Stagnancy

Fun title, huh?

I have had entirely too much time lately to be alone with my thoughts. Now, don't get all bent out of shape with jealousy about me apparently not having enough children crying in my life. Trust me, I have more than enough to go around. Ask anyone who calls me and hears the background "music".

But I have done a fair amount of driving the last couple days and so I have been thinking. Thinking about the past. Actually not really that much but it sounds sort of dramatic. In reality, mostly I have been thinking about if there is any possible way that I can ever say that every piece of laundry in my house is clean.

Did you ever read Farmer Boy? You know, the one about Almanzo Wilder, written by his wife Laura Ingalls Wilder? There is a chapter in the book about sheep shearing. Almanzo was in charge of bringing the wool up to the loft after it was sheared off the sheep. He knew that he would never get to be done first because by nature his job was last. Anyway, this bothered him so much that he somehow carried/drug one of the unsheared sheep up to the loft so that he was sort of done first. I always think about that story when I think about my laundry. Can I somehow wash the clothes before they land in the hamper?

But where were we going here? Oh yes, stagnancy.

The other night, at 0030, I realized that I had not taken the garbage can down to the curb. Even though I was already in bed I figured I had better get up and go do it. As any of us with babies know, it is not cool to leave diapers (even sealed up) in the can for too long. They fester in there. Every time I think about diapers standing there in all of their stinky glory, I think about my husband and giggle.

See, I have known Noah for a long time. Since preschool. I liked him from jr. high on. (maybe even before). When I was 14 I thought he was like, the smartest 15 year old ever, ever, ever. And he probably was. He is like the smartest 29 year old ever, ever, ever now, so it makes sense.

Anyway, we wrote letters to each other from 8th grade on. Like not little letters. Like pages and pages. But we weren't dating and we weren't "going out". We were just friends who wrote really, really, long journal like epistles to each other. Because that is normal. And that is what we were. Totally normal. And smart, can't forget smart. (notice all the "likes" I am regressing to my high school years as I remember them.)

So one day I wrote a question in my letter to him. "What does stagnant mean?" That was the dark days before Wikepedia or google search were invented. We did have dictionaries though, but I apparently didn't have one handy. I had heard the word in that song, "Where justice rolls down like a mighty something..." So he writes me back and the example he gives me in his explanation was about urine stagnanting if it sat there for too long. Or something like that. (I could give the exact quote but then nothing would get done tonight as I read all of those old letters...) Not the coolest example he could have given me, I think it kind of gave away the geeky/socially unaware side of him. (seriously, don't discuss stagnant urine with the girl you are trying to impress. Oh wait, I was the one trying to impress him...)

The point of that story is that every time I smell those diapers I think about his 15year old explanation of stagnancy...

Oh how I loved that boy, and oh how I love that man!