Why oh why did we invite people over?

A couple is coming over for dinner tonight. It is the best option, since they have a baby, and we have two kids as well. But the house is such a mess. And I forgot to write this dinner down in my calendar, so I didn't really know about it until Wednesday night. Argh. Yesterday I managed to un-bury my desk, and clean the leftover decorations off the dining room table. But today I need to make the house look presentable to others who have not visited us here before. No small task, since the house is half under "remodeling" status. The other half is decorated with children's toys and mismatched furniture. Even when spotless, my house makes me cringe.

I'm hosting a party on the 20th of January. My newest goal is to have the living room wallpapered before then. I'm thinking about calling a bookie and allowing people to bet on it. (Odds are pretty long on that one, though.)

Must now get off computer, and try to make our kitchen look less "apartment squalor", and more "rustic farmhouse". Then I need to make bread for dinner tonight. I work well under pressure, but I've left myself a huge task. Double argh.

My boy is heading to the dentist today

My poor little guy has bad teeth. To be honest, it's only 4 of them that are bad. They have varying amounts of enamel missing. They are probably decayed. (I only say 'probably' in hopes that denial actually works.) We are heading to the dentist today. It's going to be horrible. He's only 2, and there is no way I can make him understand that the guy in the mask in the room with the x-ray is going to help him. The dentist reportedly has "the touch" with young kids, and can put otherwise jumpy children at ease, but I'm not convinced. I'd almost rather take him to a dentist that will sedate him. But I'm more afraid of sedation than of a screaming toddler. There is no joy here today.

I hope that the roads in Peoria are better today. We spent 3 hours travelling to nowhere on Saturday. blech.

On a more positive note, my girlie gets to spend the afternoon with Grandma Karen. She'll enjoy that, I am sure.

For anyone keeping track, my body has now been host to 3 unique viruses in the last 2 weeks. Overnight I came down with my kids' cold. And it's not even full-fledged flu season yet. oy.

Keep your fingers crossed!

I know no one but me really reads this, but it's a good reminder for me. I *think* we're all on the downhill side of a week of illnesses. Last week, I had a sinus'thing' and a stiff neck. It really hurt. I got over that on Friday, but then came down with the pukies on Saturday afternoon. I hate pukies. yuck. Sunday morning, both my kids wake up with colds. I am indeed counting my blessings that a) I was sick on a weekend so my husband could take over as the resident human for 18 hours, and b) the kids woke up with colds and not involuntary protein spills.

So yesterday afternoon, I get home from a walk with the kids (it was 62 degrees on November 27 -- what's up with that?) and my poor husband was sitting in the family room, complete with blanket up to his chin. Luckily, he was spared any pukage, but he felt pretty crappy just the same. He went to work today. I hope he feels better as the day wears on.

Aside from the sickness, we're trying to decorate the house for the holidays, and it is going very slowly. We had just moved in and didn't decorate at all last year, so I'm trying to figure out how to do it this year. Our previous home's exterior was much easier to make festive, as it turns out. I'm about this > < close to buying a bunch of those 8-foot-tall inflatable Santas and snowmen and maybe a Spongebob for good measure and putting them all out in my sizeable yard. My kids would be convinced that I'm the best mom ever. But people might drive by and take pictures of my yard and then post them on the internet as examples of extreme Christmas tackiness.

So anyway, thats most of what is happening in my life. I now need to go finish washing my down comforter upon which a cat puked up faux pine garland. Ah, the joys of Christmas and pets. At least I was smart enough to buy plastic ornaments for the lower third of the tree. I hope that we'll be all healthy enough to get a tree sometime this week.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's boring on the shampoo bottle, and boring in life, too. As a non-outside-of-the-home mom, I do a lot of lathering, rinsing, and of course repeating. I just spent an hour preparing, then scrubbing and mopping the kitchen floor. It is all clean at this very minute. Once it dries, I'll move the table and chairs back in there, and commence re-dirtfying the floor. By 6pm, it will have a whole new array of spots, streaks and crumbs.

Next on the list is the front room. We aren't currently using that room for much, so it has become the catch-all room for the extra toys and mismatched furniture (both of which are plentiful around here). It's the largest room in the house, though, and there will be 16+ people over for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. So I need to clean it. In order to do that, I need the kids to be there with me. So while I'm lathering one end of the room, the kids will be playing at the other end. You with children know how that it going to play out. oy.

At this very moment, there is laundry swishing and tumbling, only to be folded, put away, worn, and sent back down the laundry chute. (Yes, I have it better than you who have to schlep you dirty clothes in baskets though the house; my life isn't all bad.) But the neverending cycle of housework goes on.

Lather, rinse, repeat. It just doesn't have the same ring as that mantra from Finding Nemo, Just keep swimming, does it?


note: I tried to bring this entry around to a tidy point, but I can't seem to make that happen. As it turns out, I'm just whining about the neverending housework. Go figure.

U no what I h8 about Myspace?

The stupid abbreviations. Maybe they wouldn't anger me so much if I ever used text messaging on my phone. No, I think that the excessive abbreviations are evil and are tearing apart the fabric of America.

Sorry for the hyperbole there. Really, I think the abbreviations are fine on cell phones, but serve no purpose except to appease lazy fingers. And if you are a real internet addict, you should be a good typist in pretty short order. It truly doesn't take more time to type night than nyt. Serously, folks, take a typing class if it's so hard!

I promise to get back to regularly posting here soon (I know, promises, promises). Problem is, most of my writing lately has not been stuff I really want to put out in public. I'm nutty like that. Like I saw on a t-shirt the other day, "I post intimate details of my life on the internet and I don't know why." Ain't it the truth.

ouch.

My throat hurts. Well, the left side of it, at least. Am I the only person on the planet who routinely gets a unilateral sore throat? Both of my ears are plugged, however.

The hubby is home sick today, too. Nora is delighted about that. She only sees the fact that she gets to watch Scooby Doo's Pirate Adventure with him. She sure is a daddy's girl.

It's a good thing I wear $5 shoes

The other day I was walking to work (only about a 10 minute jaunt through my little burg). It was one of those fall rainy days, and I spent the first half of the walk kicking myself for not having driven the car. It was windy and wet and not really fit for humans to be out. About halfway there, I crossed the street and headed up past a local insurance agent's brand new building. I had seen the concrete and bricklaying crews there that week, and noticed that they must have gone inside because of the rain. Or it could have been lunchtime, but that's not important. What is important, however, is the fact that in their haste to leave the worksite, the concrete crew had not put up any barricades on the brand new sidewalk. I assume you can see here this is heading.

Yes, I plonked my right foot (shod in $5.00 black fake-Chuck-Taylors) 4" deep in fresh, wet, concrete. Of course, my left foot had already begun it's next step. Left foot now also 4" deep in fresh, wet, concrete. Now you are wondering, Wwhat exactly does one do after putting both feet ankle deep in wet concrete? I'll tell you.

1. Mumble "shit!" and a few other words of the blue persuasion.
2. Quickly look around to see if anyone is pointing and laughing. (*whew* No one around.)
3. Hop out of the sidewalk as quickly as possible and start walking fast away from the scene of the crime.
4. Do not under any circumstances stop within eyeshot to assess the damage.
5. Once safely away, use napkins from your purse to wipe off anything that would make you look like you escaped a botched mob hit.

And a few days later, when you walk by that sidewalk again, you look like a kid on his first trip up an escalator, because your feet surely do not believe that the concrete is set. They did manage to re-fill my shoe marks.

Tuesday's post

It's cold here now. I think the heat is on for good. *sigh* A couple of weeks and the trees will have no leaves (many of them will be lodged in my gutters), and the short sleeves will be packed away for 6 months. We have the furnace company coming out on Tuesday to give her the old once-over. I wonder if they can get the Yosemite Sam figure out of the heater pipe. My daughter was pretty sad when her little bro sent Sam a-packing down the vent. But mostly, I just hope that they don't find anything seriously wrong. I'm sick of paying people to fix stuff. Aren't we all?

We went to WalMart today. I hate that place. But for us it's a necessary evil. We did find Nora a winter coat. She's so picky, I was afraid we have snow before she saw ome she liked. And I bought some clearance rack shorts for Nigel, too. Now I have to remember where I put them so we'll be able to have them next summer. I really ought to be better organized. Hmmm-- I'll put it on my New Year's resolution list.

A little update

I'm cursed with a complex, I think. Im absolutely convinced that my life is too boring to blg about. But I also feel like I should keep this just in case something interesting happens. Nigel had his second birthday last week. Nora is now too tall for last year's jeans. DH's new job is going well. And he even packs his own lunches. (woo hoo!)

Me? I'm just sitting here with Nigel and his cold, sleeping on my lap. That's right, I'm blogging one-handed! How's that for a party trick?? I made my wallpaper-hanging debut yesterday. That's featured in our house blog. It's important to note that I will never be a professional wallpaper hanger. Not only does it take a level of attention to detail and precision that I do not possess, but it also has my neck very angry with me. I have a yoga class tonight, so I hope to be feeling better after some stretching and meditation.

I can think of nothing else for the moment, so I'll sign off for now. I promise to check in if anything earth-shattering comes up.

Fall is coming!

I'm not a huge fan of winter, but fall sure is nice. We've had the windows open and the air conditioning off for a week now, and today my husband and daughter picked the first pumpkin. She helped start the seed in April, and then helped put them in the ground in May. After checking on it several times a week for a few months, she got to pick a pumpkin. She is so proud of it. Of course I jumped at the chance to take a picture of my girlie with the fruit of her labor. There are about 6 or 8 more out there that will become jack-o-lanterns in October, provided no critters or hooligans wreak havoc upon them.


In no time at all it will be time to break out the flannel jammies and woolen socks. And then I'll start posting about how I wish it were summer. It's a neverending cycle of complaints, I tell ya!

Leftovers

One thing I did not forsee when my husband left the restaurant industry was that he would need to begin taking a lunch to work with him. That means that we need to have food for him to take. Now this represents a problem in two ways. One, we need to remember to get the lunch prepared the night before. Second, I now need to make enough food for dinner that there are leftovers for him to take. The alternative is for him to eat sandwiches at lunch every day. How boring is that? Now I dislike leftovers, as a rule, so in the 10 years of our marriage, I've learned to make just enough for the family to eat at the one sitting. My husband, who is happy to eat reheated, day-old food, has been eating at the restaurant: I never really had to think too much about his nutritional needs. So far, he's taken a salad each day.

This whole lunch-packing thing is going to be a learning experience, for sure.

New job starting today

My husband, after many months of searching, finally found a new job that is not in restaurant management. He started today, managing a warehouse crew. I'm sure he'll be super at it, although he's a bit worried. He's "not already an expert" at this, and that is new territory for him. He'll be done in about 3 hours. I cannot wait to find out how it went.

Lemme tell you about my friend

I have been a part of a couple of internet comunities since late 2002, when my daugher was a wee babe. I've gotten to "know" several women very well in that time. Some of them, just for fun, and some of them because of hard times. In particular, last year, one acquaintance was reeling from some pretty horrible medical news. She had recently found out that she had a genetic predisposition to cancer, and had unfortunately passed the gene on to two of her children.

One day, she had an acute need to talk to someone, so I gave her my yahoo IM name. We chatted a little. We didn't know each other very well at tthat point, but I knew she had a real need to vent about her situation. I don't know if it helped her, but after that, I felt like we were linked. There was now a bond with this woman. In the last year + since, she's had several surgeries, countless different drugs to try to help her cope with the side effects of said surgeries and cancer, as well as a move across the country. As if she doesn't have enough to do, she decided that homeshcooling was the best thing for her kids. I don't know where she gets the energy for all that.

We don't talk much anymore-- she's too busy with life to 'hang out' on inane internet message boards, but I read her blog when I have a chance. And I wish that she lived close enough that I could hug her and make it all easier for her. But I'll have to settle for knowing her online, and drawing strength from her humor and fortitude in the face of a all sorts of crap.

And she's a better writer than I. ;)

How does my garden grow...

While I've been indoors during the heat wave, my veggie garden has been busy. Unfortunately so have the weeds. BUT, I have some tomatoes, and yummy peppers to show for it all. There are teeny jalapenos out there too, not yet ready for picking. And with a little luck, Nora and Nigel will have home-grown jack-o-lanterns this year.

Next year, I hope to have a much larger garden. If I get really ambitious, I might grow all sorts of things, and learn how to put them up in the fall. Grandma Bug will be so proud of me.

It's not 99 degrees today!!!

After we got back from vacation, the nasty stomach flu made ts way through our humble home. Once we all felt better, it was hot that no sane human would go outside. Unless there was free food involved, of course. So finally, FINALLY, everyone is healthy and it is only 76 degrees out. It's supposed to rain again this afternoon, though, so I better get some clothes on the kids and go for that walk before we lose our window of opportunity.

I'm outta here

The house is too stressful. So we're heading off to the lake to boat and swim. I hope to get some good pictures!

PSA: Don't forget to put away the glue when you go to the basement.

I went down to do some laundry after dinner, and came back up a few minutes later to see Nigel smearing Nora's glue on construction paper. His hands are a mess. But I remember deliberately smearing Elmers glue on my hands when in elementary school, just so I could dry it and peel it off. So no harm done, right?

Wrong.

It is in his hair. He's got a very punk rock 'do now. But it was nearly bedtime, and he'd had a bath today already, so I need to put off trying to clean him up until the morning. Unfortunately, he really dislikes having his hair washed. Really, really dislikes it. And I think there will be some serious scrubbing involved. That is going to be one sad bathtime. yikes.



For those of you who know me, I took pictures. Let me know if you'd like me to email them to you.)

I should have named my son Harry

Because he's quite the escape artist.

I was out of the house for a couple of hours this morning, and my husband was at home with the kids. Now, our boy Nigel (22 months old) is quite a handful. He's a really fun kid, but he can also scale any wall ond open any door. So we've got baby gates and door locks all over the place. (It's like running the 25-meter hurdles to answer the phone, not to mention the locks on the medicine cabinets, drawers, oven, refrigerator, the list goes on and on.)

So, back to today's story. Daddy's playing with Nora, and all-of-a-sudden he realized that Nigel was absent. So he starts calling for him. No answer. So he looks upstairs. Looking all around, in our closet, the bathroom, etc. Still no Nigel. He eventually goes outside to find our "little" boy, bare feet, and still in jammies walking down the alley towards State Route 24, Half a block from the highway!

!!!

Daddy ran full tilt, and caught the little Houdini and brought him back in.

Turns out, he walked from the living room, climbed over the gate into my office, then through that door to our back door, unlocked that door, and then pushed open the screen door. He figured it was a nice day for a walk. Apparently also a good day to give his father a heart attack.

I hate keeping ourselves locked inside so securely that family and friends cannot just stop by, but we obviously have no choice. So if you want to come over, give me a call first, so I can be ready let you in.

Follow-through is not my strong point.

After all the dirt and grime from yesterday's carpet adventures, I'm not in the mood to work on that room any more today. Unfortunately, I really don't have a choice. I cannot let that grimy floor exist in this house any more. First, there's the odious task of trying various cleaners to figure out which one will do the most cleaning with the least amount of effort. Then, the actual cleaning of 189 square feet of 20-year-old dirt.

I guess I'd better get started...

Wall-to-wall carpet is yucky

I just spent the last couple of hours pulling up old carpet. It was gross under there. I will never *ever* put carpet in my house again. Area rugs? Sure. But if I cannot lift it up every month or two to sweep under there, it won't be in my house. no way.

Now for a late lnch, then on to pulling the hundreds of staples out of the pine floor.

We live in an old house. Thanks to some record-keeping snafus down at the county courthouse, we are not exactly sure how old. The best we can tell, it was built around 1900, then there was a pretty substantial remodel done in the 1930's (or early 40's).

When we moved in to this house last November, we thought the "family room" was a later addition, and didn't have the same wood floors as in the rest of the main floor. So we kept the dark green carpet from the previous owners. I didn't like it, but there really wasn't much money left in the budget to add new flooring in that room. And with such pretty heart pine floors in the other rooms, there 's no way I wanted to lay laminate flooring in the family room.

But then, we had a cat who decided that it was too difficult to go under the baby gate to the basement for her bathroom needs. So she peed in front of my daughter's play kitchen. ew. And then off to the side, by the toy box. double ew. So we shampooed the carpet. I swear it smells worse. I think that the previous owners had had an animal or two, and the carpet cleaning jut reacitvated old smell. {insert gagging sensation here}

So I said to myself "That's it!" and pulled up a larger section of the carpet last night, trying to figure out how much money I was looking at to replace the carpet with hardwood. My husband just got a bit of a quarterly bonus this week, and I could use that for the flooring instead of sticking it in the kitchen renovation budget. But, alas, I found that the spot I originally looked at (near the basement stairs) was not indicative of the whole room. Read: we have hardwood under there! I am ecstatic. I cannot wait until Monday to call some local refinishers and get quotes. There's some sort of adhesive on the boards, but I am sure that it's nothing a professional floor guy couldn't handle.

So today's mission is to avoid the temptation to attempt ripping the old carpet out of that room by myself, with my two kids underfoot. I don't know if I am strong enough to resist that temptation. I really really really want that stinky, ugly carpet gone.

I'll let you know tomorrow if I managed to hold off on the room destruction...

Hmmm

I really want to keep this thing going, but my brain has turned to mush. I'll meditate on possible blog topics whilst washing dishes and folding laundry. I am sure that my housekeeping tasks will feed my creative side, and a new thought-provoking post will emerge. Check back tomorrow, kids!

My Personal Dna Report

Benevolent Leader

Confidence 92
Openness 72
Extroversion 72
Empathy 48
Trust in others 76
Agency 56
Masculinity 22
Femininity 64
Spontaneity 62
Attention to style 52
Authoritarianism 52
Earthy/Imaginative 84
Aesthetic/Functional 32

Spring is here.

I am so discouraged. It feels like we are never going to get past this cold late-winter weather. I made the mistake of looking at the forecast for the next two weeks, and it doesn't look like it is going to get warmer any time soon. This has me in such a funk.

Coupled with the fact that all four in ourfamily have colds, to varying degrees, I am really struggling to maintain my composure. Nigel and Nora were both up at 3:30, after waking each other. It took over an hour to get Nigel back to sleep. I haven't slept more than 2 hours straight in 3 days. I snapped at Nora first thing this morning. Great way to start the day, huh?

I soooo need to turn my kids loose outside and just sit and dig my fingers into the grass. And I need sun on my face. And I need to look at flowers blooming. And to open the windows in the house and let the fresh air in. To hang the laundry on a line to dry.

To wear only one layer of clothing.

I know that the air will eventually warm, but I am impatient. I want to act like a 3-year-old and stomp my foot and demand that it be sunny. Ya think that would work?

Celebrity "What were they thinking"??

I don't normally blog about fashion. BUT, Charlize Theron's hairdo (I am not even giong to critique the dress) at the Oscars last night looked like she might have stolen it from Marion Mercer in 1981's TV hit It's a Living. D'ya think her stylist went to the hair people and said, "Hey, here's a thought -- Let's make one of the prettiest women in Hollywood look like a 55-year-old lady."



But then again, wasn't Charlize the one who showed up looking as orange as an Oompa-Loompa at the 2004 Academy Awards, after a horrible spray-on tan incident? Maybe she's just got a whimsical streak.

I don't wanna play today

It's 8:15, I've eaten, had a cup of coffee (another will be had when I am finished with this post), and I don't want to be me today. I want to take a really long shower. I want to "do" my hair. I want to paint my fingernails. And then go buy a pair of shoes. Or a new top. But that isn't me.

That, however, was me 4 years ago. But then I gave birth to my precious daughter. Nora is absolutely the light of my life. She's funny and smart and has a stunning ability to recall past events. She's pretty, too. But there's no fingernail painting when you've got a little one around.

And then came Nigel. Equally the light of my life, he's even more of a handful. If it can be climbed, he'll scale it. If it can overturned or poured on the floor, he'll do that too. And there's that smile. It stops perfect strangers in the grocery store to say 'hi' and smile back.

I've got two fabulous kids, alright. I am thankful every day that they are part of our family. But that doesn't keep me from yearning for the days of makeup and matching clothes and clean cars and candlelight dinners. And try as I might, I have yet to enjoy playing Candyland with a 3-year-old. Or reading The Runaway Orange for the 100th time. So for now, I just have to grin and bear it, and know that someday I'll get to clean myself without hurrying through the steps, for fear of what I'll find when I step out. Or that I'll be able to wear makeup even just to the grocery store.

And I am sure that my husband wouldn't mind it either.

Enh. Not much to write.

I have no divine inspiration, but I really want to start being more consistent with this blogging deal. So I am posting in spite of my lack of inspiration.

The boy is napping, and the girl is running around in shorts and a t-shirt. My teeth chatter just looking at her, but she insists that she isn't cold. She's nearly 4 -- I should trust that she'll add clothes when she feels a chill.

And now the boy is awake again, so I draw this entry to a close. Maybe I'll be back tomorrow.

I don't plan on homeschooling. So there.

I just want to put that out there, and start owning it. So many of my friends Home School, and as wonderful as it is, I am just not equipped for it. We moved to a small town with good public schools, and my kids are going there when it comes time. I know they'd probably get a better edumikation from me. I know that they won't be exposed to untoward influences if they are at home with me. I know all the reasons why I oughta homeschool.

But I don't want to. I want to grocery shop in peace. I want to be able to have coffee with a friend. I want to have a hobby (or 6). Or maybe I'll get a job that pays real money. I want to be able to clean my house with no one bugging me. I want to shower every day.

Of course if one or both of my children do no excell in the public school system for whatever reason, I woudn't hesitate to pull them out. But I hope it doesn't come to that. I really want a life after all these years of Mommydom.