Wednesday, August 22, 2007

One of Those Days

One of those days, unfortunately. By 5 o'clock I was reduced to sending the younger ones to their rooms and telling them not to bother me. My Rachel's voice seems particularly high-pitched lately. She and Brian have spent the day bickering with each other in an attempt to drive me right over the edge.

I am bored out of my skull. All jobs have their boring moments, I know; but my particular job seems to have more than its fair share. I need to take up a physically demanding form of exercise - long-distance running, say, or bicycling - to distract my mind from the fact that most of my days are filled with pointless tedium. Eating chocolate does not do the trick anymore. I can't believe that most folks feel that solitary confinement is some sort of punishment. It would seem like heaven to me right now. A nice quiet room, with a pile of books and maybe an exercise bike - that's not asking much right now, is it?

It doesn't help that at Target today (yes, I was there again - what of it?), I noticed an elderly woman sweeping the floors and emptying the trash cans. That will be me, 25 years from now. That's what happens when you are stupid with your finances - we've taken money that should go towards our retirement and are sinking it all into this money pit of a house we bought last spring. It cost us 700 dollars yesterday just to have our new kitchen sink hooked up (yes, for a day or so there, we had everything but the kitchen sink). Seems that the handyman who installed the last sink here was pretty damn creative and glued all sorts of things together, so everything had to be ripped out and replaced. Which took a lot of time. 500 dollars worth of time, to be exact. The hell with college - I'm apprenticing all my kids to plumbers and electricians. Eighty dollars or more an hour doesn't look too bad to me. And then maybe they could support me in my old age so that I wouldn't have to sweep the floors at Target. That is, if they manage to forgive me for locking them in their rooms every afternoon at 5:00.

10 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness, you so get my humor, and right back at ya, sister! Love it!!

    Hey, when you secure gainful employment at Target, can I get an employee blogging friend discount? I think it's about 30%.

    Thanks in advance for that!

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  2. I would be quite pleased to have a plumber in the family. OR an electrician. Right now my youngest wants to be a builder. Sounds good to me. Maybe then we can finally afford to refinish the basement.

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  3. I wish 30%. I think it's closer to 10 percent, and they make you pay for the ugly red shirt. Do you think they'll listen to me when I tell them that it's just not my color?

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  4. I YEARN for solitary confinement!

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  5. I get it, BELIEVE ME, I get it.

    I look pretty good in red - and I already live at Target. Since the advent of NetFlix, I've been looking to replace my dream of working at Blockbuster Video. This might do the trick.

    Although I am being lured by those "work here" placards at Starbucks. Mmmm...chai...

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  6. Why would you want to work at Target? The other option - jail - sounds WAY better. If you go to jail, you can just sit. Maybe knit (wooden needles, of course). And if you look crazy enough, they leave you alone. That's what I'm shooting for. BTW - it'll get easier to put the kids to bed at 5 when it starts getting dark... I'm just countin' the days, here!

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  7. I have actually resorted to locking myself in the bathroom to get some peace and quiet.)(or eat the last piece of chocolate.) And once they catch you changing a tampon in there, trust me, they won't be barging in on you quite as often.

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  8. Hmmm....I hadn't thought of that...

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  9. Target sounds like a good option to me. Some days I'd gladly work fast food rather than referee over at my house...

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  10. The last time I got an estimate from a plumber, I pretty much decided that I had chosen the wrong career path!

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