Yet Another Sick Day

Still not mine.

J is sick this time, but it seems like only a low grade fever (can't find the stupid thermometer) and cough. She woke me up this morning around 7, which meant I couldn't write up specific plans, but the preschool director said she would take care of it.  I mean, I did have my plans for the week written up, but it doesn't specifically say what I was planning to do today. 

So while J lays on the couch relaxing, here's what I plan to accomplish:

• Laundry, laundry, and more laundry - I have done so much laundry today that I literally have lost track.  I'm thrilled to say that I only have two baskets waiting to get washed left.
• Sorted every piece of laundry in the house.  Now have HUGE piles on my bed, but will work through them all through out this day.  And YES, I had to add it to my To Do list so I could now say this - TA DA
• 5 minutes in the LR, DR, and Kitchen  TA DA
• Chop up veggies for soup  TA DA (And the soup was delicious!!!)
• Cut up the chicken
• Rearrange the kitchen cabinets - plates and cups
• Create world peace
• Work on our budget (hmmm...maybe I should just stop at world peace)
• Once again tackle the mountain of papers

I hope I can get more than this accomplished, but for now, this is my TO DO list, which I hope will soon turn into my TA DA list.  I will add in italics what I actually do today.

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant

Okay, so it's not really "an Italian restaurant" so much as my favorite Borders.

And it's not really "scenes" so much as ideas I've gathered from my stack of magazines and books to look at while I'm hanging out which I will return to the shelves before I leave for the night.

But when I tried to think of a good title, "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" stuck in my head.

Deal with it.

This afternoon was kind of rough, so I jumped on DH's offer to basically take the rest of the day off in exchange for various {ahem} favors.

And now I'm at Border's.  Alone.  Ahhhhhhhh....

I decided to list all the fabulous ideas I gather tonight.  Whether I end up actually USING any of them remains to be seen.

• Lay a Tray - create a decoupaged tray using egg shells that have been thoroughly cleaned and broken into small pieces.
• Go Gaming - make a centerpiece kind of tray thingy by gluing misfit game pieces on a plain charger.  Note to self - figure out what a "plain charger" is.
• Check out DSIRE.org to figure out if we can get a free home energy audit.
• This one woman featured in this magazine had no room for a separate pantry, so she opened one kitchen wall to expose the studes and added 2x4s cut to size for shelving.
• Go to diyadvice.com/paintcabinets for some much needed advice on how to hopefully paint my kitchen cabinets.  Or maybe we should just remove the doors altogether?
• I need to replace the awful, huge, fluorescent light in the kitchen - maybe with a "chic pendant lamp" from IKEA and one of those pot holder thingies.
• IF (and this is a big IF) we had an "extra room" that could be used as a guest bedroom, there's an article here on how to make it do double duty as a craft room by using a Murphy bed. 
• Oh my goodness - I cannot IMAGINE taking the time to wrap presents so they will look as fancy-schmancy as these do in this craft magazine!
• Hmmm...these rooms with white, shoulder height paneling look great.  And by layering different styles of molding on top of the paneling leaves a nice sized ledge to use for display stuff.
• I want to take everything out of our shed, apply painted pegboard to the walls, and hang everything from the walls.  Install hooks and buckets to the insides of the shed doors to hang lots of stuff.
• You can use a kazoo to blow bubbles!
• Use a six-pack carton as a car caddy to hold tissues, hand wipes, granola bars, whatever.
• Go to ginseystore.com to buy a $3 sippy straw cleaner!  We don't use sippy cups anymore, but all three kids love silly straws - I wonder if it would work for them.
• Volunteerspot.com to set up help for J's school party (I'm the homeroom mom for the first time).
• I want to install an indoor swing or hammock seat in the kids' playroom.  It appears that IKEA sells an Ekorre swing kit and mounting hooks for a total of $17.  Sweet!
• To make a pegboard to use in the entryway, paint it first with a base coat.  Trace the objects you want to hang with a pencil, and then use a paintbrush to paint inside the lines with the second color.  It looks really cool.
• $20 canopy for J's room: Buy tulle ($2.50 for a nine by three feet sheet), hang it over her bed with four small nails or sturdy pushpins - it's that easy!
• Preschool idea - find vintage rotary wall phones and hang them on the wall
• Just as I have always said - you will NOT catch a cold simply by going outside with wet hair.

Okay, the person sitting next to me is eating vegetarian sushi and it smells SOOO good, but they don't sell that here, so now I have to ask him where he got it from so I can immediately go there, buy some, and head home.  Of course, he's deep in conversation, so I probably should at least wait until there is a slight lull, but before he throws the packaging away.  

I hope you enjoyed the ideas I found as much as I did!

Just a Pinch and Then It's Over

Before we left for school this morning, I gathered the kids around me. "I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is I'm picking you up from school early today and taking us all over to Dunkin Donuts!"

Cheers erupted through the dining room. Only one child, after jumping up and down a few times out of sheer joy, realized something must be up and suspiciously asked, "Why?"

"Well," I began slowly, "the bad news is that we first have to swing by the doctors' office to get our flu shots."

Cheers were soon replaced with loud sobs.

I got them calmed down, sent them off to school, went to my own school to teach, but their appointment got closer and closer and I couldn't put it off any longer. I picked up the kids and drove to the office. Tears started as soon as the van doors closed.  I repeated our shot mantra over and over:  "It's just a pinch and then it's over," but A screamed, "But some pinches are longer than others!"  I tried to redirect by asking for descriptions of the donut they were going to get afterwards, but A cried, "I just can't think about that now!"

Side note - While I try as a rule to not reward/bribe children with food, especially desserts, sometimes nothing else will do.

The actual time inside the examining room was fifteen minutes, but somehow once we entered the small room (the better for our screams to bounce off the walls and deafen Mommy) all time stopped. By the time we left, all the children were semi-calm once again, but I still ended up having to physically restrain all three of them while they each wailed at the top of their lungs. A jumped out of my arms three different times until I finally had to sit in a chair and hold him on my lap with both arms AND a leg, only to have him begin to laugh through his tears as soon as the shot was over, explaining, "It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would!"

Great, buddy.  I'm so glad it's didn't hurt YOU as much as you thought it would.  It sure hurt ME just as much as I thought it would!  I hate having to hold them down so some scary doctor or nurse can inflict pain.  I feel like I'm betraying any and all trust you have in me.  I know it's a necessary evil, but it still breaks my heart each and every time.

Sick Day

Not mine. B has been sick with a fever and asthmatic cough, so we've been taking turns staying home with him. Today is my day. His fever was down this morning and is now gone (woohoo!) so he is now off the computer/not watching tv/done with the Wii and is tackling the mountain of schoolwork his brother brought home for him. Wasn't that nice of him? (sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell)


So now that he's not really, really sick, I really, really have no reason to still be sitting at the computer, ignoring the state of this house.  Really.  Since I wasted the morning:

B, I'm going upstairs to take a nap.  Here's the intercom if you need me, a big glass of juice with a silly straw, a bagel with margarine.  Enjoy watching the episodes of Fetch with Ruff Ruffman you just found on the computer.  Mommy needs to sleep.

Hmmm...does that make me a bad mom?  Or just one that was really, really tired?

I have to get my butt in gear so I at least feel like I accomplished SOMETHING!

Here's the plan, which I will attempt to complete in between helping B not get overwhelmed with his work:

1. Fold and put away the laundry in the dryer, transfer laundry in the washer into the dryer, and put the blanket B threw up on into the washer.  Yuck!   - DONE
2. Attack the kitchen - empty dishwasher - DONE, reload dishwasher - DONE, wash by hand the large dishes that will not fit in said dishwasher, clear off and clean off counters (including throwing away last week's CSA vegetables that I never got around to cooking - yes, I am hanging my head in shame as I throw my money away)
3. Clear off the dining room table
4. Resort and organize my many plastic containers and stock up on individual portions of snacks to make lunches easier to prepare
5. Fold and put away laundry in the dryer, transfer blanket to the dryer, put in yet another load of laundry that clearly seems to multiply whenever I turn my back
6. Find a face painting face template to print out so I can show what I am able to paint.  I volunteered to face paint at the school district's PTO carnival this weekend, and it sure makes it easier when I have faces for kids to pick
7. If I'm still standing at that point - tackle the Paper Pile threatening to fall on and crush anyone who breathes on it wrong.

Sigh.  It's pretty sad that just typing that list was the highlight of my day so far.  Okay, okay, before B moves on to his math, I better get up and go.