The Struggle Is Real

So.

Earlier this week, this happened in my life:

Cue your heart melting, right? This is Caroline, and she is our "true" preemie. So small in stature, and a little later in hitting her milestones, yet her fiesty spirit is going to help her go a long way. Plus, having another person exactly the same age (and I think a little competitiveness and scrapiness in her blood) seems to help. I died when I heard this. I have played it so much that my husband reminded me we have the actual show, so why must I hear it via video? Ha!

And then this happened:

Holy cow.

So, I ordered this:

Don't judge. I have to survive. And shower.

So the struggle is real around here. The struggle to contain, complete a thought, head anywhere without wondering where the twins, namely Mary at this point, will end up! C'mon Amazon!!! Get it here NOW!!

Anyway, the struggle is also real around here to deal with the weather. My uncle said the other day it probably couldn't get any wetter. Now, while he didn't mean it couldn't rain any more, because it obviously could, I think what he meant was that any more basic damage could be done. The plants that are in the ground on this farm (namely corn and soybeans) are doing okay. Our soil is good. Good black dirt worked not too little and not too much helps. Our ground's slope and location also helps. 

Here's your geography lesson for the day...get excited! 

Where we are is not too hilly, yet not so flat that water just stands. There are wet holes, even despite our ground's rise and fall, and field tile has been placed as much as it can, but there's still lots of standing water and wet spots. I'm sure, if you were to fly above our fields, you'd catch stunted growth, corn of a yellow tinge, dying basically of drowning. But we're okay for the most part. However, the struggle is real amongst farmers in the Midwest because ENOUGH is ENOUGH with the rain and the cool. As a pool enjoyer, I concur. Where's the hot and steamy that we know, love, and ultimately complain about in Illinois? Corn needs good warm, sticky temps to truly mature, and the beans need hot weather not cool and wet to alleviate disease and fungus.

So there's that.

There's also the fact that I STILL have a side entrance, with an obvious sidewalk from the driveway, that looks like someone may or may not replace it. We are, it's just too wet. It's starting to wear on me. I pulled weeds and had my dad trim around our "landscaping" (that includes a cement mixer for the footings, a few random boards and concrete embedded in the dirt (can you say ghetto fabulous?), just because my OCD was on overload.

The struggle is real.

I leave you with this, pray for normal. This is what we all are going for. Farmers around here need a summer. Western farmers need a rain, like desperately, and I need to figure out what normal is.

That may or may not include a sweatshirt on the Fourth of July and children in a multicolored pen.