he gifted me a urinal

seriously folks. 
a URINAL.
i grinned the most "you've stolen my heart foreva" grin as he opened the hatch to the aspen.
i looked at jacob. .  ."now, that's just disgusting- it's gross. i'm not touching that."
i looked at edward. . .he looked confused and went in the house.
i looked at mr. right. . . he knew - it was p.e.r.f.e.c.t. in all of it's leftover yellow drips glory.
he bought a urinal and saw his lady's perfectly dreamt-up "trough sink".
yes, my dears, i now own my first ever urinal.  my first ever trough sink!


let's dream together. . . . 


just simply take one 5ft long cast iron/porcelain coated urinal, sandblast the grossness right out of it, re-enamel it in a beautiful shining white porcelain. . . we're dreaming here - remember? money schmuney . . .  add three back mounted water faucets with soap dishes in between -let's go with silver or maybe nickel for now, and then mount it, kid height, just inside the door, to help wash the mud of life off of chubby little 4 and almost 2 year old fingers. . . . .


dreamy, isn't it?


good thing urbana, seve and mr amazing (and hopefully sousi!) don't recognize a urinal when they see one!  now i just need a rustic, old barn door looking sign to hang above it that says "please don't pee in my sink".  i'd go with a really creamy, whipped-butter, pale yellow in chipped paint fashion with the words carelessly scrawled in country, farm-mama white.


i know - things are out of hand around here.
but at least i survived the tumble into town for house hunting trip!
i walked through what very may have been my dream home. . . .about eights shades of normal ago.  it was tall and slender.  it was brick.  it was oooollllld.  like pre-civil war old.  it had 3 flights of stairs gracefully winding like ribbon candy up.  and when you thought that was that, it wasn't.  you climbed through a hatch door onto the roof for a breath taking view of the city and a hot tub to soak your life away in.  it was a beaut i tell you.  it was also an ice block.  no heat on  - it was 27 degrees inside.  brrrrrrr.  i longed to grab some kindling and stoke up one of the fireplaces.  if there had been a stove in it i would have stirred up a pot of cocoa and sat on the back porch that's encased in glorious ceiling to floor windows. . . .i do believe it was my dream home once upon a time.
alas, i wrenched my heart away and dreamt about a home that's not even for sale yet - just rumored for sale.  one that perches it's shoulder right on the edge of my grampa and grama's driveway.  maybe i could live there?  urbana would get shooed out of the garden with the rabbits, edward would sneak out of math to have malts with grama. . . .it was a flash in the pan sort of romance. . . . you can't just walk up to some stranger and say "hey! rumor has it you might sell your house. . . um -sometime.  can we buy it and you move out by, say. . .  mid-march?"  well, i suppose you could do that, but people might talk, ya know?


so, what did we do?  well, i think we broke some hearts and disappointed some as well.  ok -well, maybe we just broke my heart a little and disappointed me some as well.  we put an offer in on my "not ever gonna be" dream home.  why?  well, because i got lotsa kids, ya see.  now the home isn't bad. . . it's not even cringe worthy.  it's actually cute and a bit charming in it's imaginary place in my mind.  once i get my urinal mounted and drinking fountain hung it'll be peachy.  it's just not me, right now.  my high-silk hat, pre-civil war, glory -now that was me. . . this one, not yet.  but the part that's not being mentioned - the part that made us put that offer in. . . well, the home is perched like a sparrow on her nest. . . .a nest of over 11 acres.  11 acres of creeks and trails and trees.  11 acres of barn and chicken coop and machine shed.  11 acres of tractor lovin' land.  it's an old country farm house - with the farm to prove it. 


go ahead - shake your head.  lots of folks have been doing that lately - me included.  why on earth this would seem remotely like a good idea - i haven't the slightest notion.  it's just another one of those odd things in life that we can't explain. . . .it just seems right.  right in the whole "send joel off to congo, leave jacob and edward alone in their beds in italy at 4am while i traipse off to haiti -pregnant -days after one of the most catastrophic earthquakes ever, leaving urbana asleep in a strange place in miami praying grama gets there before she wakes up to strangers" kind of way.  the absurd kind of right.  the kind that warms our heart as it strikes fear and dismay into others because what God may have for us might seem down right terrifying and worrisome to others. . . .ok, so it's terrifying and worrisome to me, too!  talk about a ginormous learning curve.  i don't even know how to walk in cowgirl boots, let alone with a country swagger!  to say nothing of the whole belt buckle thing. . . i mean, do you go with the gold or the silver?  and how does that figure into the whole "overalls" thing?  do i have to let my boys "farmer-blow" with blessings now?  is it really ok to acquire a farm-girl accent at this age?  geesh!  seriously though -we have no idea what we're truly going to do with 11 acres and 6 kids. . . . ok, well maybe part of me does think it's the best thing that will ever happen to them.  what can any boy ever want more than to run free through open land with his dog at his hip, splashing through the creek and ending up in a tree with a book after a good swing on the tire swing?  i long for this for the children.  i long for them to find peace and contentment and indescribable joy at the farm.  i yearn for this to become a place of hope.  to be our rainbow after the storm.  we're still in the storm today. . . but maybe.  maybe the farm is going to be our rainbow - our sign in the sky that God will never destroy the earth again by flood.  because i think we all know that i've cried myself a flood during this whole storm.  so, as we await to see if the offer turns into an honest-to-goodness reality, i will sneak peeks at my new urnial and dream it into a new life as a trough sink.