So Many Topics, So Little Time to Write

I have so many things I want to write about, so many posts floating around in the ether of my brain, but both of my littles have what we affectionately refer to as The Hacking Death and between wiping snot, cleaning up puke after the kids cry or cough so hard they puke, doing the ensuing laundry, driving people around all over, and just trying to get some sleep so I'm better able to handle said activities I haven't had the time to write anything. So, please forgive me, but I'm just going to throw some bullets out there so at least some of it can get out of my head and leave me more room to fit in all the information about mortgage qualifying:

• Tuesday afternoons Little Man has a sports class at our local community center. The class is only 45 minutes long, so the rest of us just sit in the car and Trout does her homework, we listen to music, and if she gets done quickly enough we watch a movie. I sometimes let Sunny and Nemo out of their carseats to stretch their legs, and this week Nemo slept while Sunny was free to move about the cabin. All of a sudden Trout starts shouting about how Sunny is coloring on the car - yes, my not-even-two-month-old van. Somehow Sunny found a random piece of crayon floating in the air somewhere (because I have not allowed any such items in the new van) and colored on the window, carseats, upholstery, speaker covers, whatever struck her fancy. I was livid. It appears that the crayon was a washable one, though, because a babywipe took care of most of the mess. I reminded her once again that she was ONLY TO COLOR ON PAPER!! and thought that was the end of it. Which it was until Little Man got in the car on Wednesday morning to go to school and found where I wasn't able to remove some of the crayon from his booster seat (which he will ride in until he gets his driver's license as he appears to have my genes). "Who colored on my seat???" he shouted, and I told him Sunny had and that I'd get it later and to buckle up. "AAAUUGHH! That..that.." he struggled with the words, and since he's been experimenting with colorful language lately I thought I knew what was coming. "She is SUCH. A. LITTLE... RASCAL!!" he said angrily as he stomped his foot. Yeah, she is.
• I am my own worst enemy, I swear. Tuesday morning I had to scramble around to get all four kids up and ready to go - the bigs to school, Sunny to her preschool, and Nemo comes with me to my therapy appointment. We got up early enough, got the bigs to school and went scrambling down to the preschool to drop Sunny off. I saw one of the moms who I know has younger kids with whom I sometimes share watching duty, where one of us watches the littles in the parking lot while the other runs in to get her big kid and then we switch, and I asked if she wanted me to watch her little one so she could run in. She said no, she'd be a while, and then asked me if I had a conference that day, to which I said no and looked at her quizzically. She told me there was no school that day, it was a conference day. Which I would have known if Sunny had gone to school on the previous Thursday and I had gotten the newsletter, but she didn't and I didn't. Doh. So there I was, with my therapy appointment, to which I have to take an almost-four year old. Yeah, I don't think so. I was able to scramble around and make arrangements for my SIL to watch her and was only 5 minutes late to my appointment.
• Saturday BigDaddyFish and I had a glorious day, just us. First we matched up the socks, then we went to an Indian restaurant and pigged out on the buffet. Then we went to the Air and Space Museum Annex - Udvar-Hazy Center and had a blast taking our own sweet time looking at exhibits and reading things with nobody going "Mooooom, this is booorring! Let's go!" or running around and trying to climb on the SR-71. They have added an F-14 since we were there last, probably my favorite among the fighter aircraft - awesome. They have a couple of flight simulators there, one that you can "fly" and one that you just ride along, and since we were unencumbered by small people I suggested we ride one. We chose for BDF to fly the plane and I would ride with him. We paid our money and got in line to go in, and they had a small tv screen showing us our "pre-flight" briefing. "This ride will be taking you upside down, so please leave all belongings in the locker provided." Say wha? Upside down? Nobody said anything about upside down. Have I mentioned I don't do flying, or heights for that matter, very well? Upside down? After eating a huge meal of Indian food? "You're going to pay for this," I said to BDF as we locked up our stuff. He was the pilot, I was the gunner, and the ride was 4.5 minutes long. Would you believe that we had so much fun? And I shot down 6 planes? And I only spent about 45 seconds with my eyes shut, and probably 45 seconds upside down? Then, as if the day wasn't great enough, we went to see Charlie Wilson's War, which was great, and THEN went out to dinner. We spent the entire day without the kids; we didn't fight or bicker at all. It was awesome. When you have small people depending on you it is so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day details of living and forget why you got married in the first place - nurturing your marriage is as important as remembering to feed the kidlets. And men, if you take the time to go out and have fun with your wife, just the two of you, without complaining about how much it costs or whatever else you could be doing, it just might increase your chances of getting a little action. Dramatically.
• When we were doing the great clean out on Saturday and Sunday, we found several of what we believe are larvae for clothes moths. We have a lot of wool shirts, blankets, and socks that don't get used very often, and somewhere we have an infestation. I freak the heck out when worms or snakes are nearby - I HATE them. I'm weirded out by things without feet. So I screamed each time we came across one and squealed and got all squicked out and BDF squished them and put them in the trash. I was not aware that cedar is not necessarily a great repellent, and that stored items need to be checked at least once a year. So, now we are working on finding the source of the contamination and eliminating it, four or five vacuumings and multiple washings at a time, like we didn't have enough of that to do already. Ewwww.
• Friday night BDF and I got salads for dinner and he went upstairs to eat his while on the computer. Instead of taking it back down two floors to the kitchen when he was done, he just put it on a stool at the top of the stairs down to our kitchen, on the same floor as our bedrooms. Nemo woke up before us, and BDF put him on the floor to just let him run amok while we woke up fully. Sunny starts yelling about an awful smell, and we think it's Nemo's diaper or something and tell her to just be patient about it. Then she started complaining about a big mess and we decided we better get up to investigate. This is what we found:

Guess Nemo decided he didn't like the salad. Gem that he is, Uncle Orca (agincourtdb) cleaned it up for us when he arrived to babysit so BDF and I could go our for our date. Frankly, I was quite relieved that it had nothing to do with Nemo's diaper.

• Capital One are a bunch of scum-sucking bastards. Last month I either didn't receive a statement at all or I lost it in the jumble of papers on my table (most likely didn't receive because I still haven't found it). I realized it after the due date but before they sent me anything to hassle me about it, so I paid them something based on what I paid the previous month. We got that card because it had a 2.9% interest rate for the life of all balance transfers, so we transferred quite a large balance to it years ago and have been slowly paying it off; we cut the cards up and never used them. We've put that balance low on our list of things to pay off and put higher rate stuff as a higher priority in our quest to get out of debt. Well, they decided since we were late on our payment to jack the interest rate - to 27%. 27%. Pure insanity. I've been late on other cards years ago and if they raised the rates at all, which I don't remember them doing, it was only a point or two. I would have understood if they had raised it to something like 6-10% since that's what we had for purchases if we'd ever used the card, but this is highway robbery. We are lucky that we had the money for me to call up and pay them off this morning, and I'm closing the account immediately. They have lost us as a customer and we will be sure to warn everyone we know about them. If there is ever a chance you might be late with a payment (which would mean you are a normal person), don't be fooled by Capital One. Within two months we will have paid off all of our credit card debt, and all we'll have are our mortgage and one car payment. It feels fantastic.
• I am going through a major effort to simplify my life, cutting down on spending, paying off debt, not buying new stuff, decluttering, not watching much tv (American what?), cleaning, etc. It feels good and has helped my depression so very much, and has helped me not to feel so unsettled. I'm enjoying taking better care of my family, and in doing so, taking better care of myself.
• I'm thinking of going back to work some, ideally to pick up some freelance writing assignments, but haven't the first idea how to go about doing that. Anyone have any ideas they are willing to share, or willing to take on, I don't know, a jr. apprentice or helper or something? I'm willing to work cheap until I've proven myself. I used to be a technical writer/editor before I had kids, and I have an English degree, so I have a basis for this line of work; it's just the marketing/business side of things I'm clueless about.

So, how are you doing? Did I mention we're house hunting? In theory?

Comments

[Agincourtdb]

I live to clean up salad messes. I didn't however need to know what you guys got up to after I left Saturday. Lol.

[hokgardner]

I wish I had tips on marketing oneself as a freelance writer. I got my freelance gig because I knew someone who knew someone at the company I now work for. If I had to start from scratch, I'd be lost.