The realtor came yesterday and all went well.

 The sign goes up on the lawn tomorrow, the wandering group of bleary-eyed realtors will walk through on Tuesday, then we'll have open house on Sunday, the 26th. And today we are off with our daughter and some friends to a Buffalo Bison baseball game downtown guess-where. 

Tom received a bunch of free tickets from work.

So in the meantime here's a fun passage from one of my all-time favorite books, My Life's History, the autobiography of Grandma Moses, the artist. Long ago and far away in Susanville, California, when I was a young (read: perky, cute, thin) mother, I, thankfully, discovered this book. Some of you will be scandalized by this passage, others will, I hope, let it help you relax as you raise your children. 

While Naomi was a teen, this passage often haunted me. And I'm glad.

Here's Grandma Moses:

"The children were always full of pranks, always in mischief with their young friends. One summer the two Reel sisters, whose brother Loyd had met at school, boarded with me for two or three weeks, and of all the frolics and mischief they got into! One day at the dinner table, after Thomas had gone out, someone threw water, then someone else. Then the battle was on, some were running out of doors, out to the pump and commenced to throw it by the bucket-full. Some ran upstairs for protection, and they threw water out of the window, nearly drowning the ones under the window. The battle grew hotter, and they threw the water into the window till it ran down the back stairs into the dining room. Then one of the sisters said, she would not stand for it if she was me. I told her to let them have fun while they were young and could, it would be something to laugh about when they were old--and now they do.

It was a rollicsome, happy house, and their father would join in with them, he really was one of them."

******