AWOL

I miss you all when I don't write.  It's just so damn busy around here - not exciting busy, though. More like hamster wheel busy.  Whack -a- Mole busy.  You know what I mean?

Larry's ongoing project to totally gut our house is proceeding apace.  He actually waved the white flag and allowed me to pay the handyman to paint the girls' new walls, a job that Larry up until now had always insisted on doing himself.  We made our usual mistake and chose a color that is so blindingly bright that I doubt anyone will be able to sleep in there.  Glidden's Thai Teal, for those of you who want to know.  It looks so darn innocent on that paint card.  I'm telling you, it GLOWS, as though it were a radioactive substance.

Is it bright in here, or is it me?

Larry's also allowing the handyman to paint our main bathroom, mostly because all the paint was peeling off the back of the door and mold was starting to grow on the shower ceiling.  Initially, the girls and I chose Egyptian Sun, which I thought would be a bright yet muted shade of orange.  The reality was closer to neon orange. The girls, of course, loved it.  Larry and I decided that there was no way we could handle that color early in the morning and switched it out for Ripe Peach.  I had had high hopes for Apricot, but that had a pink tinge to it.  I was also partial to Juicy Cantaloupe, but it was too pale.  I wish I was making these paint color names up, but I am not.  I also wish I had not wasted 10 hours of whatever time remains to me on this earth running back and forth to Home Depot for paint testers.

Like I said, hamster-wheel busy.  Let's not even talk about the 3 trips I made to Home Depot looking for closet organizers.  I'm not proud of it, you know.  Not proud at all.

These? Are very complicated.

In the meantime, I am still struggling to open my kitchen cabinets, because I had Brian remove all the handles from them 3 months ago, back when I assumed we would spend part of our summer painting them with a fresh coat of semi-gloss white (a color, incidentally, that is much easier to choose than is a burnt orange, say, or a cheerful teal).  Somehow, that never came to pass; and every time I can't open a cabinet, Brian cracks up.  Not to mention that the white wood looks dingier than ever, as we have been putting our fingerprints all over them because they DON'T HAVE HANDLES.

In the middle of all this, the seasons are turning, which means children keep coming at me from all directions claiming that their clothes don't fit.  I had both girls try on ALL their jeans today and we conducted lengthy discussions over fit, style, and color.  This took a very long time.  Then we went to Target and had Rachel try on ALL THE SIZES of jeans to determine what size we need to look for at the thrift store (where there are no dressing rooms).  We did buy one pair to tide her over, so I don't feel guilty about that.

Before I did that, though, I had to run to the post office to mail back a very late standardized test before I was thrown into jail. AND I had to drive David to community college, because Larry had a work thing going on. AND I went to Home Depot AGAIN to pick something up for our handyman.

Whack-a-Mole busy, people.  It's my life.

[Thai Teal image: InPublishers]
[Storage cubes image: DealMoon]