I’ve been here before, but honestly I don’t think it was this bad. Last week the phone got cut off, today the water, sometime in the next couple of days it will be the gas and the internet. Next week, maybe the week after the electric will go. On top of this, the hubby’s got $550 or so in fines to be paid or he’ll get a bench warrant.

Now here comes the catch 22. If we buy food, that means the hubby will miss about half a week of work. If we pay any of the above bills, that means a full week, maybe two or more that he wont have money for gas to get to work. And to think that they say you have to spend money to make money. Sometimes you have to starve in the dark and pee in the tub.

The stress of all of this has made me incredibly snappy and irritable, which isn’t helpful I know, but I can’t help it. It’s hard to be super happy that Button learned how to open the bathroom door when it means a big mess that I’ll have no water to clean up. To make the stress worse, we really can’t afford to buy smokes either, so we’ll both be nic-fitting and extra angry at life in general.

Does it actually get lower than having to teach your boys to pee in the bathtub because it takes less water to rinse it away?

How am I supposed to comfort the hubby, tell him it isn’t all his fault, that we’ll be alright, when in the back of my mind I can’t stop thinking that it is all his fault, and we wont be alright? The irrational part of me wants to just lash out and scream at him for being so stupid sometimes, how dare he sit around and be depressed at home instead of going to work so much that this happened? How dare he expect me to comfort him and come up with ways to make his mess all better? But I wont. I never do. Of course, that doesn’t mean I never will…

Someday my magical and infinite fount of patience shall run out, and the world will be a darker and much less happy place.

The hubby and I often trade bedtime chores; one gets cups and does the tucking-in, while the other gives baths. The boys frequently trade everything from clothes to toys to side dishes during dinner. Button even swaps with Calypso sometimes; “You can have my milk if I can have your water?”. It’s a daily part of life, and one that I’m totally okay with; it keeps things interesting.

Today, the hubby and I are making one of the biggest swaps possible in this house. He’s going back to his beloved corner desk (which I despise), and I’m going back to the desk that has a full view of the kitchen in hopes of curbing Buttons food waste when hes “cooking”.

This swap involves a lot more work than you’d think it would, as the corner desk is often the “hub” of the living room. Anything that doesn’t have a home somewhere else winds up piled on one of desks shelves including miscellaneous trash, broken toys that haven’t been fixed yet, pointy or dangerous objects that have been taken away from the boys.

Besides the general clutter, the hubby and I both run dual monitors, his are sleek, lightweight LCD’s, but mine are unfortunately still large, clunky CRT’s, including a 21″ monstrosity that weighs probably 80lbs. In addition to the monitors, we each have our own accessories. I have a drawing tablet, digital camera, iPod, and other things that require some desk space; he’s got joysticks, a racing wheel and various USB drives and other odds and ends. It’s a lot of stuff to move around, especially when it all needs to sit on the floor until after I wash the desk down.

Along with this desk swap, we’ll be rewiring some of the network. Our old Linksys router has about kicked the bucket (after a good 4 years of life), so we’re swapping to a Motorola wireless one, which means we need to use a few less network cords, which is fine as most of the ones running through the house aren’t even connected to anything, they’re “just in case”.

Lots of work to do, but I’m looking forward to it because I’ve wanted to get this all done for months now.

For a change, I didn’t wake up randomly at 5:30am, but got to sleep until a lovely and late 9:30, I was almost giddy when I looked over at the alarm clock, and then I heard the not so lovely sound of spankings being dished out.

Moments later, the Punk runs in hollering about how Button took some cream, and my smokes, and was in the garage making a mess on the car, and that daddy said I have to get up and go help him.

We’ve had problems since day one with Button’s climbing abilities. There is no obstacle he cannot overcome. I mean that quite literally. When he was 7 months old, he managed to climb up onto a shelf a good 3 feet off the ground because he saw something shiny and wanted to taste it.

By the age of one he could climb up onto the top of my corner desk’s hutch, and there were several occasions where I came back from going to the bathroom to find him up there dancing, or poking through my “geek toys” (you know, little figurines, a voice activated purple Shoyru, some wood puzzles, Legos, those kinds of things).

At one and a half, he figured out how to get into the fridge and cupboards, and that’s been a never ending disaster. Two seconds alone in the kitchen and he’ll manage to “cook up” something tasty with the complete contents of a few spice jars, some eggs (shell and all), a slice of pizza or two, perhaps some bread.

Baby gates stopped being a barrier as soon as he learned to walk. When he was smaller, he used to bulldoze them down. He’d start running at one end of a room, and just plow into the gate as hard as he could and knock it out of the doorway. Now he just climbs them.

The only bright side here is that he hasn’t yet figured out how to open properly closed doors. I doubt it’ll be that way for much longer, but at least for now we can keep him out of the bathroom and the pantry, that is unless the Punk opens the door for him which he does quite often.

So how to get him to stop doing this? I honestly don’t know. Even the Punk hasn’t grown out of getting into everything yet, though he doesn’t do it nearly so often anymore, likely because he knows now where everything is, and what everything is, so theres no mystery to it. We’ve tried everything from spankings to explaining why its not good for him to waste spices and eggs and such, but either he just doesn’t understand, or he just doesn’t care. Neither would surprise me too much.

There are several things yet that we need to get taken care of before the day arrives, first and foremost is getting the Punk caught up on his immunizations. I spent several hours yesterday hunting around for somewhere that was doing back to school shots in our area with no success, until one of the hubby’s coworkers pointed me to the Visit Houston website, where they have information up about the Children’s Museum giving free shots and free admission afterwards every Thursday from July 31st to August 28th. You can read more about it if you’re in the area, it wasn’t easy to find.

Once his shots are up to date, we have to attend preregistration day at the school itself, and find out if they’re going to accept him at all. There are only two classes available, one morning and one afternoon, and they are available first come first serve only. This will be his first look at school, so I hope it goes well.

If they decide to give him a spot in one of the pre-kindergarden classes then we’ll need to get him a whole new wardrobe just for wearing to school. Pasadena’s school district has put in a new dress code this year, and it’s quite over the top, I think. He’ll only be allowed to wear polo or oxford style shirts in solid white, blue or red, which must remain tucked in at all times (what 4 year old keeps his shirt tucked in?) and must be free of decoration; for pants hes required to have either khakis type pants in their normal color or navy blue, or jeans that are completely unmarred, which means they must be the original indigo color, no sandblasting or manufacturer fading. He can also wear navy blue or khaki shorts (until 5th grade, after that shorts are no longer allowed). His pants can’t have hammer loops or pockets besides those at the waistband, and shorts have to be 2″ above the knee or longer. There are even fitting requirements on all of the clothes, they have to be “perfect”, not too tight or too lose, and pants can’t touch the floor. There are other crazy requirements on the list too, for example he cannot wear sandals or “skate” shoes, only shoes with full backs, which means wearing socks in 110 degree weather while walking to school and back every day.

Once he has a few school outfits, which have to be kept in pristine condition of course, he’ll be needing a hair cut, as the school district has also put in a “grooming code”, which stipulates that his hair must be “neat, clean, well groomed and free of shaved designs”. If anyone could manage to tame his hair, I would honestly be stunned stiff. I’ve been trying for 4 years to get it to look “neat”, but all I ever manage to get is “scarecrow”, or “recently electrocuted”.

The district hasn’t posted a pre-kindergarden supply list, so I don’t know if he needs any supplies or not. I suppose we’ll find out on preregistration day, but we may get him a few things anyways since this is his first year of school and he may want to have the things the bigger kids have. I looked through the supply lists for other grades, and was somewhat shocked. They even go so far as to require specific brands of pencils, scissors and glue, and specific colors for notebooks and folders, depending on the grade the student is in. Along with the supplies, we’ll see about finding him a clear, transparent or mesh backpack/book bag, as district regulations prohibit opaque bags.

You’d never know we’re sending him to a public school, would you? And to think, I haven’t even mentioned the students Code of Conduct, which is enough to strike terror into the hearts of even the most cool headed of parents, with its dozens of sections with such frightening titles as “Students Required to Register as Sex Offenders”, “Police Questioning of Students”, “Interrogation and Searches”, and the lovely “Corporal Punishment”, yes, thats right, corporal punishment. You have to actually fill in a form yearly and give it to your schools principal saying that you don’t want them to beat your child on the ass with a ruler if they commit a “minor offense” of the Code of Conduct.

Terrifying, hey?

This time I was already awake when Dolly started pouring out her energy on the roof (hello again, Dolly!), because the hubby was having a bit of an insomnia bout tonight and woke me up at 3:30 and again just now when he finally came to bed.

The two of us are very nocturnal creatures, usually. We’re both at our best mentally when its the middle of the night. The darker it gets outside, the more awake and alert we seem to be. It makes sleeping a bit difficult, though, and it tends to be a touch aggravating with the boys around because while they try to be nocturnal too, they need to sleep at night and keep a schedule for when they start school.

Speaking of school, the other bonus to being awake in the middle of the night is that I can look things up that I never remember during the day, like where to take the Punk to get the shots he needs before school starts, and what the registration date is for pre-kindergarden at the school down the street.

I’m super excited for him, and for me, finally I’ll get half my day back (well, half back, I’ll still have Button for 2 more years), and he’ll get to play with a bunch of other kids and learn all kinds of interesting things!

A while ago, we were in the kitchen together working on dinner, me babbling on as I do, and he trying to get me to stop. Eventually he just told me to quit and I, understandably (to me, at least), got a bit upset at this and wandered off to sulk at my desk.

During my little sulking fit a dozen thoughts ran through my squeaky little brain, the foremost of which was “Why on earth would he marry me if he can’t stand half the things I do? It doesn’t make any sense!”. After a few minutes of pondering this thought, the answer came to me: Opposites attract.

But why? It seems like such a silly thing. Who would want to spend all their time with someone who was completely different than themselves? Wouldn’t it be much nicer to spend that time with someone you have many things in common with? The easiest explanation is of course that with someone who is the opposite of yourself you’ll never have to worry about being bored; your opposite will always find some new way to oppose you, and you will do the same for them. I never have liked easy explanations though, so again I set the little wheel in my head turning over these thoughts.

Could it simply be that humans as a species are gluttons for punishment? We constantly put ourselves through seemingly impossible trials in an effort to “better” ourselves, so is this just another kind of trial, and will I be a better person for it when all is said and done? Perhaps its just a part of our constant need to grow, learn and evolve, who better to teach us new things regularly than someone with totally different interests and desires?

Looking back at some of the things the hubby and I have accomplished together, I would have to say that despite being opposites in many ways, we do compliment each other quite well. He always looks for a scientific or mechanical way to do things, while I always try to come up with a more mental or creative approach, and in the end we’ve always reached a combination that did better than either of us could have done alone.

Considering this I think I’ll go with the latter of my thoughts, that humans strive to learn and change, if only because it seems a bit less dismal than the other options. Maybe now that I’ve thought all this through I won’t get so frustrated with him when he gets cranky about my babbling, or does any of the number of other things that annoy me. But then again, maybe I will…

I know, my little tots are growing fast, and nap time cuts a huge swath out of playtime fun, but it is still necessary, if only for me. The faster they move, the more I need nap time to recover some energy, but the less inclined they are to go for it, so instead I spend my afternoons chasing them back into bed, and making myself more tired.

I’ve also noticed that no matter how much they fight it, they still need the nap too. Without it, they get incredibly cranky hours before bedtime, and are such a hassle to deal with that it makes me and the hubby cranky, and everyone goes to bed miserable and exhausted.

Lately they’ve been coming up with some incredibly creative ways to completely destroy any hopes we might have of getting a little mid-day peace and quiet. The newest trick is sneaking something into their room that they aren’t supposed to have, making a huge mess with it, and then telling me about it so I feel the need to pull them out and clean it up. Something like pancake mix for example. Or perhaps a can of spray on oil for cooking and such. If that fails they just resort to the good old standby of sneaking out and hiding in other rooms every few minutes.

I do hope it gets a bit easier once the Punk starts pre-kindergarden this year.

At least I think that’s what woke me up. I was happily asleep, and then suddenly I was wide awake. I noticed a light on, so I got up to turn it off, and by the time I got to the light I realized there was no going back to sleep.

So here I am, blogging at the unlikely hour of 5:30am. I’ll be adding some pages for the members of the Mouse House today, and perhaps trying out a different theme or two. Beyond that, I have no plans, except to try to get a bit more sleep before Button and the Punk wake up.

As of late, orange oil cleaning spray stuff has been my absolute favorite thing to use on most any mess. It gobbles grease, banishes burned on who-knows-whats, and adds sparkle to appliances. Plus it smells tasty. It’s especially good at getting rid of sticky goo that little fingers sometimes leave behind, and marvelous at removing peanut butter without any effort at all.

It is apparently also a lifesaver when your Button decides to paint his bedroom walls with black acrylic.

I don’t know what spurred this sudden urge to express himself all over the walls, but I do know that having textured walls in a house with small children is just the most terrible thing ever. If I could scrape it all off, I would, but I can’t, and so I will worship the orange.

On the brighter side of things, this little event did convince the hubby to finally fix our bedroom door so that it closes properly.

The problems themselves aren’t the focus of this post, though I may go over them at some point in the future. The point is the mind mapping. I came across this fantastic site called Mind Meister, where you can create online mind maps and share them, or not. It’s all very easy to use, just double click to add an idea, delete to remove one, drag and drop to move or group your ideas. It’s all very intuitive.

Anyhow, if you’re fond of getting your ideas down in a constructive and creative way, or just need a place to plan out.. anything then check it out. The basic account is free and lets you have 6 maps and some other features, and if that isn’t enough for you, unlimited maps are only $4/month.