The Queen's Rambles

1) Mike, wise man that he is, always has the ability to calm me down. I know most of you are going to say “DUH!” when I tell you this, but after my post about being so irritated with Erik at the end of the day, Mike pointed out that he just loves his mommy so much that he needs my comfort so the angrier I get the more he needs me. Makes total sense from a five year old perspective. I would prefer him to figure out that he needs to leave me alone so I can calm down but that’s obviously not going to happen.

Yesterday I took this new information into account and things went a lot better. It also helped that Erik had karate and Mike came home early. Why can’t he have karate every day? He needs to get that energy out.

2) I already did a bad thing with my “no new buying in January.” I bought another night diaper for Elsa. I decided it would make more sense to go ahead and buy another night diaper* so we wouldn’t have to be doing diaper laundry as often. I refuse to buy used diapers, so that option was out.

Other than that, I haven’t bought anything new in the past seven days. Whoa. I didn’t realize I was such a compulsive shopper. I’ve gotten rid of all the deal-a-day websites in my home tabs so that eliminates a lot of temptation.

I always have ideas for projects and then I rarely follow through. I got the idea to recover my chairs in oilcloth (they are in major need of recovering) but luckily I can’t find any decent, affordable oilcloth so it is easy to table that idea. I’d never considered oilcloth before until SAJ mentioned it. Once I figured out what she meant I was all about it. Wipeable! With no cracking! We may have to plan a trip to Sweden just so I can get some!

Or not.

Unless we stay at a hotel, I’m not going over there. I actually have found a few that I like in the UK, but they are no where near affordable. If I still have the urge to recover the chairs in February maybe I’ll get a plain ol’ solid.

My only other major temptation: a book. The Soul Mirror by Carol Berg. I’ve been waiting for this book forever, so I guess I can wait another month. My library doesn’t have a good stock of fantasy books, so I don’t have that option. I got The Seer of Sevenwaters by Juliet Marrilier for Christmas and gobbled it up. Reading a good book m made me long for more good books and Berg is my favorite author.

3) Remember when I went cloth diaper laundry rebel and started using Tide Free and Gentle? Big mistake. Poor Elsa ended up with a major diaper rash. I’m still using the Tide for our clothing and I’m much happier. My new routine involves soaking my diapers in the washer overnight with plenty of Rockin’ Green. Since I’ve started doing that I’ve eliminated the stink. I guess they need that soak to really get the urine out of the inserts. The inserts are made to absorb so it’s tough to get all that liquid out of them. At the moment I am happy with our routine and don’t have any residual laundry stress. No one should have laundry stress in this day and age.

*For the curious, we use Blueberry Minky diapers as our night diapers. I guess the minky kind of helps hold the pee in? I don’t know, but they’re the only diaper in our stash that seems to work at night. Sized Fuzzibunz are our preferred day diaper.