Looking Up
Now that I’m feeling a little better, I am able to be truly positive, instead of grasping for positive straws.
I still have a bit of a cough, but I have re-entered the land of the living and am ready for food! Except I didn’t have a car today, so we are still out of food. Bah. I made a nasty frozen dinner that made me sick. Now I am eating frosting. It’s all for the baby, right? Ha. I need to go back on those prenatals so I don’t gain 100 pounds with this pregnancy.
I decided that today we were going to make a dent in the pig-sty of our house. I don’t let Erik bring many toys up here, mainly because the living room is a very small space and he doesn’t play with them anyway. He has two beach buckets of toys in the living room and the only play he does is simple: dump them all on the floor and walk away.
Usually I can get him to pick everything up really easily. I just have to tell him he is having a race and bet him that he can’t beat me and he’ll get it done in less than three minutes. Today? Of course not. Today he said it was boring and he wasn’t going to do it.
I brought out the big guns and said he couldn’t watch any of his shows until he picked things up, but he wasn’t biting.
I decided it was not worth a big, showy power struggled but I was going to win. I walked away, and went down to do laundry.
He spent a long time watching the laundry spin. Then he spent a long time watching me scrub the bathrooms and “helping” me. Ugh. I wasn’t going to tell him no because I think it’s good for kids to get a sense of family chores even if they are less than helpful.
I think I may have solved my powder-room-smelling-like-a-men’s-urinal problem. I hope. I pray. I hope.
I often spray down the toilet and the floor and wipe it all down on my hands and knees, but it never seems to help. Today I sprayed down the walls. When I wiped them down, the rag turned yellow so I’m hoping that was the source of the nastiness. It never occurred to me to clean the walls, but maybe his aim really is that bad.
I was finally really bored and decided that if he wasn’t going to get to watch his shows, I could turn on the country music station.
The second I turned that on, he started howling “noooooooo!” and had his toys cleaned up within two minutes.
Poor kid has no taste in music.
The other topic: Our Lemon Saturn
I called the mechanic and he said not to drive it under any circumstances. You don’t want to mess with bad brakes. I have AAA, so I called them and the tow truck driver was here in less than 10 minutes.
He took the car down to the mechanic and I sat around waiting to hear the bad news.
It wasn’t that bad, but it will still set us back almost $1000. I don’t know what bad would have meant. In addition to the brake problem, they said that something with the steering would not pass inspection so we’re having that taken care of as well. I tend to believe them because I’ve noticed steering problems lately.
I should get the car back tomorrow afternoon. I am ready to drive it straight to Honda and trade it in for a mini-van. I think we are going to wait until February since that is supposed to be the best time to buy a new car. Can we really afford to wait? What other bombshells will the car drop? As Mike pointed out, it should be a damned good car now. We’ve replaced just about everything on it except the engine.
At least all my bathrooms have been scrubbed down and my living room has been vacuumed. I don’t feel like I am living in a hovel anymore.
I also decided to do a couple of things to make myself happy. I’m getting my haircut Saturday and I just ordered a pair of titanium earrings. I hope my sensitive skin can handle them. Everyone says there’s no way my ears will have a problem, but knowing my skin I am proceeding with caution. It would be fantastic if I could finally start wearing earrings again, though the selection doesn’t seem particularly great. I love earrings, a little known fact since I haven’t worn them in years.
Grain Damaged has challenged me to do one Dear Jane block this week and my week is running out. Now we know what I’ll be doing tomorrow during preschool.
Last Friday I went up to my quilting room, determined to do some quilting. I looked at the table and turned right around again. It all seems so overwhelming. But I’m going to do it. I’m going to pick a simple block and knock it out of the park. And then I’m going to organize the sewing table a bit so it doesn’t drive me out of the room.
I think I am going to pull out my square top
put a border on it and get it quilted even if it kills me. I love the top and want to use it on the guest bed, but have no idea how to quilt it. I think it would be cool to incorporate squares into the quilting, but I just have my little home sewing machine and that is not going to work well for me. I am a piecer, quilter. I guess I’m going to bite the bullet and do some kind of diagonal grid quilting. It will be fine. Right? Surely it will be fine. Just not perfect. I need to accept the fact that I will never have a really fancy QUILTED quilt. I have to be content with having the colors and fabrics being designs that I love.