The past that paved the way.....

I am not exactly spring cleaning but obsessing over a bench that I absolutely love that is broken for the last time. It's black with beadboard  and hooks for coats, I remember thinking that maybes life will change when I was putting it together in my new house way back then. I opened it up to remove the contents before I broke it down and started taking everything out. Apartment living, back here again. I take all the paper Halloween lanterns and orange lights and stack them as I wonder why I let a red Target clearance tag convince me to buy the very hideous very unused party napkins I am looking at. As I go to pull them out I see them..... My past, hanging out together. One is a picture of my first husband and I at our wedding when I was just 17. It is about an 8x10 piece of wood painted black with alabaster on each of the corners. We had the picture made in Korea where I explored a new life for six months right after we got married.

Right on top and off to one side was the custom bouquet of flowers my daughter and I had made for my second husbands funeral. Dried blue roses with a fat silk black bow wrapped around it. It felt weird as those two worlds and very different lives of mine collided in one broke down bench seat. I wondered where I would be right now if my first husband didn't die in a head on collision. Would I forever tried to please him and never come to know who I really was ? Hard to say as I was only 24 when he died. And what about my second husband, would I have went another 15 years being a sympathetic punching bag hearing I am sorry for the rest of my life? He committed suicide when I was 39. I am now 43, in an apartment living with the two youngest boys left of my four kids cleaning past midnight. I can't help but wonder if it was all to bring me to where I am at this very moment in my life. It's hard to know what to do, do we toss out the past like yesterday's paper? Me, well I hope my truly wonderful boyfriend does not get offended, but I will keep them. They are not "baggage" as some people think. They are there so that I can always remember to be thankful for the life I have now. It is not perfect but it is the best it has ever been. I'm exhausted with work In 7 hours. Goodnight.

The morning stars off with my cell phone alarm going off with the most obnoxious sound of a dog barking. A ring tone i put on to scare myself awake every morning that does work ...after about ten snoozes. I wake my oldest of three sons and jump in the shower just to find out that my son is still asleep. You know that minute where you just want to freak out but you just don't have the time? lol yep that is what happened. I wake him up again and his two brothers and I'm off to get ready. As i think that everything is running smoothly and i run to the room with one boot on looking for the other one that my "Apple Head Chihuahua" (another story for tomorrow)has surely drug off to nowhere land, i see that none of my sons are ready! With -4 minutes and counting my middle son yells that he cant go to school because he cannot find his socks!

Now my sons for some reason can come up with incredible ways to get scooter parts and xbox paraphernalia and choreograph a million ways to get to a friends to spend the night or even get to Magic Mountain on a day I have to work.....but find a pair of socks? Forget about it! After 5 minutes of yelling at ME, the one who works a full time job and uses all her breaks to pick kids up from school ( which now brings me to -9 minutes to work) and who comes home to a huge mess while they are all playing xbox live ...fixing a skateboard... and playing guitar with piles of food wrappers around them yelling "I'm starving",...well um, I lost it!
I stormed out of the house leaving them to walk to school for maybe the third time in their entire life. At about the time i got to my car I got a call with a small voice out of my 6 foot 4 inch son saying "really? your making us walk?"

Surely I wouldn't have the gull to ask them to be responsible for a pair of socks, what kind of a mother am I? After all that IS my job right? Keeper of the socks? And they cant be just any socks...no they have to be one pair with a logo on the side who has a mate somewhere in, which i have so often found elusive socks hiding, more commonly known as wonderland. Those socks are smart and clever , hiding them selves in places no sock should ever be. Below is a list that may be helpful, places I have found some of our socks, in the event that  you are ever looking for an elusive sock.


The SPOTS I HAVE FOUND THE ELUSIVE SOCK list.

Balled up in the front pocket of a back pack
In a cup on the headboard of a bed
Behind the bathroom door
Under a xbox system surely waiting to start a fire
In the dogs mouth
In a shoe
In a pant pocket
In a shower
In a tin Easter bunny
In a toy box
Over the end of a guitar hero  guitar
In the tool boxUnder the bathroom cabinet
In the front yard
In the back yard
On the roof
And last but not least, The source of the mysterious smell coming from the back seat of my car...under my passenger said car seat!

Maybe now when a sock ruins your day you will know that you are not alone!