Yesterday I was exhausted from gardening two days straight. I decided to take it easy, so I came home from dropping my daughters off at the bus and went back to bed for a couple hours.

When I woke up, much refreshed, I had the sudden urge to clean the floors. Don't ask me what prompted the urge; I mean, who has an URGE to clean the floor?

People have an urge for ice cream or cookies. No normal person has a sudden urge to clean the floor. I haven't had that kind of an urge to clean since the weekend my youngest daughter was born. No, I'm not trying to tell you anything.

I remember that day well. I woke with a sudden urge to reorganize all the bookshelves, paint the nursery, clean out all the drawers in the house, wash the windows, and on and on. I remember telling my mother that night about my flurry of activity and she said "Uh oh." I said "What? No, I'm not nesting; nesting is more of a nurturing feeling. I'm just trying to get stuff done before the baby is due in THREE WEEKS."

I had her the next day.

I had a goal to catch up on the weeding of my garden by the end of the month. With the end of the month looming I am making progress, but with rain in every day's forecast except today, I wasn't sure I was going to make it.

Yesterday it was supposed to rain and it only sprinkled off and on a bit, so I made a little more progress. But when I looked at the rest of my week's schedule, coupled with the threatening weather, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get back out there. Around here, rain is relative: showers, rain, light rain, it just does what it wants to do when it wants to do it. You can't really count on the consistency of the forecast because it can turn very quickly.

Today my day was to be filled with my writer's group. I almost went outside and worked in the garden for an hour before I showered and made the drive down to Enumclaw for our group. But I decided to sit down and blog first. Lo and behold I opened my email and got a note from one of the gals that she was still out of town. So the other writer and I canceled group for today.

The garden gods have descended upon me and shown favor. I think I may actually be able to reach my gardening goal. So now I must be off to the garden.

We live within hearing distance of Tahoma National Cemetery. I say hearing distance because I can't see the cemetery from my house, but I can hear whenever there is a funeral held there.

Often when I'm out working in the garden, as I will be today, I can hear the 21 gun salute. And today, because of Memorial Day, we will probably be able to hear the band my cousin is in playing too.

We've seen Air Force planes doing fly overs in honor of the fallen. I've seen helicopters with an American flag attached to their bellies fly over. We've seen B-17s, and various other old aircraft. We're often stopped on our way to town by police escorting funeral processions, or events like Saturday's motorcycle rally that escorted five newly fallen soldiers to their place of rest.

Because of these poignant reminders the cemetery attracts, we think often of those who serve our country and those who have served. I wish they didn't have to lose their lives while serving our country; and when I pause at every 21 gun salute to say a prayer, I hope it's someone who lived a long, happy life instead of a young person dying in the line of duty.

So I honor all our veterans on this Memorial Day. And for every 21 gun salute, rest in peace, you have served us well.

An Ode to My Gardening Pants; you have served me well

I was in my twenties
when you came to me
I thought I was cool;
I obviously couldn't see.

But you were the style
in my younger days.
Whether I wore you well
is up to others who had gazed.

After I was married
a few holes in you had worn
when you became my gardening pants
a fate for which you were born.

You enclosed my ankles
and covered my knees
a practical utility
with which I was pleased.

We've dug and we've weeded
All these years since;
We've planted and hoed
shredding you into mince.

Our very last session
was six hours long
and when I disrobed
you disintegrated in song:

"Please let me go,
I'm torn and old,
just put me in a garden
to compost into mold.

I've held you together,
though my button left long ago;
It's time to release me
I've no more life left to go."

So it is with despair
I have parted with you;
and that which I've replaced you with
will just have to do.

Nothing will ever
to you hold a shine
my dear garden pants
it's the end of the line.

I wrote a piece I intended to send to the Covington Reporter for my column next week, but then I thought better of it. It's not bad, but I'm not sure if it's too much information for the newspaper audience.

I asked my sister, she wasn't sure. I asked my oldest daughter, she wasn't sure. I may or may not have read it to my youngest, I'm sure she did cringe or would cringe over it.

So rather than send it to the paper, I've decided to publish it here for all the world to see. You can tell me what you think.

Domestic Secrets

I tried to sit down and write my blog earlier today, but the weather beckoned me... or rather lack of weather.

It's a very rainy week and there was a break in the rain this morning. It was a perfect morning to get some gardening in because it is cool outside for those of us whose health is affected by the heat.

I finally got the front corner of my garden completely weeded. Now I have the rest of a big L-shaped section to finish and the bed in front of my house.

I try to pace myself, but once I get going it's hard for me to stop. So as I'm still forced to butt garden, I start out on my legs as far as I can go, then ultimately end up dragging my butt through the garden. God save any plants that have to withstand my big hind end dragging over them.

But I did it. Now I pay! Good thing I'm a writer, I can write sitting down.

I feel like I haven't written for a really long time. It has been three days, but it may as well have been a week. I blame it on my husband.

He decided to stay home Friday. It always messes me up when he does that, especially when the kids still have to go to school. My alarm goes off at 6:00am, but I hit snooze five times before I roll out of bed. I'm aware of what's going on around me, but I'm reluctant to actually leave the coziness of the bed. It's part of my routine, so it works for me... unless my husband is home.

Just as I rolled out of bed he came in the room and told me he could take my oldest to the bus. Even on the rare days when he knows he'll be home and he plans to handle the kids in the morning, I can't help but wake up. But if my alarm has gone off five times, I am most assuredly awake. I can't just tell him "okay, you handle it" and roll back into bed. Part of my routine is filling her water bottle, getting her already-made lunch out of the refrigerator, putting it in her backpack, and unplugging and zipping up her laptop. I started doing it last year when I realized those simple things were the difference between catching the bus and not catching it. But if I have to relay all that to my husband, it's really just easier to get up.

So I went about my routine, which then became further convoluted when my youngest daughter's bus had a sub and either didn't show up, showed up really early or showed up really late. So we had to drive her to school. My husband came with us because he wanted to go out to breakfast with me. That's nice and all, but it further confused my day.

It's kind of dangerous to lose track of the day when the dependent half of the family is away from the house. At some point you have to remember to pick them up from the bus stop. Hopefully, you remember before they are actually waiting at the bus stop.

After breakfast my husband and I went to the Chevy dealer. We've been talking about getting a bigger car eventually that would better fit my really tall girls on longer car trips. While we were there we got some maintenance done on my HHR; which was nice because my husband was there to talk to them and make the decisions. We test drove a car while we were waiting. It was nice, but I don't think the perfect car it out there: comfortable for the whole family, low gas mileage, and, oh yeah, no payments.

Around 12:30 I realized we really did only have two hours to pick up my oldest daughter and take her to work. We were a half hour away, and I needed to bring her some dinner too. Without time to cook, we picked up "big sandwich" from Fred Meyer.

Saturday morning dawned and I'm awakened by my husband showering at 5:20. Because I've lost track of the days, I thought it was a weekday. I started out of bed and was just about to yell at him for being in the shower when his daughter needed to get in there when I realized it was Saturday.

Wouldn't he have been surprised? Then my daughter would have been surprised when I yelled at her to hurry up and get out of bed so she wouldn't be late for the bus. I wasn't really able to fall back to sleep after that jump start to my brain and was tired all day. I didn't get anything done and wasted the whole day.

I blame it on my husband.

The random sock mystery was solved. If any of you read the comments from my family on my blog "Random socks and other underwear" on 5/15, it seems our lab is the culprit of the random socks.

Cedar is a yellow lab with a fox red color. She really is the color of freshly cut cedar, thus her name. I think she has ADHD. I've taken her to training school twice with minimal results because I can't get her to pay attention to me and not the other dogs. She is six years old. As she's rebounding off guests in her hyperactive state, I brag that she is the older, trained version.

When Cedar was young she was destructive. Over the years she has destroyed patio cushions, patio furniture, chewed the wires off my husband car trailer and the '49 Chevy pickup, chewed the starter rope off the lawn mower twice, chewed the arm of a wooden bench, destroyed two office chairs (which were put out there for her to lay in), destroyed a living room chair (again put out there for her), chewed a leather dog collar off a dog we were dogsitting, and any bows that end up on our terrier, Pip, never last more than a few hours.

Now that she's the older, trained version she has quit destroying furniture and wires, but God save anything fluffy. She is not allowed in the end of the house where the bedrooms are, but sometimes the door gets left open and she roams through. She must've roamed through on a laundry day and lifted my younger daughter's socks as they sat folded in her doorway to be put away.

It must've taken Cedar a few trips to stash all those socks. I found a pair in the living room, the pair on my computer desk was picked up by my daughter, my husband found a pair and put them on a shelf, there was another pair sitting on the edge of Cedar's pillow, and my older daughter said there was also one on the couch.

I usually have a box in the computer room filling up with things to take to Goodwill which is probably where she got the white footie socks my daughter's won't claim. She will also lift anything fluffy from that box like the snowman Christmas decoration (RIP snowman).

There is a box full of sports things like bike helmets, tennis rackets and balls. I kept finding tennis balls all over the house one day and I was wondering why the kids were taking them all out. So I put them away and they were rolling all over the house the next day. I put them away again and they were out again. I put them away again and that evening I walked into the computer room as Cedar was walking out with a ball in her mouth.

She can't be trusted loose in the house at night and sleeps in her kennel. She's our terminal toddler.

We really enjoy when we can take her on vacation with us and let her run on the beach. Unfortunately, she will drink seawater, which will eventually go in one end and out the other in a matter of minutes, if you know what I mean. She is a good dog. She can be off leash, but come when she is called, she's not aggressive or mean.

She is a sweet dog, who doesn't get the attention she deserves or the activity she needs. But she is a handful, even though she is the older, trained version. But she's our handful.