Mostly-Mommy

Oh hello again! I’ve been away, as you may have noticed. We spent a week in Morton/Sadorus/Champaign Illinois for my Auntie’s wedding reception and to spend some quality time with the family. Now, when I say “we” I mean myself, Nick, Zoey, and my mother. We left Mike at home to work each day until the point of exhaustion, and also to drink entirely too much beer. He performed beautifully on both tasks.

While we were gone it was exhausting work caring for both of the beasties, but we managed and everyone made it out alive. The wee one decided to start screaming as loud as possible about 900 times a day. THAT was fun in the car.

We got back home Wednesday night, then Mike had Thursday off to play with us before jetting away to sunny San Francisco early Saturday morning. Where he will stay for almost EIGHT WHOLE DAYS. EIGHT WHOLE DAYS JUST ME AND THE TWO CHILDREN. HOME BY OURSELVES. FOR EIGHT WHOLE DAYS. BLARRRRRRGGGGH.

So far, so crazy. Nick is living up to his reputation as a raging Threenager asshole (sorry kid, but you know it’s true) and Zoey is super clingy and still with the screeching. Good times. My mom kept him last night and much of today which was really great because I think otherwise one of us was going to get locked in the basement. Of course Roscoe has my number too and decided to hop the fence for a little joyride this evening. You know, it is really irritating to not be able to yell at him because at least he came back. Good boy, I smile through clenched teeth.

So complain, complain, complain… why that title then? We went to a birthday party this afternoon at Loose Park and Nick was being really standoffish with me, but we had a good time. We came home, Zoey took a little car nap, Nick helped me make dinner, we ate said dinner, the kids got their baths, we read books, and both of them were asleep by 7:45pm. So too easy, must be a trick. Or the kids realized the next 6 1/2 days were going to be no fun unless they cut me a little slack. Yeah, let’s go with that one.

Today I came into the kitchen to find that Nick had given his sister an open container of hot chili pepper flakes. He was reprimanded and sent on his way. Not 15 minutes later  while I was doing the dishes it happened again. But not with something as easy as chili pepper, no… this time it was 3-in-1 Oil. Sound familiar? Except this time it wasn’t just terrible to clean up, it also resulted in a call to good old Poison Control. The good news is that she appears to be fine — the worst case scenario really involves digestive upset or respiratory problems, no specific toxicity. The woman already called back to check on Zoey, and will most likely call again. They sure are nice at Poison Control! Good thing too because at this rate they’ll just start calling me daily to see what toxic chemical the kids are into this time.

Here’s a great way to clean your dining room:

1. Secure your baby in the walker, assume everything is under control for five minutes.

2. Go take a shower.

3. Forget there are two bottles of Ecover Dish Washing Liquid for your mom on the dining room table. Don’t worry, your almost 3-year-old won’t.

4. Complete quick shower. Realize the house is too quiet. Wrap yourself in a towel, walk out of bathroom, try not to laugh, then try not to be TOO ANGRY. RAAAAHHHHH!

5. Scoop up what you can using a pyrex measuring cup and plastic spatula.

6. Wipe up what you can with a dry rag. Don’t bother rinsing because it will take 30,000 gallons of water and two years of your life to get the soap out of it. Just save yourself the hassle and throw it away.

7. Mop up what you can with a wet rag.

8. Repeat Step #7 about 150 more times.

9. Cry a little.

10. Give up.

11. Wish your dining room looked a little cleaner after all that.

There you go! Eleven foolproof steps to get you… um, frustrated? With prune hands? You’re welcome.

Also, if possible, Steps 5 through 11 should be done with a weepy, drooly, crying, teething baby clinging to your back or leg at all times. The proverbial “monkey on your back,” if you will.

On Sesame Street why is the letter of the day always baked onto a cookie? What kind of cruel jerk does that and then gets mad at Cookie Monster when he is compelled to eat it?

What blows exactly, you ask?

Why, our new furnace of course! It blows heat, glorious heat into our bedroom! That’s more than I can say for our previous piece of junk. Here, let me show you:

Goodbye sucka!

The lovely new furnace blows this wonderful heat through something called “ductwork” which we apparently didn’t have between our bedroom and the old furnace because our room was an addition. But with his magic Scott Bartmess gave us this:

And lo, there was heat. Who knew?

The funny thing was that the day he was finishing up he apologized for forgetting to tell us that the furnace wasn’t hooked up to our bedroom all night. We were like “It wasn’t? Felt like it always does.”

We absolutely LOVED Scott Bartmess, the man who installed our new Furnace and A/C, dampered the ducts, put all new ductwork to our bedroom, braced up our floor with a jack (that’s a whole other story), put in a chimney liner, and repaired our ghetto return. He did all that but he also pet the dog, was extraordinarily polite, cleaned up any messes he made, worked VERY VERY hard, and here’s the best one… he tried to be quiet during Zoey’s naptimes. Whatwhatwhat? Can you believe this guy? I never in my wildest dreams expected someone so polite and considerate, and also an HVAC genius to be working on OUR house. We struck gold. When he left on the fourth day after everything was complete I wanted to give him a big hug, but I sensed that may be overstepping his boundaries a little. Seriously, just look at his attention to detail:

Even I will be able to follow those diagrams!

And then there’s this:

I can’t even pull my Subaru in there and the dude backed up that full-size van towing a flatbed trailer into the driveway. Wow!

I saved the best pictures for last though. Here’s one of the new beauties:

Rawr!

Hello, gorgeous.

Scott explained all about how our new furnace works and how to take care of it. Here’s something I never thought I would hear, “…down here in the brain.” Our furnace has a BRAIN. What are we living in the 21st Century or something? Apparently the “brain” has a whole sensory self-diagnostic system with blinking lights for different codes and shiz. I’m not sure but I think my furnace may be smarter than I am.

I just can’t say enough wonderful things about Bartmess Heating and Cooling. I wish he had a site to link to but I think he gets plenty of referral business, and I can totally understand why. Mike wrote a great post on his blog about all this as well as the very different experience we had with getting the new windows in last week too. Last week was a big week for us! And so far this has already been a big year for home improvement projects. Many more to come!