It's Payback Time

Today is notable in that I got nothing done whatsoever. And our handyman ran away. And our kitchen reeks because there is nothing but smelly 25-year-old plywood on the floor, and if it gets wet it releases into the air every single odor it has absorbed for the past quarter century. And it turns out that the tile guy, who Larry thought was coming tomorrow, is not coming until after Thanksgiving (as in, 2 weeks too late to save my marriage). This bad timing of Larry's might just be worth a sizable Pampered Chef order, what do y'all think?

The handyman whose number was given to us by a neighbor only after she swore us to secrecy as to his identity (this is the sort of neighborhood that has experienced extremely hostile handyman takeovers) and who finally agreed to come to our house to fix (among other things) the coat closet door, the attic door, the linen closet door (we seem to have a problem here), and the missing shoe molding - not to mention building a storage bench to throw all our crap in so it isn't all over the living room - came to our house today, took one look, and decided he would put things off until Monday.

I think I'll add another few items to that Pampered Chef order.

Larry has been downstairs most of the evening trying to get our gas fireplace to light. The instruction card is covered with those international symbols for DANGER and the smell of gas is wafting up the stairway. Dear Lord, please don't let him blow the house up. Although that would take care of the smelly kitchen floor problem. And the centipedes.

Let me mention here that the 2 gas fireplaces were one of his reasons for wanting to buy this house, thereby adding unnecessary pain and suffering to our lives over the past year. Now he's downstairs experiencing a serious case of delayed buyer's remorse. Good.

Hmmm....ordering some sock yarn from KnitPicks might be a good idea also. Larry's feeling pretty bad about the floor; I might as well take advantage of it.

Barb , who manages to be endearingly funny all the time (and riotously funny at least half the time), has tagged me for another meme. Gosh, I feel popular. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, go read her contribution. It's great.

(I didn't mention my kids once in this post. That's a first. They'll be back tomorrow, I'm sure.)

Barf-o-rama, Act III

More of the same here, I'm afraid. Monday was a relatively calm day, spent recuperating from the day before. We went to Target so David and Brian could blow the rest of their money (I really don't know where these kids get the stuff; I mean, I don't give it to them - could they be dealing drugs?) on a remote control airplane. Then I went to the dentist and (to make up for my trauma) a yarn shop, a type of establishment I had never been to before. I needed to go there to get a certain size knitting needle not carried in a generic crafts store like Michael's, and I have to admit I was curious about what I was missing in terms of the specialty yarn shop experience. But I ended up being disappointed. There were a lot of uber-price-y fistfuls of wool and everything (luckily) was a bit too refined (and expensive) to even tempt my appetite. I guess I'm just a cheap-eats sort of knitter. And I'm okay with that.

Okay, so we ate dinner, tucked the kids in bed, and had pretty much settled down for the evening when David came running down to tell me (not Larry; Larry had already gone to the sleep, the sneak) that Brian had thrown up. And in a valiant effort not to soil his bed linens, he had leaned over the bed rail - of the top bunk. It was a bad scene. The blast radius of this stuff was incredible. Maybe it had something to do with the ceiling fan, I'm not sure. But somehow it landed under the bed. And on the walls. And on the dresser. And the nightstand. And we still had to strip the beds (both of them). Under the bed was the biggest challenge - I don't think I've ever tried Swiffering vomit before, but it worked. I love my Swiffer.

The rest of the night is sort of a blur. There was more vomit and then I couldn't go to bed because I felt sick again (no wonder - our entire upstairs smelled disgusting by this point); I think I must have logged 3 hours total of sleep. Larry didn't do much better. But hey - who cares? Anna needed to go to Michael's today to get some beads for the bracelets she's making to sell at the holiday bazaar. Here there were sick people lying in various states of discomfort all over the living room (Theo had been felled by the stomach-virus fairy also); Susie for some reason decided to sympathy-vomit in the kitchen after I fed her some lunch; David was weak from hunger because he didn't want to eat because he figured he was going to get sick any minute (we're still waiting); but Anna could not comprehend why I was not grabbing my keys and running for the car. She also couldn't understand why a lot of the chores were falling on her. Not exactly a team-player, that girl. I was tired enough to ignore her histrionics, an approach which worked pretty well.

So there we are - for those of you keeping score, that's 5 down and 3 to go. And tomorrow's Larry's b'day.....so my money is on him.