirmed that a) we got a new roof just in the nick of time and b) it needed painted badly. So I did that too. And the trim. All in one day. If I could lift my arms I would give you a high five.

I would rather do about anything else than decorate, something the state of my house attests to every day. I have painted the living room, and there’s the wallpaper in the kitchen that I hung nine years ago. (I do not recommend hanging wallpaper six weeks after a c-section — just sayin’.) And that’s about it.

Here’s an old picture of my kitchen wallpaper:

I have adored my kitchen wallpaper since that first sighting in the wallpaper aisle at Lowes. I’ve always loved the Waverly-esque-ness of it. But it’s old and tired, and falling off the walls. It’s stained from baby food. Early in its tenure it had a bad run-in with a two-year-old on one corner. I’ve known for a while it’s probably time for it to retire.

When I saw this picture, I knew I had found my new kitchen color. But before I could even think about painting the kitchen, I had to follow through on my verbal commitment to paint the kids’ rooms.

And here we are. But we are so past due on painting, painting the kids’ rooms makes the footprints up the hallway walls more noticeable (my kids literally climb the walls). And then there’s my room and the family room. It never ends.

And the ceilings. I had never painted a ceiling before yesterday. It’s hard, and the thought of doing it again makes me feel a little weepy. But I will persevere. It’s all for the sake of good decorating.

I can’t believe I just typed that. That may be the paint fumes talking.

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Last night Theodore’s brother and his wife came to stay with us. My sister-in-law and I started discussing home projects, and I pulled out the color samples that I got, oh, six months or so ago. She helped me pick out a color for Camellia’s room.

And somehow, in the middle of Samuel’s T-ball game, I decided that I was going to paint that room today.

This is not me. Before I do a project I have to think for a while. Then I have to check out a dozen books at the library, call my mom, call a sister, call a friend, discuss it with a group of friends, then act. Today I just decided to go get some paint and…paint. And while I have been talking about painting this room for a while, I didn’t check out a single book from the library.

In the past I have bought paint from one of those large home improvement superstores. But the last time I was there I had a very hard time getting any sort of service since the college guys behind the counter where enthralled by the problem of the two sorority girls who were trying to determine the best sort of paint to paint a clear shower curtain. Somehow getting paint for my living room wasn’t as interesting.

I decided to instead take my business to a local paint store. I told the man the size of the room. He told me how much paint I needed and the best kind to buy. He mixed the paint and CARRIED EVERYTHING TO MY CAR. It was a delight.

Until this:

I am out of paint. Out. I have scraped the sides of the can. I have pressed harder on the roller. There is no more paint. I estimate that I need about two cups of paint to finish the job.

Sigh.

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A couple of weeks ago, I followed a link to Bring The Rain. It’s the blog of a woman named Angie who carried and birthed a child knowing that it would die within a few hours.

Now, it seems, the same family has been struck with another tragedy. Angie’s five-month-old nephew died of SIDS last week.

Here are some of her reflections after her nephew’s death:

God Himself chose this to happen. Trust me, that is not the easiest sentence I have ever written, because I am human, and I am a grieving mother. I know that none of this is a surprise to Him. That doesn’t mean we don’t feel every bit of the loss, or that we just go about our lives because it’s all okay now. It just means that we are steady in the belief that God knows what we don’t, and none of this changes Who He is. None of it.

I am sure that people who do not trust in the Lord will be tempted to ask why such a great God would let us suffer so much. I am not going to pretend that I don’t ask that myself sometimes, but I will tell you this, and it has made all the difference.

I ask Him.

I don’t let myself “reason” through it, because I can’t. I don’t let my anger fester too long, or I will, in my own weakness, crumble into nothingness. I just cry out to Him and tell Him that I don’t understand, that I am angry, that I want answers. I want to know why. And He gives me momentary peace, and reminds me of the two words that drift around us we mourn.

We do.

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Any time I have visited the south in the summer, someone will inevitably ask me what I think of the heat. The assumption is that since I live in Missouri, I have never experienced truly hot weather.

And though they were all lovely people who were just trying to make conversation, one or two of them have been truly disappointed to learn that the southern states do not have the market cornered on heat and humidity.

Today is going to see high temperatures in the nineties. The humidity is 72 percent right now. That my friends, is hot. And yes, the southern states do experience hot weather for longer than we do here, and perhaps their temperatures are a bit higher, I challenge anyone to try and convince me that a heat index of 96 is not hot.

It’s the kind of hot, for example, that may induce a mother to throw herself down in the dust in the midst of her son’s T-ball game and weep. That kind of hot.

I don’t like summer. People often seemed shocked when I say this, particularly when I say this in the middle of winter, but I don’t like summer. This is a big part of why I don’t like summer: it’s too hot.

And why they will agree on the heat (especially on days like to day), they will still argue. “But there is so much more to do in the summer! And you can stay outside!”

Outside? Where the heat is? Where there’s poison ivy, mosquitoes, bees, wasps, and allergens? Yeah. Can’t wait.

But there are two big bright spots this summer, and since I don’t like to complain all the time, I’ll share them.

In summer, kids like to go swimming. That sounds fun, but when you have three kids in five years, here’s what swimming entails: getting three kids in swimming suits, slathering three kids with sunscreen, packing a bag, going to the pool, sweltering in the heat, take three kids back and forth for bathroom breaks and/or diaper changes, comforting the child who immediately wants to go home as soon as you get there, buying over-priced junk food, dragging everyone home, comforting the child who wanted to stay (who may or may not be the same child who previously wanted to go home), bathing everyone, and collapsing only to realize it’s time to cook supper.

Yee-haw.

The alternate is letting them play in the hose. It saves a couple of steps, but after three kids have played in the hose the kitchen looks as if someone took a bail of hay and spread it all over the floor.

But this year we have turned a corner. I have graduated. I am no longer the mother shuttling back and forth from the baby pool to the big pool and chasing toddlers. I am now one of the mothers sitting poolside on a lounge chair opening one eye long enough to count heads. And though when I was a young mother in my twenties I thought of those women in the lounge chairs as perhaps a bit long in the tooth, I’m exhausted now and I no longer care.

The hose has gotten easier, too. My children can now remember to rinse their feet off before they walk inside. The little bit that was tracked in was swept up by my dear daughter without me having to ask her.

I still think it’s too hot, but I just might survive.

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