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Off and on for the last several years, my husband and I have contemplated installing one of those backyard play “systems”. It would replace the plain, wooden swingset that my husband and father-in-law built when my oldest child was a baby. Today, my children are 7 and 5 and the swingset is one of their favorite places. I can’t even begin to count the hours that they have spent there! I enjoy the If You Give A Mouse A Cookie book. Here’s my backyard version…
If you build a backyard swingset, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy and you can hang a toddler swing on it. When that toddler has been hanging on you all day, it will be the perfect place to “hang” him for awhile!
If you build a backyard swingset, there will come a day when you need a 2nd swing – one for the new toddler living at your house and a bigger one for the 1st toddler that used it.
If you build a backyard swingset, you’ll buy new chain when you change to big swings for everyone.
If you build a backyard swingset, it will be the soccer goal, the football goalpost and one of the bases on a baseball diamond. It will be a castle and a pirate ship and a fort and home base for hide-and-seek.
If you build a backyard swingset, you might be tempted to think that you should add other pieces to it. You will shop for climbing walls and slides and picnic tables and sandboxes. Then, you’ll go home to think about it. You might even measure a space and layout a box, but the extras will cost more than you want to spend or the weather will start to turn cold. Then, you’ll decide “just to leave the swingset”.
If you build a backyard swingset, you’ll witness confrontation, teamwork, diplomacy and “state secrets” being compromised, literally, in your own backyard. Your children will use their imaginations in ways you could never plan or predict. They will reluctantly come inside to eat and sleep and they will always wish for longer days and moons that light the night.
If you build a backyard swingset, they will play like everyone should (and many don’t have time for anymore). Best of all, they might never know they don’t have a play “system” to do it on!
originally posted on rplcommunications.blogspot.com on 3/5/2008
My best guess is that there are at least 17 “extra” pill boxes laying around our house. You know, those plastic boxes that are sectioned into days of the week and/or times of the day. There are daily boxes, weekly boxes and monthly boxes. There are boxes for single daily doses and multiple daily doses. There are travel boxes, detachable boxes, box caddies, colored boxes and shaped boxes. Whatever your medicine routine, there is probably a box designed and shaped specifically for it!
My husband, who happens to be a pharmacist, has a number of “regular” pills that he takes. He has morning pills and evening pills and they are not the same. Over time, he has brought home numerous give away boxes from work. As his medication needs have changed, he has also bought some boxes. Ultimately, I think he is hoping to find a box that is marked and sectioned (and probably shaped and colored too) the same way he sees his medicine routine in his head. To that end, he has “re-labeled” a couple of the monthly boxes to fit his routine. Now, about once a month (usually on a Friday or Saturday night), he lays all his pills out on the bed and fills the big box. Don’t tell ME the romance is gone! In truth, I don’t mind. Those pills, literally, keep him alive. I would much rather have him refilling his pillbox on a “date night” than not having him here at all.
For most of my life, I have been fortunate to be healthy enough not to need any regular medicine. Consequently, I am not a pillbox afficianado like my husband. Not yet, anyway. It seems that, in recent months, I have begun to pick up the pace on my pills. With every medical checkup I complete, my medicine is becoming more “regular” – a vitamin here, a prescription there, allergy medicine and pain relievers when the weather changes, and migraine medicine when I don’t catch the allergy headache in time. On any given day, I have 2-4 doses of medicine to take on a schedule.
Here’s what I’ll do…I’ll use a pillbox to keep track of all that. This weekend, it will be MY medicine spread on the bed while I fill one of the pillboxes that wouldn’t work for my husband. All this talk about pillboxes is okay, I guess. I just wish I was discussing a hat instead!
originally posted on rplcommunications.blogspot.com on 3/14/2008
As we walked across the preschool parking lot recently, my daughter pointed out the empty handicapped parking spaces close to the door…
“Mom, you see those blue lines?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“You know what they are?”
“Tell me, ” I said.
“That’s where the Cadillacs park!”
After delivering her to her classroom, I had to call my mom to tell her about my daughter’s observation. After my mother (who drives a Cadillac with a handicapped tag) quit chuckling, she made an announcement…
“I have to go. I’m going to buy a new car!”
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