Friday...

My sister asked me to babysit the other day, and along the way I snapped this photo of a farm that is still being held hostage by the ice. No matter that the temps have been at or near 40f the past couple days; many places are still left with ice in their pastures. Looks like a barren wasteland, doesn't it?

While at my sister's, I was subjected to little girls playing with little toys called Little People. I'm not sure if that's the correct name for them; it's what the girl's called them, though.

I was never much of a fan of little toys like this. Thankfully Darling has finally outgrown this stage. She used to play with all sorts of little plastic things, and while vaccuuming I'd unfailingly miss seeing something in the carpet until it was too late, then hear the thwunk thwunk of some poor puppy or pair of shoes as it took it's last carnival ride up the hose and into the bag-o-dirt. I used to try, desperately, I might add, to go through these bags of dirt in an effort to find the beloved article. That, however, didn't last long. Soon I graduated to going out and buying a replacement before Darling knew what had happened. Again, this was a short phase...it didn't take long for me to become A Mean Mom...

Yes, I'm now a mean mom; just ask my kids! I've lost track of how many of Polly Pocket's dress shoes or Donatello's pizzas I've sucked up with my trusty Kirby. They'd hear the revving of that powerful motor and come scrambling out of their rooms, snatching up anything shiney or plastic before it got sucked into the bag of doom, never to be seen again. According to the children, I should have given them fair warning. They said there was a standard contract between mother and child which gave the child 48 hours warning, with a reminder every fifteen minutes, prior to vaccuuming. Starting the vaccuum and screaming "It's time to clean" over the roar of it's engine, they said, was in clear violation. To which I pointed out that had they bothered to pick up that contract off the floor prior to my vaccuuming, they may have a leg to stand on. But as it was, the contract had been sucked up into never never land, and their toys were next.

As the children grew larger, so did their toys. They no longer fit inside the vaccuum, so I've given up that dirty job. And with the extra time I have, I can now do things like babysit my sister's children, and play with tiny, little toys, never worrying about where that extra pair of shoes may have gotten to, or what happened to the plastic puppy...