Friday, April 25, 2014

You can take the blond out of your hair... but you can't take the blond out of the girl

Let me begin by saying that I haven't gotten a whole lot of sleep lately.  Andrew has been waking up at night, or staying up late... the point being that I am tired and don't have much brain power...

So today I was continuing in my quest to track down these little motors for our paint dispenser.  They are, as far as I can tell, impossible to find in the United States.  I have been googling them and searching all over.  I decided to try Ebay.  Now, I also must give the disclaimer that I don't really go on Ebay much... So I get to Ebay's website and as I'm looking for the search bar, I see a heading that says "Motors," and I went, "Perfect!!" and clicked on that. I was more puzzled than I should have been when the screen filled with cars.  It took me a full minute to put that one together in my head.  "Oh yeah, motors refers to automobiles..." 

A little while later I was outside in the garden center looking at the vegetable starts we have, and trying to decide what to plant in my garden this year.  As I was glancing around I see a tag in one of the plants that said, "Red Raisin." I looked at that and thought to myself, "That's dumb... you don't grow raisins. You grow grapes and they are turned into raisins!" Then I looked a little closer at the tag and realized it was actually a type of kale called "Red Russian."  Yeah, I felt really really smart today!

Sunday, January 5, 2014

1-2-SQUIRREL!!!

I have a self-diagnosed condition and it can be quite serious. It is housework-induced ADD.
One day, a couple days before Thanksgiving, I started cleaning house while Andrew was napping. I began in the kitchen, trying to clear some of the clutter that had accumulated. I emptied the dishwasher, re-loaded the dishwasher, and was getting ready to clean the counters and vacuum the floor when I decided to take some stuff out to the trash and recycle. I stepped into the garage and saw the mountain of cardboard spilling everywhere and began flattening and neatly stacking it, crushing plastic bottles, and cans so they'd fit into their allotted bins. I took the trash out, and came back inside. I stepped into the bathroom to wash my hands and I started scrubbing the bathroom. I cleaned the tub, the toilet, the sink, the mirror, the counter, then I headed back for the kitchen to clean the counters. I got into the kitchen and remembered that I still needed to wash my hands. 

As I was getting ready to clean the counters, I decided to take a couple dish towels to the laundry room, where I found a load of laundry that I needed to start, a load I needed to fold, and the pajamas of Andrew's that I'd been looking everywhere for... I took a load of towels and sheets upstairs, started putting them away, and decided to change the sheets on the bed, then I decided to take a shower before Andrew woke up. 

A little while later I returned downstairs, freshly showered and in need of a cup of coffee. I made my cup of coffee, Andrew woke up. We went on about our day, and as I was heading for bed that night I looked around, and thought "I really need to clean those counters and vacuum tomorrow."

The day we went to get our Christmas tree, Andrew and I were having a quiet lazy morning watching Mickey Mouse waiting for Daddy to wake up.  When he got up, he asked if I wanted to go get a tree. I said yes, but I wanted to shower first. So I headed upstairs to get ready, and as I was running some water in my sink, I was once again frustrated by how slow my sink runs. I have tried a few times to fix it without removing the drain pop-up, because those can be such a pain to put back in, but I knew that my problem was a gunky clogged up pop-up. I started trying to clean it with Q-tips, but wasn't making any headway. I went back downstairs and asked Matt if he had a tubing brush in his tools. He said no. I grabbed some baking soda, white vinegar, and an old bottle brush from the hospital and headed back upstairs. I started trying to clean it out with the brush, but managed to completely clog the sink. So I emptied out the cupboard under the sink, and tool the trap apart, and then removed the pop-up; immediately a whole bunch of icky gunky water poured into my waiting container.  I put the pop-up into another container, sprinkled baking soda on it and then poured vinegar over it. Then I scrubbed it with the bottle brush until it was sparkly clean. I reassembled my sink, and then started sorting through all the various and sundry items that I had removed from the cabinet. I gathered up a large load of stuff that was headed for the trash, put the stuff I wanted to keep neatly back in the cupboard, scrubbed the sink, and counter, and for good measure, Matt's sink too. 

Now nearly 30 minutes have elapsed since I headed up to take a shower. I take my large armload of stuff down to the garbage, and as I walk past my husband he asks me, "are you ready to go?" I look at him, utterly bemused and say, "No. I was fixing my sink!" As if asking me if I were showered and ready to go was completely out of the question, I mean really, why would you ask me that?

It's a wonder that I ever get anything fully accomplished.