Living rural

Most of the population of Utah lives in three or four counties clustered around Salt Lake City. There are 29 counties in Utah (I know a song that names them all! Beaver, Carbon, Davis, Morgan...) and my county is home to just under 1/100th of the population of Utah. 24,000 people total in the county.

This is obviously a benefit for us. There's lots of open space, lots of undeveloped land; mountains and nature and trails and nobody-owns-this surrounds us. Land is cheaper here – which is why we're here. We wanted at least an acre and a house that would fit a large family, and we couldn't afford to buy it in the more populous counties with the conveniences and amenities.

Are there downsides? Yes. Only one violin teacher in the entire county, for instance. Only jazz dance (really a kind of pre-cheerleading) is taught here. Signing up the kids for city league soccer or baseball means you're driving between eight different towns, because each town only has enough for one or maybe two teams.

But still, we love it. Our neighbors are übergreat. We're happy with our house and yard, with the wide blue sky, with the quiet and lack of pollution.

But if there's anything that's going to drive me out of Sanpete County, or indeed out of Utah, it's the near-constant drought conditions. However beautiful it may be to see a brilliantly blue, cloudless sky every day, it ain't good for the lawn. I am so tired of water rationing and setting my entire schedule around when I can and can't use the irrigation water! I'm tied to the yard every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening, dragging hoses, hooking up sprinklers, fine-tuning spray patterns, trying to rectify this or that brown spot. The green lawn is worth it (or I wouldn't do it), but after several weeks of gorgeously clear weather I can't help but wish for a rainstorm. If only!

We've had way-below-average snowpack for more than a decade now, and this state has never been one much for summer rainfall. I know our reservoir is at only 40% of capacity, so I'm just hoping I'll be able to water the garden this year, and that all the grass won't die. *sigh* Because it would be prohibitively expensive to reseed an acre of grass.

Perspectives

Last Friday at this time we were just pulling into our driveway, heaving a sigh of relief after having performed three plays we'd been rehearsing with a group of homeschoolers for about ten weeks. We had so much fun, and saw some unexpectedly delightful performances from many of the children, especially our own. :)

One of the plays was called "No Room for a Sneeze," based on a folk tale you've probably all heard. In this version a man, his wife, and their seven children live in a too-small house, filled with noise, commotion, clutter, and din. The father laments, "There's no room even for a sneeze!" They consult a sage to see what is to be done, and over the course of the play the sage advises them to take their smaller farm animals in the house to live with them, then the large ones, and finally a beggar from town. It's noisy, it's smelly, and the beggar eats all their food and sleeps in their bed.

Finally the sage tells them to send the beggar away, and the animals back out into the barn. When they've cleaned up the house – the very same house that was too small at the beginning of the play – they find it "so quiet, so roomy, so comfortable."

That was me, yesterday. I did some Relief Society service in the home of a neighbor – inactive, someone I've never met – and the home was in such bad repair and nothing was organized or even clean. When I got home I walked around my own and suddenly all the things I have always found unbearable or embarrassing were no big deal. The vinyl flooring in our bathroom has a hole. So what? We see the hole, but I bet you wouldn't, if you came to visit us. And despite the hole the floor is clean. Some rooms may need painting, but the walls are whole and straight and ready for paint. The sewing room is the catch-all room and filled with clutter, and how wonderful it is that we have an entire room, small as it may be, that we have the luxury to clutter up and not worry about!

As I mowed the lawn outside, too, instead of seeing all the unplanted flowerbeds and the vegetable patch which is only weeds, I saw a large expanse of lawn which really looks pretty presentable. No junky cars up on blocks, no piles of trash, no unlandscaped patches. And I continued, for two days running now, to realize how wonderful my little piece of real estate is. :)

Little stinker!!

I wrote almost three months ago about Macklin: "He is in a stage that is at once difficult and adorable: half the time he's getting into mischief...the other half he's smiling sweetly, laughing, wrinkling his nose, and otherwise charming us so completely that the first half doesn't matter."

Yeah, well, the adorable has diminished to the point that the first half matters. I'm not saying he's not cute still, heaven knows he's just about the cutest thing on two legs. He still melts me with a smile, he still is one of the seven wonderful sunshines of my life. But hoo, his mischief has escalated to the point that I'm quite tempted to build a little cage and let him live in it for the next few months until he grows out of this. Supposing he does grow out of it *prays*. The only time I can breathe easy and assume nothing is being broken and/or he isn't in danger of imminent death is when he's asleep.

Things he does with regularity:

• climbs anything and everything – beds, chairs, tables, wood-burning stoves, the piano, bookcases, toilets, stairs...
  
• gets stuck at the top of things he climbs; often he can't get down, sometimes he can't even turn around, all he can do is cling and call us.
  
• stands across the room and shows me that there's something in his mouth that could choke him, and then runs gleefully away.
  
• runs with sticks and pointy things in his hands, an uncoordinated about-to-fall toddler run.
  
• climbs onto my computer desk and gets my scissors.
  
• climbs onto my computer desk and plays with my computer.
  
• climbs onto my computer desk, gets my USB wireless keyboard, sneaks under a table, and pushes buttons. Once he literally opened every document in my documents folder and every application in my applications folder at once.
  
• plays with the toilet plunger, it's one of his favorites.
  
• swishes __________ (everything) in the toilet if the bathroom door isn't tightly latched.
  
• smears lotion everywhere if he can get his hands on it.
  
• empties my wallet or hides my keys if I mistakenly leave my purse where he can reach it.
  
• rips the earpieces (is that what we call the folding arms?) right off my sunglasses if I leave the purse down.
  
• removes the registers from the in-floor heat vents, and fills them with crayons, colored pencils, Legos, anything else precious, and his own little lower body.
  
• empties out the kids' school "lockers" (cupboard with shelves full of art projects and what not), breaks pencils, loses erasers, draws on himself and walls with pens.
  
• drags chairs anywhere he needs to in order to be able to reach/climb higher.
• though I have the kitchen gated (otherwise he'll unload every pot, every pan, every leftover container, every can of food from cupboards...) he has discovered that one of the cupboards has a door from the outside which goes all the way through to the inside, so he gets in whenever I'm not there. Likes playing with my pyrex baking dishes best. Glass. Clinking, stacking, potentially breaking. Joy.

On the other hand, because you know there is one, he:

• gives me tight hugs now, and about half the time will give me kisses for the asking. Sometimes he even leans over during a meal (with food face, yes) or stops nursing or toddles over during play making smacky noises, and asks me for a kiss.
  
• brings me a diaper and the wipes when I ask him to go get a diaper.
  
• says "Dipe dipe!" for diaper (and other words, but that's the most recent).
  
• moves his lips to lip-sync along with the kiddles when they're doing one of their elaborate song and dance routines.
  
• knows when I'm eating one of my secret stash of mint chips, and comes running, imploring me with a cute little open hand.
  
• loves to ride on Christian's shoulders, loves to snuggle Christian when he wakes up.
  
• lifts little two-pound weights when I'm doing strength training.
  
• hangs on the kitchen counter and swings, like Ethan.
  
• drags a chair to the light switch, and then laughs sweetly while he turns it on and off, on and off.
  
• eats like he's got a hollow leg, more than Kyrie sometimes.

Remove your hands from my person, if you please.

In fact, remove your person from my person.

I've always been mildly hands offish, with a large personal-space bubble. I don't like sitting so close beside friends that our thighs or arms touch, I don't use the shared armrest at a movie theater, I have many good friends I have never hugged, I don't stand close to people when I'm talking.

Blaine is the exception to all of this, of course; I sit so close to him as to practically be on top of, I hold his hand while walking, I hug frequently, etc. And yet, there is still too much distance and too little contact for his own personal tastes much of the time.

Back to our story: I love my children, I dote on my babies. But will you please all get off my lap?! I just want 30 minutes of not being touched, sat upon, or felt up. (Macklin, whom I am trying desperately to wean, frequently squishes his favorite part of my anatomy.) As soon as I put Macklin down, Kyrie climbs up. As soon as I put Kyrie down, Macklin says "Nnn! Nnn!" and raises his tiny arms with the cutely dimpled elbows, wiggling his fingers. As soon as I put Macklin back down Kyrie's back up. And if by chance I get away from those two sweethearts, Ethan or Libby is ready for a cuddle. And Jackson loves to stand beside me here in my computer chair and wrap his little arms around my right one, curtailing my range of motion almost entirely.

I love them all, and I adore the little shows of affection. But today I'd just like a couple of isolated moments, not being touched, grabbed, pushed, pinched, petted, pawed, squished, or sandwiched. Just a couple.

Of course if I ever chance to get away – for a jog, say, a solo grocery shopping trip, or even if Blaine takes all the kiddles somewhere and leaves me alone for a couple of hours – I'm ready for all the cuddles they'll give me as soon as we're reunited. So! I guess I need to get away for a bit!

Any volunteers to watch the kiddles while I go off alone? ;)

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