The Painting Rules

From time to time, over the course of my entire life, my household gets the brilliant idea to paint the inside of the house.

As I mentioned recently, we found ourselves in a situation where we needed to do an "emergency" painting of a bedroom on little notice. (Thank heavens for my mother, that's all I have to say about that.) During the course of this recent painting mass scramble, we decided the time has finally come to write down the most important rules of painting we have accumulated over the years.

First, we all agree that if God had meant mankind to be a painting species, we would all have been born with 8 foot long arms and a paint bucket stabilizer at our waistline.

Nonetheless, if you take these lessons to heart, even you will survive painting your entire house.

1. Paint is magnetically attracted to any spot on the floor that is not covered, no matter how microscopic. We strongly suspect there is a law of goofy-quark behavior involved.

2. Even in the most cramped and hard to see places, it is never a good idea to just stick the paint brush in and brush wildly about.

3. If you have the urge to paint randomly with a brush, remember the Karate Kid. He learned karate by painting. You can learn to paint by watching that movie.

Pets and paint can be very entertaining if you remember to have the right attitude, as evidenced by the following rules.

4. If paint is unable to find an uncovered spot on the floor to adhere to, it will attempt to use a small furry creature if one is passing by.

A few years back, Girl Cat came out of hiding to say hello to my mother in law while my father in law was painting our dining room ceiling. The only paint that fell from his brush that entire day was while Girl Cat was walking right below him. She promptly took said paint offering and ran it around the entire house, pausing to shake at least once in every room before being cornered for a bath.

5. Black, short-haired cats who shed very little can use their foreheads as paint brushes if they so choose.

Big Black Cat once watched Darling Husband for nearly an hour while Darling Husband was painting a wall sky blue. After we packed everything away and waited for the paint to dry, Big Black Cat marched out into the other room with a nice spot of blue paint on his forehead. We never did find where on the wall he bumped, so we concluded that his fur was sufficiently like a brush to not matter.

6. Orange cats that shed a lot should never be allowed near wet, damp, or even freshly washed painted walls. (I suspect this one is self-explanatory.)

7. There are places even the best ladders cannot go. Please accept this fact gracefully and move on.

8. Painting is more entertaining if you embrace the mess.

9. Books on CD/IPOD are helpful because they are quiet enough to talk over, but they do provide a distraction. A good tip is to try to remember to load up enough CDs so you don't have to change them with painty fingers.

10. Always check your socks and your posterior before leaving the painting environment.

11. Never answer the front door on painting day. No good can come of this.

12. Resist the urge to paint other people, even in jest, no matter how long you have been painting that day. No good can come of this either.

13. Understand that no painting job is complete without at least a sanding job, an electrical rewiring, or a major caulking.

14. No matter what the end result, you should feel free to blame any issues on the prior owners or the builders and their poor workmanship.

15. Each major repair has its own vocabulary. If you hear, "Well isn't that stupid," chances are you are overhearing an electrical problem. If you hear, "Oh, shoot," something has probably gone wrong with the paint. More strong words are often interchangeable.

16. The words, "Oh, woops!" or "Woopsie!" or "Uh oh," are never a good sign.

17. The most adventursome painters really need to add a toddler for full effect.

If you keep these simple rules in mind, your painting experience will be much more fulfilling.

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And It Will Be The Perfect Storm After All

Man, that Entropy dude knows his stuff. Either he is the most phenomonal planner this side of anywhere, or he is a tremendously gifted opportunist.

Last Monday I mentioned that I thought Entropy was setting us up for the perfect storm with all the things that were going on. Specifically, I have been concerned that with all the travel one or the other of us is doing the next several weekends, would we be able to get the spare bedroom painted and ready for the new furniture that was due to arrive in 6-8 weeks? Given that we have a series of sentimental "collections" to remove from the closet and various other spaces in the room, this could be a dicey adventure. Six to eight weeks of evenings and weekends can go by pretty quickly, and believe me, I was not going to try to paint a room on my own with only Toddler for help. Noooo. Even I am not that disillusioned into thinking it would actually work.

So, I very carefully began undoing the pieces of the collections I was allowed to touch -- specifically the Harry Potter playsets and Lego kits. My job was to clean them, box them in the original box (of course), with as many of the original pieces as I could identify from the pile of miscellaneous pieces on the dresser. As you can imagine, I had a big suspicion this project could take a long, long, possibly very long, time.

I found the directions for one of the big Lego playsets and tried, often frustratingly, to disassemble the set in reverse order, attempting valiantly to identify any missing pieces. Only after I was completely done did I realize that the pile of extra Lego pieces that was stuck in a plastic bag on the bookshelf ALL went to this one set I was working on. In fact, there was only one Lego set even out of the box at all. There was no reason for me to take all this time, and I could have just shoved all the pieces into one plastic box. Well ... nuts.

That was one hour down.

In the meantime, lots of junk was growing on my floor. Not to worry, I thought to myself, there is always tomorrow. We have lots of time ... well, I know I can't keep saying this ... but still, this is only the first day.

Then I got the phonecall from the furniture store. "Guess what! Good news! We managed to squeeze all your furniture onto last night's truck, and it's HERE! When can we schedule a delivery?"

Holy cow! We don't even have the PAINT YET!

Well, long story short, I persuaded the furniture store to hold the bedroom stuff for one week ... which means that Darling Husband and I had one week, minus most of a weekend, to get an entire room cleaned out, collections and all, and painted. With Toddler's "help". Yes. Let's not forget that.

The perfect storm indeed!

Thankfully, my mother decided to come down and bail us out, offering to help watch Toddler while we worked. Instead I managed to get her to paint a lot alongside us while we all hollered, "Toddler back up!" (It worked all times but one, and that one time led to a set of white back pockets and a white shirt belonging to Toddler. Formerly these items of clothing were tan and blue. If you find yourself in this situation, I highly recommend very warm running water immediately applied.)

As of the time I am writing this, we are two days into what will be a three-day job, with a Toddler who desperately wants to help. He even went to far as to pick up a paint brush and run it over a piece of the closet door when we weren't looking, all the while saying, "Toddler paint!"

Just to top everything off, Toddler decided he wanted to show off all his potty skills to my mother. Every few minutes, he wanted someone to come out and help him because, as he said, "ME NEED GO POTTY!" Of course, when he tried to convince us that he was big enough to leave the diaper behind ... he wasn't. Of course. When we are all covered in paint he is covered in ... well ... it wasn't paint.

The good news is that the room will be all done in record time. The bad news is that the rest of the house is falling apart in the meantime. Entropy has done his job well.

On the bright side, this unexpected experience has brought us the following scene to chuckle about:

ME: Mom, we're heading your way.
MY MOM: Okay.
TODDLER: No! That's not Mom. That's Grandma!

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Just Shake Your Head and Walk Away

Today is one of those days where I'm having a hard time finding the humor. I should have a huge sign on my head that says, "Stand Back. You Have Been Warned." I have to be very careful when writing this blog on a day like today, because I risk moving from funny to caustic as I come perilously close to telling you what I REALLY think about what is going on around me.

So, on a day like today, I offer a compromise. Below is a list of some things people have said to me in the past year that make me count to 10 before I'm even allowed to open my mouth lest I try to do something really dumb like argue or try to use logic. As I think you can see, arguing with some people is absolutely useless.

Here is what I heard:

1. Well, no, I didn't take the trash out for garbage day because there was still room in the bag for more garbage.

2. I don't take my bags to the grocery store because they only give me five cents off a bag. I'd rather use a twenty cent coupon instead of my four bags.

3. No, I don't think we have gluten free pasta, but I can offer you whole wheat pasta. Will that do?

4. Me: For a few months I'm not allowed to have any "diet" stuff with artificial sweetners or anything like that. My Friend: Can you have a diet gingerale?

5. Me: I don't have any time off for your "free" vacation. Vacation Solicitor: How about if I cut the price?

6. I can't bear to throw these things out or sell them, so I'm giving them to you.

7. I just bought these t-shirts in your mall while visiting you and I decided I don't want them after all, so I'm going to leave them here with you, okay?

8. Yes, we are having group preschool tours for parents. No, child care is not provided.

9. I just drove this plant the entire way across the country from my old apartment to yours, but it won't fit in my car for the last 400 miles of my trip to my new place, so I'll give it to you. I know you'll take good care of it.

10. I am fanatic about clean hands. I don't like bar soap because someone else can touch it. I don't think softsoap really works, and I don't think hand sanitzer really works either.

11. Restaurant employee: You are allergic to dairy? Me: Yes. I can't have dairy. Restaurant employee: What about Velveeta and sour cream?

12. My Friend: I'm so glad you came across two states and had time to visit with me. I think about you often and wish I could see more of you. Me: Well maybe if you are taking a vacation over our way we can connect? It's a lot of fun! My Friend: Or you could just come back and see us. We live right off the turnpike, you know.

Now, I have paraphrased some of the conversations to make them slightly less identifiable, but I think you get the general idea. ::shake head, walk away::

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Missing Pieces

Around about a month ago, my friends at The Crazy Hip Bloggers suggested the writing topic, "Missing Pieces." Specifically, they said, "We all have missing pieces in our lives. Things we have lost. Things we have yet to gain. Frames of mind we have yet to set! We want to hear all about YOUR missing pieces!"

Well, I have to say that the first thing I was missing was the topic for this article. I wasn't looking on the right place in the website, and I thought we didn't have a topic, so I freelanced. I could make some snarky remark about how the upcoming post topics might best serve their purpose if they are in the sidebar labeled, "Upcoming Topics," but I won't. (You may think I just did, but I didn't.) You see, I wouldn't say such a thing because 1 - I don't want to lose my membership title as a "Crazy Hip Blogger" and 2 - I know the people managing the site have small children, and more than one of them. Under those circumstances, they have fulfilled their obligations to get the topics up in a timely manner, regardless of where on the website they may be. The rest of the responsibility most emphatically belongs to the bloggers, because, as you will see in the rest of this post, I could do no better and probably would do a whole lot worse.

For me, missing pieces is a very literal topic. I'm missing the mates to a lot of socks, a few mittens/gloves, and lots of toys. I have outgrown toys hiding in my room, waiting to be moved to the attic, but they have been lingering there for a few months hoping to be reunited with their missing pieces.

For Christmas, Santa Claus brought Toddler a matching game with 66 pieces. I think I know where 64 are, after diligently counting them every time I put them away. I don't even want to talk about the crazy relative that sent the puzzle. (Thank you, by the way.) The toy car playset for three-year olds comes with removable pieces less than an inch tall. Actually, "removable" is really not accurate. "Hard to put in and easy to fall out" would be a better description. One of them was a little, teeny, tiny, very small, smaller than my pinky, stick figure of "Toodles" from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. "Toodles" is Toddler's new favorite character. He asks me for it daily. My answer, sadly, is,"Toodles is wherever you dropped him last month when we first lost him. I haven't found that place yet."

We also have one of those "busy gears" toys, with all the different color gears to put on, and take off, and stack up ... and lose. All I have to say about the gear toy is this: Thank you to whichever parent donated your collection of mis-mated gears to the local thriftshop. I needed them.

Letter toys -- why yes, my alphabet is regularly missing letters like, "Z"and "U". I think we might find them when we move. Maybe not. Too bad the letters didn't come with a storage box -- preferably one that is attached to the rest of the toys.

Generally, I would have to say the biggest missing pieces we have around this house is the other half of the tupperware and the other half of pairs of socks (as I mentioned above), but to my utter astonishment, every sock I put into this weeks laundry came out the other end to be with its mate. They socks didn't necessarily come out with the same load they went in with, but nonetheless they all appeared at the end of the day. I am so astounded by this fact that I am wondering what my long-standing nemesis Entropy and Chaos are doing. I think this might be more to the "Perfect Storm" I think is brewing.

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I Beg Your Pardon?

I have been having a little bit of trouble this past week in figuring out exactly what people are saying to me. I can hear them just fine, but for some reason, either the world has turned very ambiguous recently, I have been overly obtuse, or people have been saying odd things to me.

Let me share. (Please, please, let me share.)

First, I have this friend/family member who reads my blog about once every month or so, and catches up on all the missing posts. While she does this, she sends little email "missives" to me about her comments to what she is reading. Unfortunately, she usually fails to tell me what she is reading. Sometimes I can get it from context, and other times I will get something that seems very random and I will need to call for an explanation.

The other day she sent me a message that said, in essence, "My husband can check your grammar."

I'm thinking ... okay ... did I use bad grammar? Am I prone to it? (Oh, say it isn't so!) Why would she volunteer her spouse to check my grammar? Or ... is this a joke? Check my grammar as in "body check it into the wall" like in hockey? Or something? I have no idea.

Belatedly, I figured out that she was probably referring to this post where I mentioned that no one had yet had the wisdom to accept my unpaid job opening as proofreader, and she was offering her spouse as a sacrificial offering of some sort, almost certainly without asking him first. I wonder what her spouse would have said if I had accepted? That could have been soooo awkward. These offerings of our spouses to other people often work that way. You know, "My wife will be happy to have the kids over. No problem. What's another 3 or so children around the house, right?" Or "my husband will be THRILLED to redo the siding on your house. I mean, he did ours about 10 years ago. It only took two days, and we only had to redo a small part after the storm ...."

Then there was the woman we met outside the chinese restaurant after the buffet. She followed us out the door and said (in reference to Toddler), "Wow, someone must have a lot of patience with this little guy. He talks so well!"

I'm thinking, is that a compliment on his speaking ability, or a critique that he narrated his entire lunch? Even now I'm still not sure what she meant by that. She either thinks my child is wise beyond his years, or her lunch really sucked. I'm not sure I really care, though.

And then there is Toddler. Figuring out exactly what he is saying can be hard enough. For example, one night I was walking up the stairs with DH was giving Toddler a bath. I could have sworn I heard Toddler say, "I drink the water!" To which DH responded, "Oh, you are smelling lilacs? How nice."

Once we have the words down, figuring out what he means by what he is saying is sometimes impossible. The other day he came marching (literally, marching) into the kitchen, folded his arms across his chest, looked very sternly at us, and said, "I said STOP!"

Why so you did. Stop what? After about 3 days of this, we figured out he meant DH should stop hugging me. As soon as we figured that out, he began to tell us to "Stop eating!" and "Stop singing!" and "Stop 'puter!" I don't know about you, but I think this is an unfortunate thing for my child to be saying. I much prefer when he tried to tell me about "SuperGoof" on TV and accidentally called me "Supermom". I've been trying to bribe him to do it again, but he keeps saying, "noooooo!" I also much prefer when he randomly looks at me and says, "Good job, mommy!"

Now, this last part has nothing really to do with talking, but I have to include it anyway. As you may recall, Toddler had a brief but eventful fling with a girl in his music class whose mother apparently disapproves of me, or him, or both. (See story here.) I am rather intrigued to tell you that she was the underdog mom today in class for accidentally stepping on the fingers of a crawling child. While I feel bad for the child whose fingers were pinched (and who proceeded to bawl for quite some time), I felt a little bit vindicated. I'm ostracized for forgetting your kid's name, but you STEP ON CHILDREN.

Ok. I feel better now.

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God Kicked Me Out of Church Last Sunday....

So, the whole mess started last Sunday when the nursery pager buzzed me during the very beginning of the church service....

Wait. Maybe not.

You see, I have to admit I was in a rotten mood, and I wasn't paying all that much attention to the service. We hadn't even gotten to the sermon yet, and I was taking mental notes for my blog, I forgot to stand up when I was supposed to, and I freely admit to mouthing the words to the hymn because I couldn't figure out the tune. I find reading music I've never seen, singing it, and remembering which verse we are on and getting the right words to be a bit of a stretch of my musical talents. Standing next to Darling Husband, who sings quite enthusiastically with complete disregard for key and pitch makes it all the harder. I wish I had his devil-may-care (or I guess that's "heaven may care, right?") attitude and just "sang out." Unless I have a good pitch-person behind me feeding me the notes, though, I am meek and mild on songs I do not know. You see, my mother told me if I couldn't sing the right note, I shouldn't sing at all. In our house, this was the corollary to "If you can't say anything nice...."

So, with all that being said, the story probably starts with, "I wasn't really paying attention in church last Sunday." I was grumpy, we had a lot of unpleasant chores to do, and my cleaning lady just quit so I am concerned that if I don't buy a toilet brush we may all die of some vile disease of the commode. (Ok, that's not true either. I do clean bathrooms, but I do admit to leaving it up to the cleaning lady whenever possible. Wouldn't you?)

I was also thinking, as I sat there, that with the way this past week played out (as I described yesterday in detail), Entropy and Chaos might be massing for the biggest assult on my home we have seen since I brought a NICU baby home to a house without a kitchen.

Anyway, when it came down to it, God was not amused with me. Or, just maybe, he was quite amused by me and thought that was not really appropriate. Either way, the pager from the nursery went off less than 10 minutes into the service -- the first time it had gone off in almost a year. Darling Husband and I look at each other with a bit of alarm. This could not be good news. Toddler LOVES the church nursery. In fact, he runs inside, starts to play, then turns around, comes back to us, and pushes us out the door saying, "Bye, mommy, daddy. Bye." I guess we cramp his playing style or something. Then again, last weekend he came out of the nursery wearing a valentine from another girl-toddler, so maybe there is more to it then that. Whatever the reason, he wants to be there and loves it ... so what could be the page?

Like any reasonable parent, I grabbed the pager and jogged down the stairs. (If you haven't done this, it is an interesting experience, jogging down stairs.) All the while, I'm thinking about the time he was outside last summer with the nursery crowd and ran in front of a moving child on a swing and ended up flat on his back. What would the trouble be today? Bloody nose? Puking? Pulling a shelf of toys down on himself?

I walked in to the nursery, and he looked fine. The caregiver came over and said something like this: "Well, Toddler said he had to go poop, so I took him to the potty. He didn't have to go poop, but apparently he did have to pee. We had a bit of an accident because ... well ... his pee pee was pointing the wrong ... well, you know. And, you see, we didn't find any change of clothes in the bag. We thought he could just wait, but he keeps saying, he's 'all wet'. And ... well ... he is. We were hoping you had some pants in the car or something."

I just stood there, not sure whether to laugh or hang my head in shame because I failed to pack an extra pair of pants. What kind of mother am I not to pack extra clothes? Well, to be fair, I'm the mother of a child in diapers who never asks to go to the potty when he is outside the house, and never, ever, asks to poop in the potty. I am also the mother of a child that stopped throwing up a year ago, and I was enjoying the fact that I didn't really need to carry two changes of clothes everywhere I went.

I forgot for awhile that I am also the mother of a 2.5 year old BOY CHILD who loves dirt, forgets to point the right way in the potty, and remains totally unpredictable. I have now put a pair of sweatpants in the trunk of the car.

Of course, I had to check out the pants for myself, because everyone was standing there, staring at me, like perhaps I had some magic pants-drying wand or something.

Nope. No wand. No clue what I am supposed to do.

Nonetheless, I feel the pants. Um -- wet? These things were soaked from top to bottom, front to back, all across the left leg. This was no minor pants-wetting. This was a fire hose on high.

Of course, I was thinking, "HEY COOL! He was obviously holding it for the potty!" What I said was, "Right. This is not good. I'll get DH and we'll just take him home. Thanks so much, and we'll be right back."

So, less than fifteen mintues into the church service, and Darling Husband and I are gathering our coats and trying to "sneak" from the second row pew out the side door. No luck because the deacon is standing right there. No sneaking allowed. All exits must be bold and forthright. Yet, what do I say to this man with the concerned look? "Um, Toddler is having a really bad day, so we need to leave. No, no ... nothing is wrong ... exactly ... we'll just see you next week."

Right. That was ... inconspicuous.

In the end, I can honestly say it took us longer to find a place to park last Sunday than we were actually in the building. I guess the fact that the parking garage wasn't open and there were no un-snowed spots wasn't enough of a clue to us that God wanted the day off from our unfocused and irreverant attendance (or at least mine).

I knew I should have slept in and sent the boys off on their own.

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The Calm Before the Perfect Storm?

Once upon a time, before I was a blogger, and before I was a mother, I was a lawyer. (Okay, I technically still am one, but that's hard to write poetically.) In general, I had more money than I had time. Now that I'm not practicing, I still often don't have time, and now I don't have any money, either. But I digress. Back in those days, Entropy was pretty much winning the war hands down. Basically, it wasn't even a fight. We were lucky to escape each day with our lives, and each weekend was a fight to get the basics done, like laundry and just enough cleaning that we didn't drown in our own stuff. I needed help.

So, one day I hired this sweet woman to help me. She would come by two times a month, clean the whole house so we wouldn't die of the plague, I'd keep doing the laundry, and she was a bargain to boot. This was a match made in heaven because, as you know, you can't have a cleaning lady come into a house that looks like it needs a cleaning lady. (Erma Bombeck said that. She was right.) She was the impetus to help us keep fighting the forces of Entropy and Chaos. If we didn't work at least once every other week to clean everything up before she arrived, she wouldn't be able to find the floor with the vacuum cleaner.

Even better, we had wonderful communication. She spoke only Spanish, and I spoke no Spanish whatsoever. Well, that isn't exactly true. Thanks to 7 years of studying Spanish from Junior High through College (and later, the Handy Manny years), I learned how to say such useful phrases as: "Hello, how are you. My name is Flicker," "I am American," "Where is the metro?" "I would like a cup of coffee, please," "Where is the bathroom?" "How much does it cost?" "No cheese, please," and "I don't like vegetables." For the most part, none of these phrases were at all useful in day to day conversation with a cleaning lady.

Despite these challenges, we got along famously. She even vacuumed my fireplace, and when she didn't like my vacuum cleaner, she brought her own. From time to time, she failed to dust all of the cobwebs, but this was largely because she was very short, and sometimes she forgot to look up high enough. Still ... she was tremendous. From her I learned to say, "You have a lot of cat hair in your house," in Spanish.

Then, along came Toddler. The cleaning lady told me a very long story about her child who was born with breathing difficulties. It was a lovely dialogue. At least, I think that is what she was trying to tell me. I understood the words, "baby" and "hospital" and she pantomimed something that looked a lot like breathing stuff to me, and the story ended with, "Everything is just fine." My part of the story was to nod and smile and repeat back the words I understood. Eh, maybe she was talking about a friend, or a traffic accident she saw at the market last week ... but I'm pretty sure she was talking about a baby in the hospital who couldn't breathe. Either way, she adopted us on an emotional level. When Toddler came home, she walked in one day, took the laundry out of my hands, and simply added it to her list of things to do.

Then, I left my job, and I had to tell her we couldn't pay her. I asked if she could come once a month instead. You'll think I'm kidding when I say she refused to be laid off, even part time. She insisted on coming twice a month for half the pay. I was so confused by this conversation that she went to get an interpreter. Her reason was simple. "Hay mucho pelo de gato y necesita mucho ayuda para el bambino." (You have a lot of cat hair and you need a lot of help for the baby.) Well! How embarrasing! I didn't think the cat hair was that bad ... at least not since we got the vacuum cleaner working. Maybe she was afraid of what might happen if she left. Maybe she just wanted to help. Either way, I was unable to lay her off. She simply refused and kept coming to work.

Not too long ago, she started having problems making it on any given day. As it turns out, she was having some problems with a sick relative, and she was trying to be all things to all people. Eventually, just last week, she sent her interpreter to tell me that she couldn't work anymore. On the one hand, I was relieved because not knowing when or where she might come by made things like going to the bathroom with a Toddler a bit nerve wracking. What if he opened the door on me just as she was about to walk in the house? Plus, in the past many weeks, Toddler spent most of her cleaning days walking around following her, getting in her way, and trying to "sweep" just like her.

On the other hand she had been missing for about 6 weeks, during which I kept up with everything in anticipation of the idea that she might walk in any day, and I didn't want her to see a disaster. So, yes, I did it. I managed without her ... mostly. I did let 2 of the 3 bathrooms go more than she would have approved, but I got most of the rest of the stuff.

Now, I feel like Entropy is gearing up for a major assault. My backup is gone. I used to know that if I fell down on the job, eventually she would be there to dig us out and give us a nice good dose of sanitation. Will I keep up knowing that I don't have to look like I don't need her? It's kind of like doing Weight Watchers by yourself. If there is no giant scale with a success story holding a clip board taking your numbers every week, will you really be faithful to the plan?

Even worse, my Mother called with some advice that made me think she might be working for Entropy. Then again, she might be working for my sanity. Sometimes I have a hard time telling the difference. She called to tell me that because she is the cause of my old-fashioned floor cleaning obsession, she was going to help me find my way back out. At that moment Toddler threw food at me, which landed on the floor. As I bent to pick it up, I saw a whole pile of dirt and sighed that I was obviously going to have to wipe the floor today. Here is what she said. "The key to survival is to bend over, and pick up the thrown food with your eyes closed. That way you never see any of the other pieces, and you won't have to scrub your floor between scheduled cleanings."

This speech does not sound like the same woman who used to clean tar marks from the linoleum by scraping them with her fingernails daily.

I'm deeply concerned. Was this really my mother, trying to help me find a way to keep going without my backstop? Or was this really Entropy in disguise, trying to take over my house within the next few weeks?

Even worse, we were presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase bedroom furniture for Toddler's new room. It will arrive in 8 weeks, ready to be assembled and installed. Once assembled, it likely will never move again, which means we have exactly 8 weeks to strip the room, repaint it, remount the light switches, and replace the overhead lamp. In the meantime, we have also arranged for one of the two of us to be out of town 4 of these 8 Saturdays.

In the meantime, we are still waiting to be able to deal with some of the aftermath of Blizzard 2009 and Blizzard 2010, and the windstorm in between. The storms took out a good 1/3 of our roof gutters, and they are dangling attractively in front of the windows at the rear of the house, waiting for us to repair them ... when the ground and roof dries out and it is safe to do so. Of course, I hear there is more snow on the way and the melting runoff is fast wearing away at the soil in our yard. Plus, at least one of our evergreens will probably not survive the literal weight of the storm, and I'm not so sure about the rest, which means much sawing and chopping of trees in the near future.

All of these things together make me think that Entropy absolutely has to be involved. Now that I have laid it all out, I am in great fear that we are being set up for the perfect storm of Entropy and Chaos.

Brace yourselves.

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