Today I was sitting in the waiting room for my car to be diagnosed. It needs a new alternator which I already knew, but was putting it off for a few months till I felt it couldn’t go any longer. You know when you get that feeling of impending doom about your car–it’s time to fix it. One of my automatic doors also needed a new motor, but after hearing that one motor was going to cost almost $500, Rob and I decided we are just not going to use that door.

Anyway, I was working on my novel in the waiting room and wrote a scene where the heroine shouts, “Do not underestimate me!” Well, actually she shouts it to herself as a sort of war cry. That war cry energized me for the rest of the day. Rob and I have been struggling to re-do the front lawn. Rob accidentally killed the grass when he thought he was spraying weed killer and instead sprayed grass killer. Then when he asked people at church for help, he got the “I could use help with my lawn too,” attitude from a couple guys (I could call them something else), so he didn’t ask for any more help. My dad and one super nice guy from church helped on Saturday as Rob tilled up the dead grass. My dad, myself and brother nice guy raked and shoveled for hours. Rob had made himself so sick that on Sunday he was puking most of the day. So today after I came back from the repair shop, I decided that as no other man was going to help us, I could work as hard as any man. Actually, I already know that women do, but I think men underestimate us in regards to physical strength and stamina. They don’t realize we run up and down the stairs twenty times a day and get on our hands and knees and scrub the floors and bathtubs and lift twenty pound kids, and jump on trampolines and etc, etc, and don’t you think that makes us stronger? I’m getting off subject…re-reading…oh, yeah, so I came home from the repair shop and grabbed a shovel and filled that wheelbarrow and pushed it filled to the top up our steep driveway a good three times before Rob came outside to help. Sure I was breathing hard and nearly passing out, and hadn’t eaten anything but a bowl of Cheerios six hours earlier, but it felt good. It felt good to dig that dirt and say to myself “Do not underestimate me!”

After I ate some tuna fish and recharged, I speed read a book in 45 min.–Louder Than Words. It’s about Jenny McCarthy’s struggle with her Autistic child and it brought back all those memories with Nick and what I went through to get him to the place he is now. The book did make me question one thing: At one point in the book, Jenny called the Mormon Missionaries to give her boy a blessing, and she wrote how grateful she was and the faith she had that the blessing would help. I on the other hand, never asked anyone in the church to give my son a blessing, and just figured I do everything on my own. Does Jenny McCarthy have more faith than me? Could be.

Later I helped three kids with their homework, made one work his butt off for forgetting to bring his home, fixed dinner, then went back outside to dig more dirt until it was too dark to see. Tonight as I work on cutting out the last 120 out of 520 fabric letters for 30 banners, pack lunches, do the dishes, clean the kitchen, and finally get a shower, I’ll just keep saying…Do not underestimate me!
Except for when it comes to math. I couldn’t figure out Nick’s algebra homework tonight. I left that entirely to Rob…Sometimes you just can’t do everything.

So, when I was getting ready to take a shower after digging dirt, Rob comes into the bathroom and says, “I think I’ll get the light and keep digging.” We have a flood light.
“Oh, I was just about to get into the shower or else I’d come help you more.” I’m halfway in the shower stall.
Then he gives me that drooly guy look. “You could ask me to do anything right now and I would do it”
“Really?” I respond.
“Yeah.”
“You wanna go do the dishes?” of course I come up with something for him to do, and off he goes.
Wow. If I could just hang out naked more often, I’d have less chores to do.