I'm losing my $#@%!!#$% mind

I will now tell you what a typical day consists of for me:

Get up, get kids up, bathroom, teeth, etc.

Kiss husband goodbye as he runs quickly from the oncoming group of chaos that is his family.

Give kids a bath.

Dress kids. Dress youngest child twice because she sticks arms into bathwater which hasn't yet drained.

Feed kids/drink coffee. Do a load of laundry. Fold 2 loads of laundry.

Clean up kitchen-load/reload dishwasher.

Dress youngest child again because she has put orange slices in her sleeves.

Attempt to do something educational and/or fun with these children. Today we read 3 issues of Highlights magazine and discussed ways to avoid further injury to our heads.

Clean up living room which has become a fort of pillows, etc., necessary for reading.

Feed children lunch.

Dress youngest child again as her sister so thoughtfully gave her a bowl of balsamic vinaigrette to dip her cheese in, which youngest child dumped on table and played in while I was in the pantry putting the crackers away.

Brush teeth again, hunt for shoes- eldest child takes approximately 14 years to tie shoes-panic because we're going to miss the school bus.

Find backpack, throw in granola bar for snack.

Bus arrives, eldest child goes to kindergarten-yay!

Return home, put youngest child down for a nap.

Realize I'm hungry, drink another coffee instead.

Go into living room and spend the next 2 hours scraping paint off the ceiling (see Sweet Calcimine post), spend another 30 minutes cleaning up tremendous mess on floor.

Get youngest child up from nap, check e-mail while cuddling her. No good e-mail.

Walk down to bus stop, fetch eldest child.

Return home and begin the project that I meant to do today- rearrange furniture in the guest room.

Give kids a snack.

Get bed that has been stored in basement out and assemble-discover that it's too big for the mattress and boxspring-put the other generic metal frame underneath and pretend that it is correct.

Give up on this, go downstairs, let kids watch cartoons while I make dinner.

Husband arrives.

We eat, clean up, etc.

Pick up freecycle item, a drafting table to put in guest room so that Old Baby can do her art projects somewhere other than kitchen table.

Return, assemble table.

Help husband and kids carve pumpkins.

(Oh, did I fail to mention the 7 diapers I changed?)

Go upstairs to put away yet another basket of laundry and honest-to-goodness overhear the following question posed by Old Baby:

"Hey Dad... why doesn't mom have a job?"

Yay! Head injury!

We had the pleasure of rushing Old Baby to the hospital last night when she learned the hard way that when mommy says; "Stop twirling that thing around and spinning in circles or you'll bust your head open on that radiator!", it's best to heed the warning.

Two stitches on her forehead, over the right eye.

It took 3 nurses and her dad to hold her still (AFTER she was wrapped in a blanket) for the stitches.

The nurses all commented on her strength and her lung capacity.

We're very proud.

I know I already said this...

...but I really abhor Sarah Palin.

I just watched the Katie Couric interview, again, and I am in a state of shock, again.

Jibberish.

Sweet Calcimine

Ah, the joys of an old house.

B and I began a rather large project over the weekend. Our living room ceiling had a series of cracks that had begun to alarm me-visions of massive chunks of old horsehair plaster falling on my children's heads began consuming my every waking thought-so I did my research and came up with two possible fixes. The first option was to tear out the entire ceiling and install new drywall, the second was to try and repair the plaster using Big Wally's Plaster Magic (sounds awesome, right?). This second option would allow us to re-glue the plaster to the lathe using a super special adhesive without removing any of the original plaster-so I decided that Big Wally's it was.

The first day consisted of drilling a bunch of holes into the ceiling, shooting them full of goo and screwing temporary supports into the lathe until the adhesive fixed. This was surprisingly easy-very little mess, very little hassle, just a lot of time.

Second day consisted of the same, but done with a slight hangover (unrelated to the project itself).

The third day I rested.

Today is the fourth day and time to remove the temporary supports. No problem, no worries, that is until I attempt to scrape the excess glue from the ceiling and discover that the paint is coming off the ceiling in sheets, big sheets and little flakes.

I'm alarmed, I keep scraping, the paint just keeps coming off, I'm even more alarmed...I run to my computer and do a Google search.

Here's the issue: In the olden days, when this house was built, after the walls were plastered it took between 6 months and a year for the plaster to cure. Walls and ceilings couldn't be painted until the plaster cured; clearly this was too long to wait and so Calcimine was applied over the uncured plaster. But what in the hell is Calcimine? Calcimine is a water-base paint containing zinc oxide and glue and coloring (I don't know this to be a fact, I got this info online).

This is all fine and well, but it seems that nothing will bond with the Calcimine except more Calcimine, which is sort of like liquid chalk dust, not really permanent (remember all those Laura Ingalls Wilder/Huck Finn-type stories where everyone was always whitewashing the house or the barn or whatever the hell it was they lived in? Same concept). Of course, eventually modern people painted over this crap with latex or oil based paints. On a ceiling it isn't such a problem unless you get moisture between the Calcimine and the paint or you start scraping at the paint as I did, and then you will find yourself in the state of mind I currently find myself in...pissed off.


The only way to properly address this issue is to wash all this crap off the ceiling, wash again, and repeat and repeat and repeat. Then let the ceiling dry. Then skimcoat the areas you damaged while scraping. Then let that dry. Then skimcoat again. Then let that dry. Then sand. Then prime. Then paint.

Wait, did I mention that this is in the living room? Where we live?

Or I could just pretend that I didn't know better and paint over it directly.

Hmm.

My toddler will have the venti latte

New Baby LOVES coffee, I've discovered.

I can no longer leave my partially finished cups laying about willy nilly as I once did, as she will find and consume them in no time.

"Mmmm", she says, "Nuk!"

In an interesting twist, this morning I found her dipping her barrettes into a cup and licking them clean.

I am tired of people, especially during this campaign

I just saw on the news that Barack Obama needs to defend himself against allegations that he uttered a sexist remark directed at Sarah Palin. The remark was in reference to John McCain's economic policies, and Obama stated that "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig".

Really, people? This makes you angry? This is a sexist remark?

I also caught a segment where some roving reporter was interviewing women voters in Park Ridge, Illinois. When asked how they felt about Governor Palin, several responded; "Well, I like that she's a mom! I am definitely going to vote for her!" ,when these same women were asked if they knew anything about where she stands on "the issues", they said "No, not really."

Hey Gals! I'm a mom, too!!! Perhaps I should run for VP, 'cause I've put the old uterus to work a couple of times! Yay! The sisterhood is strong!

It isn't that I hate Palin personally, I don't care about her personally,she seems like an interesting person, I have no doubt that she's tough, but I have learned enough about her to say that I strongly disagree with many of her views. So, I won't vote for McCain/Palin (or as Brent said yesterday "McCalin") I think men and women both would be well advised to vote for someone who supports the things that will advance our country, and respect the best parts of our nation.

Like freedom of speech, for example.

There are many things I find objectionable about Palin's views, but what I can't get my head around is her inclination to ban books at the library of Wasilla while she was mayor. I don't care WHICH books, I don't care WHY she wanted to ban books, I'm just not having it. Should someone happen upon a bit of literature that they find objectionable, there is no reason they cannot simply stop reading. If a child brings home something that the parents find offensive, there is no reason they should not exercise their parental rights and take the material away from the child, or maybe explain to the child what it is about that material that offends them.

Information is not harmful. Ideas are not harmful. Ignorance IS harmful, and I see so much ignorance on the part of Palin: global warming is NOT the result of human activity, creationism IS a valid explanation for how the world came to be, and should be taught in schools, the war in Iraq is "a task that is from God", blah blah blah.

I don't care how many kids this woman has... She's bonkers.

Hoard the Cord

I have spent the last three days attempting to organize our office space and de-clutter the house. I was on a roll, things were bagged and driven to the donation box, I found that I could bear to give up several dozen pairs of shoes, old handbags, clothes that didn't fit right, old books, small electronics, etc. Things that I imagined I would one day require were easily and readily cast aside for the sake of simplifying life. I felt good, I felt productive, I felt invincible.

Last night, however, I hit upon a monumental snag. The snag's name is Brent, and he is my husband, and he has a disease. The disease probably doesn't have a name, only a description: the irrational need to keep each and every cord, cable, ac adapter, splitter, what have you, that has ever passed into our house. If it has a prong or a plug and is attached to a cord then it can never NEVER be thrown away. Ever. Period.

Never mind that the adapter is very clearly marked as belonging to a set of speakers long ago disposed of, forget the fact that most items such as scanners or printers come with their own adapters and cables ,etc. and that all the scanners and printers we own are currently connected to their respective cords and functioning correctly. All of that most be disregarded because someday we will find ourselves in need of this very THING that I proposed might be disposed of.

"Uh, what are doing?"

"I'm getting rid of these cords that were all jumbled up together in this box that has been sitting untouched since we moved in 4 months ago, and before that sat untouched in our office at the last house for 5 years."

"No, I need to keep those."

"Why?"

"Because I ALWAYS need adapters just like that one."

" But clearly you don't because they've been in this box for our eldest child's entire lifetime and you haven't used them."

"I was looking for them, but you keep getting rid of things."

"But I didn't get rid of these, here they are."

"Just let me take care of it, I'll take care of all of this"

"You've been saying that for half a decade"

And on it went until I agreed to untangle all of them and neatly store them in an enormous plastic bin which I placed in the attic and which I will probably lay eyes on again several years from now when we move them to the next house.