The Queen's Rambles

It’s the start of the school year and I’m bleepin’ exhausted! It’s really hard to give a little baby the right conditions for napping when you have to drive all over the country every couple of hours. She’s no longer a little newborn who can nap anywhere.

Erik had a most excellent first day of class. Two of his buddies are in his class and they were thrilled to see each other. His new teacher is excellent and enthusiastic–good for him, exhausting for me. She has us go into the room when we drop off and pick up because she has things to tell us and assignments to give us. That’s wonderful, of course, but not so easy with a big ol’ baby.

His school is on the corner of a road and a big corn field wraps around it. They’re harvesting the corn this week so he had a brilliant idea. He asked the teacher if he could have some corn so he could make his grandpa some whiskey.

I’m sure he made an impression. Not sure if it was a good one or not (good–corn makes whiskey–science! Not so good–four year old talking about whiskey).

Drat those country music songs.

His first karate class started about an hour after his school ended, so I guess that’s where the exhaustion comes in. It was a hilarious class and he did pretty well. I think I’m going to like this activity a lot better than swimming.

I’ll have to post pictures later.

I’m also exhausted because I stupidly planned a little pizza party playdate here tomorrow. I’m cleaning like a fool, but nothing ever gets any better. We didn’t do a lot of general house cleaning this weekend because we spent hours and hours cleaning out our dishwasher.

Did you know that if you turn your hot water heater below 140F you are creating the perfect conditions for black mold in your dishwasher? Did you know that parents are recommended to turn the water down to 120F so they don’t scald their babies?

We were bad parents with Erik and never bothered, but when we had our plumbing crisis a couple of months ago I thought about it and went ahead and turned it down. We’ve been suffering from cold, low pressure showers ever since. I had no idea that it was also causing all the mold growth in our dishwasher.

We’ve tried all sorts of things to clear it up, but I finally read that the only solution is turning your heater back up, pulling the whole thing apart and scrubbing it all with bleach water.

Oh the nooks!

Oh the crannies!

So yeah. My house is a disaster area even though we worked our asses off this weekend.

One of the ladies who says she’ll be here is really particular about germs and cleaning and all that. I kind of want to just stick my head in the oven and forget it.

Why is that a saying? Is it because of the natural gas in the oven?

OK, I better wrap this up. I smell my diaper soup. Why yes, I do live an exciting life. I’m boiling all my diaper inserts to get rid of the wet dog smell. I wish I could boil the pockets as well, but I think that would be a terrible idea. I may have to give in and bleach them. What’s the deal with pockets and bleach? It destroys them upon contact? Or I can get away with doing it once in a while?

I am really tired of Mike’s new job. I used to think he was late if he arrived after 5:30. Now I think he’s early if he’s home before 7–yet another reason I’m exhausted.