A conversation

Me: I bought that t-shirt.

Meg: Which one?

Me: The one that says, "If you consider the set of all sets that have never been considered, does it disappear?".

Meg: You're such a dork.

(short pause)

Meg: You should go on "What Not to Wear". They pay $5000.

Me: Why should I go on "What Not to Wear"?

(pointed look)

Meg: I love you.

(end scene)

Why my house is a disaster area

At the end of last month, I went out of town for a few days, leaving my husband and children home. The house fared as well as could be expected, which is to say, it was still standing. To give credit where credit is due, the kitchen was clean (but then, no REAL meals were prepared, only take-out and kid things like hot dogs and nuggets were eaten) and Mr. Picklebottom had helped Jo and Beth to pick up a portion of their room, which is to say that SOME of the clutter was picked up in PART of the room. To be honest, after I got home I was not doing a fabulous job of catching things back up to the NORMAL level of squalor, but I had plans. Big plans. Getting down and dirty floor-scrubbing plans. Then I got sick. And simultaneously, so did Mr. Picklebottom. The kind of sick where doing ANYTHING AT ALL short of lying there in misery is impossible. There were four kids, though, who WEREN'T sick. So you can imagine what happened to the house when there were no adults functioning at a level capable of keeping the chaos in check. Which brings us to today.

After ingesting enough antibiotics so that by last Thursday I was functioning normally, or as normal as it gets for me, I was sick enough of all the mess to sit down and write down the things that needed to be done today WITHOUT FAIL. First of all, though it won't help the overall state of the house, the laundry still must be done. So I got it started. I loaded the dishwasher and washed dishes so the sink would be empty and I could FINALLY, after WAY TOO LONG, clean the little fish tank in which Jo's pet fighting fish, Calypso, resides. [The fish tank hasn't been done as yet, but it will be as soon as I publish this.] I also decided to hunt down and kill the dust bunnies right where they live, in their nests under Amy's dresser, crib and changing table. HOWEVER, while dressing Amy after her bath, Beth came in with her magnetic earrings, which basically attach to the earlobe with really strong, yet tiny, magnets. She pulled a necklace over her head and the earrings were pulled off her earlobes and proceeded to bounce across the hardwood floor. After gathering up what we could see, we were short one magnet, specifically one of the earring backs.

Now I couldn't vacuum those dust bunnies, because Beth was CERTAIN that the magnet had gone under the dresser, and heaven forbid I vacuum it up. So I had to first find the magnet. Since it was a really strong magnet, I thought I would just pass something long and metal back and forth over the floor under the dresser, the magnet would stick to it and I could go about my cleaning plans. So I went to the garage and came up with this:



After getting on my hands and knees, sticking it under the dresser and dragging it around for a while, I came up with nothing but dust. Lots of dust. So then I dragged the dresser away from the wall and ran the wrench around the baseboards, since there was a tiny gap between the bottom of the baseboard and the floor into which the magnet could have slipped. No dice. So then I followed the same steps underneath the changing table and the crib. Finally, I was left with sore knees and a very dusty wrench, but no magnet. In frustration, I let out a big sigh, looked down, and there was that damn magnet. Right in the middle of the floor where Beth and I had looked and run our hands over and finally determined that it must be under something. So YAY, I found the magnet, but my 5 minute dust vacuuming job turned into a much longer job that required a lot more effort. I will say, though, that Amy's dust bunnies have been vanquished. of course, after lugging the vacuum back downstairs, I noticed a couple of cobwebs. Next time...

You'll recall that I had started laundry. Well, I went downstairs to do the whole process of removing clothes from dryer, transferring clothes from washer to dryer and starting another load in the washer. I managed to get everything out of the dryer except one of my bras. A bra that I have only owned for a couple weeks now, as a couple weeks ago I was down to ONE raggedy bra and finally went to the store and purchased several so I could, you know, ROTATE their usage. It wouldn't come out of the dryer. WHY would it not come out of the dryer, you ask. Well, because of THIS:



One of the hooks had somehow hooked itself to the dryer drum. For the life of me, I could NOT unhook it. Now you would think that, hey, it got hooked on there somehow, so if I just REVERSE how it got hooked, it will come UNhooked. Yeah. That's what you would think. Thinking is overrated. And WRONG. No matter what I tried, and I tried every possible angle, it would not unhook. When I did finally get it out, which took A WHILE, it looked like this:



So there goes one new bra into the trash. At least I buy cheap-ass cotton bras from Target. Tell me these kinds of wonderful things happen to you. They happen ALL THE TIME to me.

So now, after cleaning Calypso's tank (only because I can't justify NOT doing it, the poor guy has been suffering long enough), I am going to sit down with a warm brownie and some ice cream rather than finish what I wanted to finish, since OBVIOUSLY everything I try today is subject to sabotage by the fates. I just hope Calypso and his tank survive the cleaning, it has been THAT kind of day. And that is why my house is a disaster area. Because I myself am apparently a walking disaster.

More miscellany

[This post was originally published on my old blog on 8/28/07, so any time references are in regards to that date.]

Once again, with nothing else to talk about, I will resort to posting about the most interesting person I know... me. :) You can find the first post I wrote about myself here. So, on to more stuff about me...

I like photography. I really enjoy B&W photography. I don't use a digital camera; I still don't believe that they take pictures as nice as a regular one. I do use my husband's digital camera sometimes, when I know I want to put the images online, since it's easier and less time-consuming than developing and scanning. And someday I will use one of those fancy digital SLRs (probably the digital version of what I use now). But for now I'll just stick with my Nikon N80. If I had known myself better when I was younger, I might have worked to become a photographer, but alas, life goes backwards, and you don't really know what you'd like to study in college until long after you've graduated. Of course, my favorite photo subjects are my kids. I don't have my own darkroom, but someday I plan to.

I can't grow fingernails. When I was a kid, I bit them. Now I don't bite them, and they do grow, but they're so wimpy that they break off immediately upon achieving any length whatsoever. Oh, well. The ones that don't immediately break off keep getting in the way anyway, so I end up cutting or biting them off out of frustration. I don't understand how those people with really long fingernails function. I mean, really, how does the woman in this picture tie her shoes or button her shirt? Besides which, I'm sorry lady, I'm sure they took forever to grow and you're very proud (of what exactly, I'm not sure), but YUCK!

I rarely wear make-up. And when I do, it's minimal. Just blush and mascara. It's not because I think I have a natural beauty that I want to let shine through. Ha! It's because when it comes to make-up, I don't have the slightest clue how to do it. That, and I'm too lazy to learn or, if I did know, to take the time out of my day to apply it.

I LOATHE uncomfortable clothing. I would spend my life in jeans and T-shirts if that were acceptable. I wear jeans to church, even on Easter. I don't fall for those "dressing up is a way to show respect for God" arguments. I think showing up is what matters. When a special event occurs, I call someone and ask just how casual I can go. And invariably, I am the most under-dressed. But, if you read my last post about me, you know this - I don't care. :) By the way - SO NOT ME in the picture. I wish!

I have an extremely hard time starting things. I'm a terrible procrastinator. Even with easy things that will only take a few minutes. Once I do manage to start, however, I MUST FINISH NOW. To the detriment of other things. If a project has begun, I am compelled to work on it 24/7 until it is completed. Can you say obsessive-compulsive?

I once stepped over the piddly little barrier they have around things at Sea World and let the hyacinth macaw step onto my arm (I had a couple macaws at the time, so knew about how to handle them). People were feeding it and stuff, so hey, why not? The Sea World people came running out to chastise me. Hey, they shouldn't leave them just OUT like that, you know?

And that's enough for now.

Miscellany

[This post was originally published on my old blog on 7/17/07, so all time references are in regards to that date.]

I don't really have a topic today, so I thought I'd just throw out some miscellaneous info about myself. Since I am SOOOOOO interesting. First of all, a crappy picture of moi. It was next to impossible to find a picture of me, since in my family, I'm the one who takes all the pictures. So this is from a day last spring at my daughter's pre-school. I was sitting on the floor looking up, which is SUCH a lovely angle, don't you think?

I am not getting gray hair! Yay! I am, however, getting white hair. Which I like better than gray, so I'm fine with it. Plus, since I'm a redhead, I'll be like 80 before anyone will notice it. I only have about 5 of them so far (but I can't see the back of my head, so there may be more). No, I will not color my hair. I will let it go white naturally.

I am apathetic. Pretty much completely and totally. Except when it comes to my kids. I may get riled up about something for a short period of time, but then it invariably burns itself out and I go on about my business. Not a great quality, I know, but hey, I don't care. ;)

I LOVE to read, and always have a book going. I'm anal about it, though, and I don't like to read more than one novel at a time. I have to finish one before I pick up another. This is because I have read so much that I often get plot lines and characters mixed up, even when I'm only reading one, so reading more than one at a time puts too much stress on me to keep everything separate. My most often read and enjoyed genres include mysteries, psychological thrillers, legal thrillers and southern fiction. Currently I am reading "Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1)" by Orson Scott Card for the "Something About Me" reading challenge, which is science fiction, a genre I usually avoid, but I am enjoying the book so far, and may read the rest of this particular series. Which leads me to...

I am not a joiner. Though I went out on a limb and did the reading challenge, I generally do not join things. No Gymboree, no "Mommy and me" things, no book groups, no nothing. I am a loner. I am not all that social. The few friends I have basically had to keep at me and at me until I finally gave in and did something with them. But those few friends are great ones, and I'm glad they harassed me until I gave in. :)

I love going to the movies, and I thoroughly enjoy going alone. It's been about 10 years since I've been able to do that, but it's one of the things I am most looking forward to doing in my old age. Not to say I don't enjoy going with other people - I do, but I like going alone just as much. (I'm also one of those people who will go to a nice restaurant alone and read a book while I eat.) I like most genres except horror and slasher flicks. Scary, I'm okay with, like "The Ring," but I don't usually see those either until they come out on DVD or are shown on TV. Favorite movie ever? I'm not sure. Loved "The Princess Bride" way back when, haven't seen it in a while. All the "Pirates of the Caribbean" were great, I thought. So maybe I go for swashbuckling and humorous, I don't know. What I do know is that the worst movie ever is "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover." We're talking major suckage there.

So that's enough for now. Can't give you everything at once. Got to hold something back for the next time I'm stuck for a topic.