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?"
Thursday, October 30, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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