Short takes

Can anyone explain to me why the child who is content to wear clothing until it is so dirty, smelly, and generally disgusting that it would be a scientist's dream insists on having clean, fresh jammies every night? Well, at least on the nights he's not trying to sleep in the aforementioned week old nasties. Is this a special rule made by the laundry gods that I have been unaware of until now? Never wear jammies more than one night before tossing them in the laundry? Could this be why my whites are never quite white enough? The gods are wreaking their revenge on me?

Staying home with sick kids is going to kill me. I feel trapped. I spent the week before this one stuck at home with a kid suffering from bronchitis. Getting out to get a haircut was a huge outing and made me feel like breaking out in song. (I'm tone deaf. You definitely don't want that.) So sending the sickie back to school this Tuesday was like rainbows and kittens day. Until yesterday when the school nurse called to say he had a fever of 101 and must. come. home. again. to. stay. Does it sound completely and totally unmaternal of me to admit I don't *want* him home again? I am so stinking tired of listening to the Disney channel or Nickelodeon or the like that I could spit. I enjoy my peacefully quiet house while the kids are at school. The fact that the boy nods off to sleep even with the obnoxious ear worms of childen's programming echoing through the room not only confirms that he is truly sick but makes me feel slightly guilty for not wanting him home. I hate feeling guilty.

We got the bill for R.'s dance the other day. This doesn't cover everything (the costume bill is still to come) but it was enough of a whopper to just about cause a coronary. I'm still thinking about which child we're going to sell to cover the cost. It would be R. but if we sell her, there's no point left in paying the bill and really the boys haven't earned an eBay listing. (Well, maybe I should sell W. to someone interested in running medical experiments since he's clearly going to malinger as long as he can until school's out for the summer, driving me nuts and making sure we get our money's worth out of the cable bill.)

I expect D. to come home any day now and tell me we are moving. The reason for this? After a year and a half of living here, I finally unpacked the last of the boxes. Yes, we are officially all moved in. Everyone should celebrate with me. Oh, and in case you don't realize that me being completely and totally unpacked means Hell has indeed frozen over, please note that in unpacking, I saved a set of shelves for D. to put his books on instead of just claiming all the shelves for myself. I know. I know. I'm so generous! A whole set of shelves out of the dozen or so that we have. I must be coming down with something. I probably caught it from W.

As if one sick kid isn't enough, T.'s ear is so full of fluid that he can't hear out of it. He can only hear his own pulse throbbing away in there. Makes conversations with him interesting. And made my night the other night terribly sleepless as he dozed on top of me while I rubbed his head and neck to try and calm his sobbing while we waited for the children's Tylenol to work. Didn't help that we only have the infant's version and he's almost 8. Not wanting to overdose him (see, I have a few maternal cells), I probably underdosed him. That resulted in a lower level of sniffling and whimpering but no added sleep for me. It also led to the realization that it's a bit of an embarrassment when the dog gets to sleep in the bed and the miserable kid camps out on the floor on the dog pillow. (Wouldn't want to have you think I have *too many* maternal instincts.)

I remain behind on my book reviews and e-mail and have no excuse other than I am climbing the walls with cabin fever. I'm starting to seriously consider slipping Lysol in everyone's food to disinfect them from the inside out. And if this weather doesn't go back to the delighful sun and spring-like temps of the past weekend, I might just curl up into a ball in the corner and start weeping uncontrollably. We live in the south for pity's sake. This near freezing thing is bad enough but combined with the grey skies and clouds, it's just plain mean. Either snow and be pretty (although preferably not on a school day because the last thing we need is a snow day with kids off of school) or warm up and be pretty. My poor daffodils, which braved the warmer weather a couple of days ago to send up leaves, are probably shriveling up and dying in their little hearts. And I'm such a crap gardener that daffodil blooming time is the only time my yard looks gorgeous.

I also took advantage of the warmer few days to trim those dratted "crap myrtles." I am pleased to say that it was a better experience than last year. For starters, I wasn't wearing pants that kept falling off my butt. The fact that I have gained enough weight to keep pants up would normally be a bad thing but not mooning the neighbors trumps moaning about unwanted weight. I've also gotten better at dodging the branches I've trimmed so I think I only beaned myself in the head with the branches a handful of times. And I drew no blood. The crepe myrtles still look like something only Charlie Brown would rescue since I'm still short and the ladder sank into the soft rain-soaked ground a fair ways when I climbed it but given that I am considering whacking the things off about three feet high with a chainsaw, they got off fairly easily this year. Not gonna win the neighborhood yard of the month this month. (No, we don't have this award--at least not that I'm aware of--but the neighborhood directly behind us does and the winner has a monstrously large sign out in front proclaiming their superiority. Kicked in the competitive urge a bit before I realized that, as mentioned above, I am a crap gardener. Oh, and I don't live in the neighborhood that gives awards. Details.)