How I Feel About Maids, Giving Birth and Chopping Wood

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This week's topic is "Three things you did not know about me"!

Okay, thing one. Even though I live in Mexico and all the cool kids are doing it, I REFUSE to hire a full-time maid. For fear of offending any of my dear friends who do have full-time help, I will abstain from writing my miriad reasons, but suffice it to say that I have five able-bodied children and we should be able to clean up after ourselves. I'm not judging anyone, really, this is just right for my particular family. Just for the record, I do have someone who comes in to help for four hours each week, and she mostly holds the twins, because they're in love with her, and tries to keep them out of her mop water.

Thing two. I love to give birth to my children without the aid of anesthesia...of any kind. Again, for fear of offending all of my dear epidural-loving friends, let it suffice to say that there are hormones that are produced during the pain of labor, such as dopamine and seratonin, that just will not be present unless you go through the pain. These hormones give an extreme natural high to both the mother and the baby, and help both to bond after childbirth. During this time after giving birth, I feel like I want to run a marathon, climb the highest mountain, or eat a huge plate of Nachos Bell Grande, and have. One of my brother's friends said, "You know, if you want to get high, I could hook you up with something a little less expensive." Funny. Nope, I love my after-birth high and I'm not giving it up any time soon. Unless, of course, it's another c-section. I do have some sense.

Thing three. I love to chop wood and am really good at it. Once I went camping with another family with my five children, the youngest of whom was 5 months old, and without my late husband, as he was serving in Korea for a year. The other couple had three older children and a very loud dog.

After our belongings were unpacked, the kids and I had the tent set up in about fifteen minutes, then went to help our friends with theirs as they were struggling something awful. Now, normally, this is not something I would ever bring up, lest you think I toot my own horn, but because of what happened next, I couldn't omit it. Unfortunately, there was very little firewood, but there was a large tree that had fallen down, about a foot and a half in diameter. I told the husband that I could chop this up for our firewood and that it would probably take me about an hour. He began laughing hysterically and said that it would take me at least five hours, and it would be dark by then. I was determined to prove him wrong. With the extra adrenaline he had just provided me, I began making "V" cuts with the hatchet to get the log into managable pieces to split, then after I had finished with that, I split the wood into perfect camp fire-worthy pieces with an ax. I did this in 35 minutes. I tried not to gloat, as I could see this guy had enough problems when I witnessed his wife commanding the kids to brush their teeth and commanding her husband to do it, too. Right now.

Yes, I like to chop wood.

Okay, there are three things you might not have known about me! What about you? Any weird idiosyncrasies we need to know about? Love to hear it! Thanks for listening!

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