Things I Learned Today

• White glue is the best thing to use to make raindrops on the floor. Or so announced DD, as I scraped away at the dried glue dots on her hardwood floor with an old credit card. For those confronted with this problem, let me announce that a credit card does not work nearly as well as a razor blade, but it has the singular advantage of being unable to mar the finish of the floor. So I stuck with the blunt credit card and eventually all the "raindrops" were removed.
• Spring cleaning is a happy concept, however I think it was conceived by someone with no small children in the house. I vacuumed and mopped last week, thinking, Now I can get down to spring cleaning! Har, har, har! How about just keeping it clean? I would be satisfied with that.
• Whenever "spring cleaning" is mentioned, I believe that children have a special hidden switch in their brains that goes into Make More Mess™ mode, wherein they find new and incredibly destructive creative ways to mess up the house. For instance, did you know that toothpaste is great for cleaning hardwood floors (DD)? Or that food items proferred as snacks can be broken up into little bitty pieces and crammed into the carpet (DS)? This is especially fun with mushy foods like bananas!
• I had never noticed the similarity between broken up little bitty pieces of brownies and brown PlayDoh, until DD accused me of vacuuming up her PlayDoh this morning.
• Speaking of PlayDoh, if you don't have any in your house, JUST SAY NO. If bananas and brownies are fun to try to get out of carpet, try dried PlayDoh. Also consider how often you will discover your baby eating PlayDoh that the big sib has left out. DON'T DO IT PEOPLE! Stick to crayons for creativity!!
• I have decided that a protective film of dust on wood furniture is really a good thing. Who needs to dust, really? Not me. Just building immune systems here...
• I will never, ever get the shelves cleaned off by the bird cage. I had high hopes of turning it from the Piled Up Dusty Bits and Generally Untidy-Looking Shelves into a sort of modern-styled baker's rack, holding all my baking paraphenalia and perhaps a few limited other items. Apart from the fact that the bird attacks me when I go over there (to her it is a part of her territory and thus is to be assiduously defended from invaders, even those bearing appeasement snacks of nuts), I don't have a friggin' clue where to put all the crap I mean stuff that's on the shelves now. Maybe in 2010 I will have a better a organizational system.
• I don't want to think about the gargantuan amount of work looming in the yard and in the Cottage, where we currently store boxes and mounds of STUFF from the old house that doesn't fit in this one, but most of which cannot be given away for various reasons (antiques? kids clothes for a possible #3?), but which must be transformed in actuality to a Guest Cottage complete with (currently non-existent) bathroom for DH's parents and sister, who are coming for a Christmas visit. I'm thinking it might be cheaper to rent an RV as our Guest Abode. Ugh...