Why do things happen, do you think? Out of the ordinary things, I mean. Things that don’t really have any lasting significance, things that just mean a little bit extra… work, or thought, or dealing-with. Those kind of things.

Things like: when your two-year-old breaks a mercury thermometer that you didn’t even know you owned, leading to a cleanup event involving an eyedropper and wet wipes and rubber gloves and old clothes. And then—guess what!—you’re supposed to stay out of the room for a while, to let the vaporized mercury clear out. And since the room in question is your bedroom, and since “for a while” includes overnight, you have to sleep somewhere else entirely. Like in another room, on a futon. (Firm organic cotton! Firmly wrapped in organic wool! Like sleeping on an uneven organic rock! Which was fun, since we were sleeping so well to begin with!) Not difficult to deal with, really, but certainly annoying.

Also my hair has been funked out all week, and not in a good way.

Which is not as irksome as the whole mercury spill thing, but still. Why oh why do things happen? Sometimes I wonder.

(Oh, alright. If nothing ever happened, well, that would be boring. And unhealthy. Okay, okay, things can happen. But next week, could the things revolve around unicorns and ice cream instead of mercury and frizz? That would be great.)

Help STOP Am drowning under the weight of the non-sleeping never-sleeping who-needs-sleep-anyway toddler STOP Send sleep or sleep equivalent STOP Or sleep alternative STOP Not sure what “sleep equivalent” or “sleep alternative” even mean STOP In related news house is a crazy mess STOP Every time I pick something up to put away I find eight more things underneath the one thing I was going to clean up STOP Must find sleep soon STOP

(Why yes, the toddler DOES have a stuffy nose which keeps her from falling asleep and then wakes her up repeatedly all the night long, my poor baby! Why yes, I am starting to lose my mind from lack of sleep, just a little! This morning I couldn’t remember my own address! How awesome is that?! Zero. That’s how much. None at all. We’ll be better in a few days, I am sure. SURE.)

The same board game that you played eleventy million times yesterday? When set up on a lazy susan instead of on the table? It’s fun all over again.

And seriously, that may be the only rainy day tip I know. Which is a bummer, since I think we’re less than halfway through this whole week-of-storm thing. What else you got?

Dear Children Who Live in My House:

When shampooing your hair, and in life more generally, the same guidelines apply: panicking and flailing about will not help matters. In fact, both tend to make things worse. Trust me. I speak from experience.

Thanks,
The Management

You know what’s funny? When you’re all cranky, and you even write a cranky blog post, and then you wake up the next morning and you feel sort of miserable. Sick-like. And you get to think: Hey! I’m not just whiny, I caught a bit of a bug.

And then you realize: that’s just what my toddler does! She’ll be cranky all day long, and I’ll be about ready to agree to let her watch back-to-back episodes of Between the Lions on DVD from now until she turns eight, if only she’ll stop fussing, and then suddenly she’s sick and the crankiness all makes sense.

So basically I’ve not matured beyond the toddler stage for Behavior When Getting Sick.

Well, it’s not ha-ha funny, but still.

Dear This Week,

It’s been fun. And by “fun” I mean “long and exhausting.” And it’s only Thursday morning. Let’s get today and tomorrow over with quickly, ‘kay? Because between the never-falling-asleep-at-bedtime toddler and the overtired older kids (what are they even tired FROM?), I’m beat.

What’s that, you say? You notice that my to-do list has gotten shorter every day? That’s because I include things like “clip toenails (mine)” and “eat breakfast.” I don’t think that can be taken as a sign of an Excellent Week.

I’m hoping that today and tomorrow will somehow be spent blissfully at home, reading books and wearing pajamas. As far as I can tell, there is approximately zero chance of that happening, but a girl can dream, right? Or maybe I should just wish for more sleep, in order to shoo away this crankiness. Because while it’s cool to be cranky here, in print, in a letter to the week, I can’t be cranky all the day long. I’m the only grown-up these kids get all day; it’s not cool for that grown-up to be a burnt-out mama.

Barring sleep, I’ll take a tall glass of something caffeinated and a daydream that the weekend will bring rest.

Anyhow, This Week, like I said, it’s been fun. But seriously. Be gone.

Love,
Me

Sadie was given a book of nursery rhymes for Christmas, which Abigail offered to read to her this morning.

“Listen to this,” Abigail said. Sadie glanced over at the book, but made no real effort to join into the whole nursery rhyme experience. Abigail began to read anyway: “Hey Diddle Diddle, the cat and the fiddle…”

Now, I know that the kids mimic lots of things I say and do. They say things like “drat!” and “oh my,” and “let’s use words to solve this problem.” I’m cool with that.

However, I would like to state for the record that not everything they say comes from me.

Abigail read the rhyme all the way through, then looked up at Sadie, who was still mostly ignoring the book. “Hey Diddle Diddle!” Abigail said. “And that’s only a small sampling of what’s inside!” Sadie reached over and grabbed the book.

You see? Not everything they say comes from me. Some things they say come from late-night infomercials.*

*No, they’ve never seen late-night infomercials. I’m just saying.

There is a cabinet in my bathroom. Well, there are a number of cabinets in my bathroom, but I want to talk about one in particular. So: Cabinet. Bathroom. It’s full of Useful Things, like spare toothbrushes and cotton swabs and cotton balls and a hairdryer and I don’t actually know what else. Stuff. It’s all piled in there precariously; opening the door is likely to cause a minor avalanche of deodorant bottles and unused packages of tooth whitening strips.

Every time I open that cabinet, I think: how hard would it really be to tidy this up? It’s all toiletries, mostly. They’re almost all in little rectangular boxes. But I never get around to it, because there’s always something else more important or more urgent to do at that moment. Like maybe applying the deodorant. (And look: right now I’m writing a blog post about not cleaning the cabinet instead of just, you know, cleaning the cabinet.)

It is possible that someday the minor avalanche will turn into a real avalanche—Dane will come home to find me either meticulously arranging the extra toothpastes, or unconscious underneath a mountain of said toothpastes—or perhaps one day my children will be grown and I’ll find that I have both time and energy to deal with things like unruly cabinets. Though I imagine I’ll never have difficulty finding non-cabinet-cleaning endeavors to fill my time. Even if those endeavors are mainly composed of sleep.

For today, I have decided that the messy bathroom cabinet will be a badge of honor: it proves that I have more important things to do than tidy cupboards that no one will ever see. (Can you hear the self-imposed pep talk behind that sentence?) When everything falls out and I have to clean it, it can be a badge of something else. Organization, maybe. A badge of organization. Or I guess it can just be organized. I probably have enough badges already.

There are a few chores that don’t get done in a timely manner at our house. (Okay, lots of chores. Lots of chores that don’t get done in a timely manner. Whatever.) Putting away laundry is one of them. It gets washed, it just takes a while to get put away.

So.

Q1: What’s worse than finding a stack of clean laundry on the end of your bed, waiting to be put away? (Well, lots of things, obviously, but stick with me a minute.)

A1: Why, finding a banana stuck in the stack of laundry! Of course.

Q2: And what’s worse than finding a banana stuck in the stack of clean laundry? (Okay, okay, lots of things; again, stick with me.)

A2: Finding half a banana in the clean laundry!

Oh yes.

Aaaaand, bonus question: Who thinks the other half actually got eaten (not left in a super-secret location that I have yet to discover)?

Yeah, me neither.

Silver lining: At least it’s not garbanzo beans.

I feel like I’m living in that folktale—you know the one, with the big family in the tiny little house, where everyone is so squished that there’s barely enough room to eat breakfast? And the parents go to the village wise woman, tell her they’re cramped and discontent, ask her what to do; she tells them to bring the chickens into the house. They come back the next day, she tells them to bring the family goat into the house. Then the cow. And so on, until there’s not room to eat breakfast at all, let alone walk or sit or read a book, and they’re no happier than they were to begin with. So she tells them to take all the animals back out of the house, and: magic! There’s enough room to eat breakfast again, and now everyone appreciates it. They’re all happy, and all it took was a week of living with a goat to be thankful for what they had.

That’s the story I’m living in.

Except I didn’t bring farm animals into my house. I brought in Christmas decorations.

Now they’re gone, packed away until next year, and the tree was taken away to be turned into mulch.

I wasn’t actually discontent before, but oh my goodness, NOW I CAN BREATHE THERE IS SPACE IN MY HOUSE AGAIN. Ahhh.

The kids, of course, were not thrilled to see the decorations go. This morning when we went out for a walk, there were dried-up trees lining the curbs, waiting for the tree-recycling truck, and the kids were more than a little sad to see them. But a while later, playing on the newly-found floor of the living room (it’s no longer buried in pine needles, hurrah!), Owen said: “You know what? It’s not the worst thing ever, having to get rid of the tree.”

Boy’s got a point, is all I’m saying.