Officially Nutto, and Beat Up Too

Remind me, peeps, the next time my parents are coming, to NOT undertake any major projects such as furniture moving and rearranging, two days prior to any visit. Furthermore, any proclamations that all clutter shall be banished should be verboten prior to company coming to town.

Oh, I think if the kids are angels this afternoon (they have been very tolerant of my busyness this morning) I can complete about 90% of the tasks, make no mistake...and it will be a miracle, and the angels will sing because surely God will have helped me along with the multitude of work! However, understand that there will still be dust covering surfaces that probably need a good dusting (dust is most welcome in this house, I am building up tremendous immune systems in my children and thus avoiding any occurrence of asthma). And the vacuuming will be poor because the famed Dyson Animal has been beaten down by repeated cage cleanings and parrot feathers and hair in the bathrooms. I suspect it has a clog somewhere, reducing its famous suction to something quite half-hearted which has me questioning the point of vacuuming at all, really.

I can hear some of you now, with helpful suggestions like, "just do a little cleaning each day, and keep up with it instead of cleaning for company." Yes, these are the types of helpful suggestions you read in women's magazines and parenting magazines, but you never read about days like my day yesterday, oh no you don't.

You don't read about parents schlepping their two kids under 3 in a double stroller from the autoglass place to the mall, weaving through construction zones around the mall and dodging people zooming to the Goodwill drop off and cursing while they streak off equally irritably upon discovery that the trailer is full today. And you don't read about moms who scour the purported "clearance" racks in the stores but find clothes that are still overpriced for what they are (which is clothes that look cute with unique buttons and embroidery and bits of lace but which will turn into dangerous (broken buttons), unraveling, need-to-be-ironed to look presentable clothing which will be irrevocably stained after about the third wearing). So you obtain a bribe ice cream cone to keep your two year old happy and tell yourself that a little caffeinated coffee ice cream is really not bad in the big scheme of things for your seven month old--at least he's happy! And then two hours later you call the autoglass place and find out that they do not have the right glass for your car, but oops our installer didn't catch it until he cut out your old glass, so we have these options, all of which involve inconvenience and about $200 more...*sigh*

Then you take your two year old to the playground, because you promised you would, before schlepping them back to the autoglass place to remove your carseats and get a ride home from their receptionist (oh joy). And your two year old refuses to come to you at the playground entrance when you clearly counted down the time left until you had to go. And you try to grab your DD as she runs past, keeping your DS and stroller within a moderate distance at the entrance, and end up doing a face plant on the floor, crashing your DD to the floor with you, resulting in a wrenched knee and a wailing child to console. So you awkwardly hobble the mile back to the autoglass store with the double stroller and two exhausted children, get your stuff arranged and get home, only to wrench your shoulder moving furniture.

Why is it that we never read about these types of things in the parenting magazines, hmmm? "Mom Tips for Surviving Child-Inflicted Injuries", or "How Not to Care About Housecleaning When Company's Coming". Now THOSE are articles I could use, peeps!

All right, I'm off to ice my knee and continue moving furniture. Don't worry, I only have a really heavy poplar pie safe to move now. And a chair and ottoman. And the desk from the doorway of the guest room to our cottage. Along with the metal bedframe on our deck. Did I mention clearing a path in the cottage to be able to move those things in? No? Well, don't mind me...I'm just nutto here.

The Frenzy of Preparation

My parents are coming for a visit this weekend, and I am in the process of frenetically cleaning, organizing, and preparing my house and myself for their arrival Thursday. The clutter of mail had spread beyond the normal 2 clutterpoints in the house, so I have shoved the remainder in a drawer because I was tired of dealing with it tidied it away neatly in anticipation of their arrival. Their house is full of clutter, so I have the vain hope that if I can have our house neat and relatively clutter-free, it will subliminally tell them that it is NOT okay to clutter up MY house during their five day stay. I really, really hope this is what they will pick up.

Anyway, I am also attempting to have all laundry done, all dishes done (including no pans left by DH to "soak" in the sink for days on end), and the two clutterpoints actually GONE and everything TIDY...and the angels singing en masse because it will be a miracle if it all happens.

As it happens I have actually finally mounted the curtain hardware and hung the curtains I sewed a year ago for DS's room, which also pinch-hits as the guest room. We will just ignore the fact that I forgot how long they are and mounted the curtain rod too low on the wall and the bottoms of the curtain sort of sit on top of one of the guest beds, yes we are just ignoring that for the time being...ahem... I am also reorganizing all the hand-me-down clothes for DS, getting them semi-organized in bags and somewhat tidied away in the closet. I've even accidentally pulled out from the wall preventatively tested the wall strap for DS's dresser in the closet, so DH has a little fix-it project to tackle at some point in the future when DS actually, you know, occupies his room instead of the pack-n-play in our room.

We have arranged a family visit to my brother and fam up north, so that will be fun. I am steeling myself for my dad's grumbling about "walking too far" regardless of wherever we choose to picnic, and am hoping that wherever my parents treat us for dinner out, the food will not be sniffed at with proclamations of "it's too spicy" or "they used too much pepper". I hope.

Of course, DD is ecstatic at TWO trips to the airport, and the presence of grandparents who are sure to treat her to too much ice cream, cookies, and sugar for her general well being. Now that both of my parents are diabetic, I have bought some sugar free cookies (including Oreos) and will be sneaky and put them in ziploc baggies before they arrive, thus they will probably eat them. Hehe. And I bought my mom her preferred snacks of several 100 calorie packs from Nabisco, closing my eyes and paying FULL PRICE for them at the grocery store--complete, utter breaking of grocery shopping rules! She will eat them if I have to shove them at her 24/7 during their stay. All snack purchases, of course, were made in the vain hope that they will not go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of crappy processed high sugar food name brand snacks. If I can keep them out of Costco and the grocery store, I will have succeeded.

And naturally now was the perfect time to completely rearrange all the furniture in our living room and den! Sofa and sofabed were moved by myself yesterday, and floorplans and furniture arrangements dissected until we have what we think is a workable plan. I just have to finish moving it all...by myself...today. Did I mention that DD is potty training in earnest? And just had her second accident of the morning, this time, on purpose, because I would not put on a video she wanted to watch? So she purposely left the room with her training potty and went to her room and peed on her soft foam princess chair? Which I now have to wash?

Yep-er, a great day looms. DD has been warned that if she goes elsewhere to pee again, she is getting spanked. Whatever about negative associations--this kid KNEW EXACTLY WHAT SHE WAS DOING. And that is something "up with which I will not put." Sorry, I draw the line. *sigh* Oh yes, and I am getting my windscreen replaced on my car today rather than hear my dad bitch complain about it all through the visit. I hadn't saved up the money to do so yet, so that's a hit to the e-fund. Oh great. Better though than hear my dad endlessly ranting about it for five days, which would inevitably yield to some other ranting about how poorly we keep our cars.

Oh yes, this will be great fun. Now, where are my margarita fixings??? Just kidding.

In Hiding

I am hiding from my children. Here I sit, huddled low on the couch in the den, in the vain hope that by blogging and being out of sight my children will somehow sense that Mommy is D-O-N-E for today and they will behave and stop doing the following things:

1) Pooping in their underwear instead of the training potty, which is conveniently placed in the living room so that no activity or favored TV program can be missed. This has happened TWICE today, and carpet cleaning plus cleaning a very messy bum and then declogging the "uncloggable" toilets due to the vast amounts of toilet paper required for said cleaning...well, let's just say I've had enough of that particular activity to last a lifetime. Or two.

2) Catnapping for forty minutes and insisting that "No Mommy, I am really not tired any more, see my cute gummy smile?" and then proceed to cling to me and wail like a banshee for the next hour.

3) Did I mention the pinching and kicking during aforementioned clinging? NO? Well, allow me to explain what this is like with a 25 lb baby. Take the first three fingers of your hand and squeeze hard, repeatedly, on the triceps of your arm. This simulates your son kicking and pushing against you with his toes and his whole strength. Rinse, lather, repeat until you have perfect little toe-shaped bruises. Now do the same to your chest to achieve a similiar dotted purple effect after...

4) Simulation of interest in nursing. DS has been on and off so many times today that he could be a bobble head doll. After achieving letdown, of course he wasn't interested, so I got milk sprayed all over my clothes. And bruised boobs. Fun.

5) Crying and flipping yourself over to your stomach repeatedly when put down for a (desperately needed) nap. Back yourself into a corner of your crib and scream. Do this about a half dozen times before consenting to snuggling down in your mommy's arms without doing numbers 2-4.

6) Run pell-mell down the hall while Mommy is just putting down your sleeping brother to yell loudly and ask, "Where are you Mommy? Where are YOUUUUUUUU??" after you've been told several times that Mommy was going to put your brother down for a nap.

This has been a peachy day...yep, just peachy. The one bright spot was DD's exceptionally good behavior at storytime at the library. We'll just skip the part where Mommy threw another Look of Death^TM at yet another librarian who hemmed and hawed and refused to administer a token fine to DD, who tore 2 pages in yet another library book. This is the second time this has happened, and she's not getting the message here, peeps! I brought her piggybank because she loves playing with HER money and having to PAY would send a message, you know?? But we won't talk about that...no, no...

Nor will we discuss the irritating teenage cashier at the local supermarket chain who argued the semantics of an item in their weekly ad that said "buy 2 gallons of milk and get 2 boxes of cereal free". I bought 2 gallons of milk--it just so happened that 1 gallon of it was made up of two half gallon containers, to get DD her whole milk. I also had a coupon for 2 half-gallons of that brand, the smart @ss cashier tried to tell me, "But you have to buy two gallons, you know, two of these (holding up the gallon container). You just want to use this coupon for the half gallons (accusingly)." (As an aside, since when was it a crime to try to save money??) I asked her to call the manager and pointed out the same thing I said to the cashier (politely), "Your ad doesn't specify that it has to be 2 gallon containers--it just says 2 gallons of milk." He agreed with me and told her to "make it happen", and then had to explain to her how to do it. She glared evilly at me and huffed while I checked the receipt to make sure all my coupons and discounts were applied. Grrrrrr.

Not a good day. *sigh*

His Highness the Prince is demanding my attendance, so I shall return another day. Of course, DH's ferry was delayed. Of course. *sigh* "This too, shall pass..."

Greaser, Part II

So we did not go the Dawn dishwashing detergent route last night. Instead, we googled cradle cap and petroleum jelly and found a couple of suggestions for removing it from hair. The first involved cornstarch, which seemed a bit messy. The second involved adding baking soda to baby wash, so this is what we did.

DD was a bit bewildered to be getting a THIRD bath in the span of less than 24 hours, but was happy enough to entertain herself again with her sponge animals and rinse cup. DH gamely mixed up 4 tsp of baking soda with some baby wash and applied it liberally to her hair. After a late rinse DH proclaimed that it still felt a little greasy to him, and asked me what we should do. I made the executive decision to leave it and let her go to bed with still greasy hair, which resulted in me dragging a child that looked like she had perpetually wet or dirty hair all around the county fair.

Yes, I braved the teeming hordes today and took the kiddos to the fair. DD LOVED the animals, and I think if she could she would be competing TODAY in the horseback riding. She settled for a pony ride, however, and then spent a merry half hour assembling a bead necklace and coloring or painting free pictures from the library. She got to eat an ice cream cone and freshly cut curly fries (needless to say so did Mommy). Goats, rabbits, llamas...all were seen, petted, cooed over. Much entertainment was derived merely from watching the rides--who knows how her excit-o-meter would have twanged if she were actually allowed to RIDE one! I guess we will find out, as we are planning to head back en famille this evening for more festivities and fun.

Hopefully, I will give her yet ANOTHER bath after trying the cornstarch in her hair first. We shall see...

Cradle Cap and the Greaser

I have discovered something--you don't outgrow cradle cap. I had been hoping that DD's two patches of cradle cap would eventually disappear, but here we were, two and a half years of age, and they were still there, in all their scaly unsightly glory. It was the fact that they appeared to be slowly growing and were starting to be visible near her forehead that prompted me to call for action.

Petroleum jelly, stat! DH retrieved the miniscule container of petroleum jelly from the medicine cabinet, and proceeded to apply it liberally to her scalp prior to bathtime last night. She thought it was fun to have "goop" in her hair, and a great time was had by all as she was scrubbed, combed (with a lot of cradle cap coming off), rinsed, de-tangled, and dried. Bedtime was fine--her hair was still damp, but it usually is on bath night. C'est la vie.

This morning she finally wakes up at 9:30 and I go in to fetch her...and I've got a little greaser staring back at me from her bed! Her hair still appears damp and/or greasy, like a cool cat look from the '50s. Hmmmmm. She allows me to poke around the two cradle cap patches while she watches TV, and I manage to scrape off with my fingernail gently remove some more scales that were softened up by the grease. She finally tells me to stop picking at her hair and I let her go, but it's clear that she requires another bath.

Tick, tick, tick, and finally DS falls asleep and I get DD into the bathtub. I didn't think her baby wash was going to cut it on this stuff, so I fetched my shampoo as a second resort. Sure enough, another lather and rinse with baby wash reveals hair that still feels greasy to the touch. On to Mommy's shampoo...I warned her about keeping her head back so it won't sting her eyes, lather her up, gently wipe away the excess foam from around her eyes, and let her play away for a good few minutes before rinsing. It feels somewhat better, I think...and she is dried off and dressed for errands.

Now, having come back from Costco with a pizza-faced, greasy-haired child, I see that the Big Guns are required. It is Dawn dishwashing detergent time, for her third bath looms tonight in a span of less than 24 hours. Ugh. That cradle cap better be GONE, because I do not want to do this whole routine again!

Now DS has a few patches of cradle cap hiding under his hair. I think I am going to scrub it good with his baby brush during his next bath and pray that it comes off. I don't want to think about Dawn dishwashing detergent and a 7 month old...oh no I don't...I think at that point he would just be living with cradle cap until he's, oh, let's say two and a half. *sigh*

The Worst of Us

I can say unequivocably that no member of my family is spared from a bad case of The Grumps^TM when they are hungry. Even DH, who will protest that he doesn't get too grumpy when he's hungry, will become snappish and irritable when he's in need of sustenance. And Lord knows DD gets quite grumpy, peevish, and naughty when she's hungry.

Of course, DD is not the best at articulating her hunger. She just melts slowly into Peevish Naughtiness, with a good dose of Tiredness usually thrown in. This results in usually preferred food items being discarded with "No, I don't WANT that!" with a special emphasis on "want" leaving us in no doubt of her inheritance of the drama gene from her auntie the actress. Nothing is good enough, and even special treats might fall by the wayside. (Note that we do not go out of our way to get special treats, but usually these events coincide with special trips that involve special treats anyway.)

Witness the events of the pre-weekend festivities, involving a trip into downtown to hear our favorite musical group, Anuna, in concert in OUR town! This was a HUGE surprise to me, DH having cleverly concealed it from me until that day. We had a brilliant time, if it was somewhat challenging keeping both kidlets occupied and (relatively) quiet during the mini-concert in Borders. We chatted with a member we know reasonably well (DH knows him better than I) and got autographed copies of their new album, and I was provided with the information that they will be back in full concert, at full strength, this fall, and yes Virginia we WILL be attending the concert sans children!! HOOOOOO-RAAAAAAAAAAYYY!!! A date!! A concert no less!! Of the group responsible for DH & I meeting all those years ago (nine, to be precise). Woohoo! And there was much rejoicing in the kingdom!

Anyway, DD was quite tired and hungry after that, and even a trip to the coveted Red Robin restaurant did not meet with favor. She did gulp down her mac & cheese but was disappointed by the absence of the big red bird, and had to settle for her big red dog (Clifford) in the car for snuggling. She was out about two seconds after we hit the road, and DS snoozed off as well after being topped up in the parking garage prior to departure. Ah, bliss!

Nonetheless, it was instructive how frail our good humors are. I was snapping until I got my coffee for the road from an obliging Starbucks (imagine that, Starbucks in downtown Seattle...will wonders never cease?). DH was the only one in tolerably good form, but even he subscribes to The Grumps^TM when he's hungry. I need only say, "House cleaning this Saturday" to remind us of the Saturday evening dinner and Evil Looks thrown my way as I took care of DS or read my book. Ah yes...hunger is never a good mood.

Fall Is in the Air

Unbelievably, I can see that autumn is just around the corner. I can actually smell it, especially in the early morning. It's that hint of frost in the air, not quite enough to actually cause glinting ice crystals on the lawn, but getting close enough that the dew is turning white.

My veggie garden has been a resounding...experiment! Well that is what I intended from the start, although my emotions did get carried away with visions of bountiful produce that I would be giving away by the bagful and having to learn how to can all the excess. You know, a vision of the productive housewife, engaged in preserving food for the winter...okay, maybe I've been reading "Blueberries for Sal" a bit too often to DD, but hey, I want to be a Proverbs 31 type of gal...profiting from my field and seeing that my trading is profitable, all of that. You know, add to the bottom line for our household. So maybe I thought I would get lots of tomatoes, corn, and the like from the garden.

Such is not the case. My poor cornstalks are just bumping at 3 feet high, and are tasseling out. I think we will get SOME corn out of them, but not as much as I had hoped. Of course this summer in the Pacific NW has been a disaster--not nearly enough hot weather or sunshine to really make everything take off. My poor excuses for watermelon vines are about 6" high and there is no possible way I will see any watermelons from them. Oh well. We will add a ton of compost this fall and maybe go so far as to build a raised bed, and hope for a better summer next year. And, *ahem*, it would probably be beneficial next year to actually, you know, WEED the garden more than once. *ahem*

I have noticed the cedars are starting to brown up--drying out the old leaves and getting ready to drop the whole acidic mess onto all my beds under them in about 6 weeks, ready for me to rake off and burn. I would compost it but it takes forever for that stuff to break down, and it's really acidic too. Instead I'll burn most of it, compost a tiny bit, and use the ash from burning to amend the compost pile. Evening out the pH, that's what we are aiming for. And of course the maples will start to change color soon too.

Everything is pointing to an early fall. It was below 50F when I woke up this morning! Brrr! Time to call the chimney service to get the chimneys cleaned for the wintertime! And get all the wood stacked & tarped! On the plus side, fall means cozy smells (mmmmmmm, apple cider) and cool days, just enough for light sweaters and still fun with walks and outside play. Yep, fall is just around the corner...get ready, peeps.

The Room Where We Eat

I will not call it the "dining room", as that lends the place an august title to which the stained tablecloth, seemingly perpetually dirty floor, and beat up dining set do not really subscribe. It's completely functional, with the hope of being a dining room again at some point in the future (*gesticulates to the artwork hung on the walls*). I don't hold out much hope until after my kids are teenagers.

Yes, I have succumbed to the "everyday" tablecloths versus the "special" tablecloths. My KMart Martha Stewart $5 special tablecloth in particular is showing its age, with its faded stripes and now faded stains that refuse to be coaxed out of the fabric even by judicious applications of OxyClean, borax, FelsNaptha soap, and sulking, er, soaking with killer strength detergent. It is now stained, and I am living with it, in much the same way I have come to lament the permanent stains that have appeared on DD's clothes (and ALWAYS the cutest ones, of course!). I could kiss my great aunt for the stash of linens which she gave to me when she retired and moved out of her house, because one of her "everyday" tablecloths is withstanding everything my DD can throw at it and still comes out of the wash clean and good as new. Ah, the things you treasure!

DD's seat is covered with the debris from lunchtime, which I will go and sweep up with the dustpan shortly. And it's on the floor, too, naturally. And now we are starting DS on regular meals as opposed to the cereal when we felt like making it, because he expects it now. So I now have a highchair to clean up, too, with rice cereal and some 'learning to self-feed' puffs strewn about for good measure. I know worse is yet to come--we have yet to reach the "food flinging" stage with him. Oh joy.

Of course, I'm not sure what my great-grandparents would think of their formal dining set as it stands now. I inherited that from my great aunt's house as well, and sad to say it wasn't looking so hot then. It has this beautiful striped birch veneer, which has been damaged in one place on the tabletop and flaked off in another. One day I hope to be able to spend a ridiculous amount of money (single digit thousands, probably) to have it restored, but it will have to wait for a while. In the meantime it is perpetually covered with the velvet table guards (velvet on bottom, easy clean & stained vinyl on top) and has to be covered with a tablecloth at all times. It's a real gem in the rough, along with the six chairs that go with it. I keep meaning to clean them all with Murphy's Wood Oil soap, but that too is something that will probably wait for a good few years.

I never met my great-grandfathers (any of them), but I do remember this particular great-grandmother. She wore horn-rimmed glasses and liked to knit, and we used to go over to her garden when we were visiting in the summertime and help her pick her cukes and tomatoes so she could make pickles. Now that I'm older I know more about this lovely lady from my grandfather. She used to feed the tramps who came through on the railroad, and would bring a plate out to them to eat in the back garden. The train tracks ran right past their house and she never turned one away. Somehow, I think she would probably like the fact that her table is still serving urchins of one stripe or another, especially the pint-sized variety.

Out of Touch with the Plan

I was grooving along very well with setting plans and goals for each day. Then DS started this catnapping fiasco and now I'm totally adrift. Laundry? I need to do laundry? (as I trip over a pile of dirty laundry in the hallway). Oh yeah...wait, mail! I need to sort the mail! (as I encounter a pile of unsorted mail in my laundry room...don't ask how it got there) Kids? Oh yes kids...they are kind of hard to forget, but that leads to things like diaper pail that needs emptying and maybe I can cram one...more... in there and hang on my son just spit up on me...wait I have to do the PAINTING and hang on the veggie garden is still weedy and...but...and.....

*sigh* Such is life. I NEED PLANS, PEOPLE. My days turn into an endless roulette of catch-me-if-you-can "to do's" if I don't have a PLAN that allows me to focus and ignore the rest of the crap stuff that needs to be done, too. I did start making this month's budget, some time vaguely in the past week, and it languishes as yet another "to do". I did manage to finally pay the last of the bill's from DS's birth, after being sure that our insurance is done with the round & round of claims and counter-claims. I even managed to ask the neighbor about her pediatrician, as I have decided I am dissatisfied with ours after she prescribed vitamin drops at 4 months of age for our son, who was over the 100th percentile for everything, and exclusively breastfed. Uh-huh. I mean, I am still taking prenatal vitamins for a reason here, it's to make SuperMilk^TM! So why the heck would I give him vitamin drops? Never got an explanation, just was handed a prescription and left to smolder over it (especially since DD never had them and as anyone who knows us can see she is clearly wasting away... ).

ANYHOO, the point is, if I don't have a direction and focus to my day, I just wander around in circles and don't get much done. And I didn't get any reading done for my women's Bible study today either, which has not helped me focus. God is a good focus-er, you know? A little time with Him tends to clarify things for me, so missing out on that hasn't helped my mood. Plus, DH worked from home today due to yesterday's Car Fiasco, as even though his car was fixed by 9:30 he was too late for a decent ferry time. And it's his busy time of the month at work (male work PMS, if you will), so I really HAD to make sure the kids were quiet and left him alone so he could get a lot done. After twelve hours of that, well, I'm done (again). I have a load of clothes in the washing machine that is mildewing, and I don't care. It's going to have to wait until tomorrow.

At least we recovered from last week's Library Fiasco, aka DD Decides to Misbehave AGAIN at the Public Library and Incur the Despotic Parent Award from the librarian. Yes, as she was screaming "Sorry Mommy! I want my booooooooooks Mommy!" and the librarian was saying, "Awwwww, she really wants her books," I was practicing my Look of Death on the librarian. Um, yes, she does, but Mommy also wants to be able to check out her books without her running away from me in a library full of people and open doors while holding my six month old infant and juggling a stack of books. So, DD got the infamous 1-2-3 countdown and then she suffered the consequences--no books! Evil, mean parent! Anyway, today she asked to go back to the library and we did, and she behaved. Go figure--consequences carried out ensures good behavior the next time! DUH! Too bad the librarian in question was not present to witness the return to civilized behavior.

*sigh* Kids! Busy husbands! Housework! Stuff! Budgets! Aaaaahhh!! This, too, shall pass...and when are they old enough for school, exactly??

Someone Call the Maids

Ok. I give up. My house is NOT going to be clean, ever again. Clearly God has other plans for my house. The piles of unsorted mail are destined to be information-rich sources for archaeologists when they finally excavate my house from the giant pile of clutter which is overtaking it. I have thrown in the towel.

A six month old son who catnaps for thirty minutes and then pretends to be wide awake and perfectly happy for ninety minutes does not facilitate a stay-at-home mom doing anything resembling house cleaning. I got some more trim painting done today in our bedroom, because I propped the child up in his pack and play with some toys and ignored him as he whined at me for the last twenty minutes I eeked out painting. Worse still, my DD is following his cues, and only napped for ninety minutes today instead of two plus hours. What next? The bird is going to decide not to sleep at night and serenade us all night long?

What is inimicable and intrinsically frustrating about today is that I *did* manage to get stuff done, it just wasn't pleasant to do it--any of it. I mean, it's not that entertaining to put away the clean dishes and reload the dishwasher, but if the kids are relatively quiet, then it's at least pleasurable to accomplish those ordinary tasks. However, when you have one or both children whining at you the ENTIRE TIME you are working, doing that which needs doing around the house, that makes your nerves more than a little threadbare.

My day was capped off by DH calling to say that his car had a flat tire (bugger), then that a lug bolt had sheared while he was taking it off (double bugger), and finally that a second bolt had sheared off when he was securing the spare tire (oh, h3ll!!!). So I fed the kids by myself (the planned dinner, and not delivery pizza--a miracle straight from God in the form of willpower since I just found a Papa John's gift card) and then loaded their cranky butts into the car so that I could go and pick up DH at the car repair shop, where he was having the car towed. It will be fixed tomorrow (we hope) and life will go on. But boy, days like today REALLY. SUCK.

Welcome Back, Harry Potter...

Oh wait, that's not me. But it feels like me. I feel like I have stepped back in time, back to the darkened yesteryear where I wandered the dark and musty halls of countless military base houses and learned to cross-stitch and knit and do other historically Southern female type projects thrust upon me and my sister by our mother.

Yes, I have started knitting again. I just want some cheapy Christmas gifts, I didn't ask for the trip down memory lane! But no, here I sit, remembering the times my sister & I dutifully knitted with 50% acrylic, making atrocious color combination choices for our scarves and afghans, as that is all my mother knew how to make, I think. And doing all the packaged cross-stitch kits with unicorns and even (*shudder*) Care Bears^TM. Ah, the things deemed necessary to teach one's young... And now, I blame YOU, peeps! Yes, YOU. The ones who skulk and read this blog and talk about all YOUR knitting projects. Be-yarn you!

So I start this great project this afternoon--a simple project, just a scarf made of fun-fur. Can't be too difficult...I remember how to do a basic knit and purl, the only problem is I can never remember how to cast on or off. In fact I always had to have my mother do it for me, and when I cast aside my knitting needles at the tender age of 13 or so I lost any interest in acquiring that particular skill.

And here I sat, people, for an HOUR poring over diagrams online of how to cast on, and managed to somehow crochet (I think it was crocheting) a dangly bit of yarn and mutter curse words under my breath until I FINALLY got it through my skull that after the first "stitch" it was just KNITTING, and I was just TRANFERRING the stitch to the other needle. DUH! Yes, I have a Ph.D...but not in knitting. I am slow with crafts, bear with me. And may I just say that this "fun fur" yarn is "fun" for those that wear it, not those that knit with it? There are 2 different threads per stitch, and woe betide you if you get one of those clumpy bits in there, because that just confuses me.

It is rather comforting, and I'm telling myself I am cool because these knitting needles have cool clumpy bits on the ends instead of plain silver buttons that always got the ends entangled in what I was knitting, and hey this fun fur yarn is really neat and soooo much better than mismatched acrylic yarns. And homemade gifts are the best, right? Right?? I am sure I will get the hang of it. Give me another few hours and maybe I'll have this Beginner One Hour scarf done. Just ignore the weird clumpy bit of yarn at the end.

Further Mundanities

I am continuing my summer women's Bible study of "Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World", and this week I was fascinated by the person of Brother Lawrence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_Lawrence). Here is a person who succeeded in cleaving so close to God that each day's mundane tasks were accomplished in praise. I tell you, I need some of that in my life! I think this is the key for me for my Christian walk. If I could live close enough to God's presence to make everyday chores a pleasure, then instead of being discouraged by what I have left to do, I would see it as a blessing--and wouldn't that be nice!! To be able to be giving it to God while grocery shopping, that would be a blessing. On a completely unrelated note, my house is in chaos and I'm at a loss to remedy it. I really have to conquer the mail pile and paperwork that is floating around, which means the larger and more obstructive boxes and dirty laundry has to sit there, glaring at me in the corner. It would help if my kids would both nap at the same time, but of course DS is determined to catnap throughout the day and not sleep when his sister is sleeping. Arrrggh! I miss my "me" time people--I have to have SOME time during the day when my hair is not being pulled on, I am not being drooled on, nor am I being called on to create PlayDoh peas or closely track my DD as she goes around the house getting into everything. Hmmmmm. Maybe next week DS will change his nap schedule again. I'm subtly hinting to him now that he should be SLEEPING by having him in the swing, and he's now protesting his confinement. Little booger. *sigh* And I bought some yarn and knitting needles, to do some quickie scarves with fun fur type yarns for Christmas presents. $2 per bundle, peeps, at Michaels...I can DO straight stockinette knitting, if I can only find a bloody good demonstration of casting on and casting off online. Come on DS, Mommy's trying to make a Christmas present here!