yard work

What happened to Summer???   Here in the upper Midwest the weather has taken a very cool turn.  I am actually loving the 60's and cloudy weather because just a week ago it was close to 100 here and very muggy.   Gotta love weather in the Midwest!  Anyway, Hubs and I are taking advantage of the cooler temps and getting some yard work done.

Ok, actually......Hubby is the one doing the brunt of it.  He took it upon himself to go and buy a chainsaw and trim up our two very large, very overgrown pine trees that are in our front yard.  He got both of them trimmed up pretty good and started burning some of the branches last night and again this morning.  He seems to be enjoying himself.  I'm not sure what it is about it that appeals to him.  It might be that it's outside and he can use a chainsaw (boys with toys), or maybe it's the fact that he got to see progress pretty quickly.   Whatever the reason, he's been on top of the chore and he's even talking about doing more yard work.

I'm loving it.  Not only does my yard look better, but it's good for Hubs.  He's active, doing productive things for our home, and he's involving our oldest child to help by bribing her to haul branches and sticks in return for money or time on a video game.   It's really a win-win for everyone.  

Now------How can I get him to finish up the projects INSIDE the house????   :)

Can't sleep

I hate insomnia.

Here it is, 12:45am and I'm awake.  I'm not even a little sleepy.   Well, okay.....maybe a tad tired, but not much!  I don't know why, but it gets to be late at night and I end up being up.

I'm thinking it's because everyone is asleep, and I can finally think about stuff without being interrupted by little ones who want hugs, or milk, or a DSI plugged in, or husbands who don't know where their stuff is.....Yup, at night it's just me and the cat.

I used to love staying up late.  I got a lot of stuff done and then I could sleep in and be fine.  Those days are gone, however.  I kind of got by when my daughter was a baby.  Hubs was deployed and I wasn't working so it was awesome:  Stay up late and then in the morning lay comatose on the couch while she and I watched tv.  Then, after mommy recouped, we'd go to a mommy and me group or baby-mommy swim lessons.  However, now it's a completely different story.

For starters, now I have to get my daughter up and at 'em for school.  This is not an easy task.  She's very pokey in the morning and I gotta say I don't help because I hit Snooze a few too many times.  She gets on the bus a little before 8am and I would LOVE to go back to sleep at that point, but about the time I heard the bus drive away, I start to hear my son wake up in his crib.

Ugh.

I love it, believe me.  I wish I could snuggle with him like I did with her.  Lay there in our pj's and watch The View or Good Morning America.  However, morning time is rushed around here.  I try and get him fed, and then I go through like a freak trying to get as much done as possible before I head off to work.  Then, once i'm home at night, then it's hurry hurry to get dinner made, cleaned up, baths, homework.....the anthem of mothers everywhere.

I'm the first one up and the last one to sleep.  I think this burning the candle at both ends is going to catch up to me.  Maybe this weekend I'll try to go to bed early.  Yeah right!

Clogged - a tale of poo

I knew today might bea tad rough. It's the first day back for our daughter after Spring break and Hubs is back in his unit so I knew this morning might be a little....challenging. Well, it was. On top of the usual Monday morning craziness, the toilet got clogged. No big deal, right? Wrong. That incident ended up taking an entire morning to fix.

 Once I got her on the bus I grabbed our plunger and tried again to break it up. Honestly, I don't know how it got clogged. Maybe TMI, but it wasn't a bad bowel movement and minimal TP was used. I feel the need to put that tidbit of info in because maybe some of you are wondering the same thing my husband was when I called him to complain: "what did you do to clog it so bad". The answer is nothing. I did nothing to clog it so it shouldn't have been an issue. Our plunger was worthless. After about 20 minutes of trying to use it, I gave up. I took a shower and headed off to Walmart. I wanted a heavy duty plunger. All they had were the crappy plungers I already had and this:

I didn't think it looked like much but it was all they had so I took it.  After hauling the baby back into the car (in the rain, no less!) and driving home, I was more than ready to get this thing cleaned out and get on with my day.  I took that brand new plunger and.....no luck.  It went down a little but not much.  

I was getting pissy.  I had had plans today and running around town getting devices to unclog my toilet was not on the list.  But, leaving it grossed me out so I ran back out, this time to Ace Hardware, and got another, different plunger.  This one was top of the line, but it still looked eerily familiar to my original plunger.  Only this one was black and bigger.  On a whim, I also grabbed some drainer that was "guaranteed" to unclog toilets in 15 minutes.  Plus, it was made in America.  How could I go wrong??

By this time my baby was getting cranky, I was hungry myself, and I desperately needed a Pepsi.  I stuck a Nuk in his mouth to satisfy him for a few minutes and tried the new plunger.  Still nothing!  What the hell???  So i decided to try the drainer.  It was labeled caustic and had a warning to use gloves.  Did I have gloves?  Nope.   I had images of having butterfingers and dropping the stupid bottle and giving myself 3rd degree burns.  I carefully poured some in and let it sit the 15 minutes.  While it was doing it's magic, I fed the baby and got him back to bed for his nap. (yes, that much time had passed already).

The directions told me to flush after the 15 minutes but when I did what little the water had lowered filled right back up to the brim again.  I tried one more time, same results.

By this time I was starting to panic.  I really did not have it in the budget to get a plumber.  My neighbor happens to be a plumber, but he wasn't home.  So, I called my daddy.  He said he had a snake and would come over after work.  "You sure it's not a toy or something?"

Oooh, i sure hope not.  

While waiting I kept trying with the plunger.  I plunged for literally, hours.  My hands got red and hurt. Finally I tried again with that one from Walmart and....

IT WORKED!!!

Hallelujah, praise God.  I have never been that happy to hear a toilet whoosh.  I even flushed 3 more times after that just to make sure it wasn't some fluke.  I hurried and texted my dad who congratulated me on doing it by myself and being independent.  Yeah, that's right, who needs a man?  Not me! (Although, if i'd had one, this could have ended a lot sooner, what with their brute strength and all).

So there ya have it.  Ace eat your heart out.  My little plastic, cheap looking plunger from Walmart worked.  I unclogged the toilet and it only took......5 hours.

Yikes.

Laundry is not a dirty word

I hate laundry.  For 2 adults, a child and an infant, we have quite the load of dirty clothes.  Every time I have to attack that dreaded chore, I cringe a bit inside.

It seems that laundry is the never-ending chore.  No matter how hard I try, I cannot get caught up.  About the time I get all of the loads washed and folded and put away, a new pile awaits me.  Never.  Ending.

I don't actually mind the washing part.  We have a laundry chute that our clothes go down and ends up in the basement.  The only clothes that don't go down are the kids clothes.  Each child has their own laundry basket in their room and it's not much to lug those down to the basement either.  Sometimes our daughter's clothes end up down the chute also, so it's really just the baby's clothes that are kept separate and the only reason for that is the fact that his clothes get washed in Dreft.

I hate that moment that I open up cabinets to the bottom of the laundry chute.  I open them and there's usually a pile of clothes waiting for me.  A pile, so high, that towers up into the chute above it.  I have to be very careful pulling out the clothes, because one false move and the whole pile will come raining down on me in an avalanche of dirty clothes.   Sigh.

I'm not much for sorting the clothes.  I usually gather as many as i can and shove them in the washer.  We have a high efficiency and I can cram a lot in there.  The only snafu with this method is my husband's nasty habit.   He smokes and for some God-only-knows-reason, he shoves the cigarette butts in his pants pockets.  He says its so he doesn't litter.  I call it flat out laziness.  He is home 80% of the time and we do own trashcans.   I've tried rebelling and telling him I'm not doing his laundry unless he cleans out his pockets, but since he doesn't care if he stays in the same clothes for days at a time, this didn't really work.  So my sorting also consists of digging into his pockets and pulling out butts and tossing them in the trash.  Then my hands smell like nasty cigarettes.  Ew. Ew. Ew.

The part I hate the most about doing laundry?  It's the actual sorting and putting away once they're clean.  I'm the only one who seems to know how to do this job too.  I tell ya, I'm a real one-woman-machine here.  By the time I've sorted, and cleaned pockets and washed and also taken care of the baby and Hubs in between washings, I'm beat.  I end up piling the cleaned clothes onto beds where they stay for days until I get them put away.  Or, I tend to dump them into a clean laundry basket until I get to putting them away.  Problem is, I tend to not do that very quickly and by the time I do, the cycle has started all over again.

Never. Ending.

Maybe someday the Laundry Fairy will come visit me and take over this chore.  Or maybe someday my husband will actually take initiative and start doing the laundry himself.

I think I have a better chance of the Fairy coming.