Doings and Goings On

President's Day WEEK is going as vacations do.

The littles quarrel and tattle constantly but still play together all day without pause. Yesterday one of them closed the stopper on the sink and left the water running, flooding the upstairs bathroom. It ran down the vents to drown the downstairs bathroom as well. I put towels down to soak up the mess. The older kids freaked out when they went to wash hands for lunch thinking the flood might have come from a more unsavory source.

Shorty had a doctor appointment this morning which meant a lot of time in the car as we still go to the next county. Tomorrow I will drive him down to a friend's house about an hour away and then head a half hour's drive to pick up one of the kids from a friend's house before making the hour long trip back home. We don't really live in the boonies but it seems like it sometimes. Squeaker has already started rolling her eyes and snorting so we're all kept informed on how put out she is to have to be in the car again.

Lucky brought home an mp3 player belonging to her godfather's seven year old daughter. She asked me to charge it so I did, then promptly confiscated it. I had to explain to her that we don't allow young girls in our home to listen to music filled with profanity and nasty references to cheap, dirty sex. She borrowed that from a seven year old? Good grief.

Squeaker got into several little spats with one of the littles yesterday then yelled at me about how he was acting when I got on her about it. Does she really want her behavior compared with that of a three-year-old?

Today she went a little too far with snarky, rude comments about my messy room after I had spent all day yesterday and part of today on the rest of the house. Actually, way too far. So I made her a detailed list and she is taking over all my household/yard/pet chores so I can have the luxury of tidying my room to her satisfaction. She managed to get through cooking and cleaning up dinner, doing dishes, sweeping, and folding a load of laundry before admitting she was ready to pass out. That was only part of the evening chores. Tomorrow should be fun since she'll be privileged to get up early and put in a full day of it.

I've been having Lucky work a little each day on her science fair project which is due next Monday. It's been going okay but tomorrow she starts working on the report part of it. Writing is a challenge for her but she seems to have a good grasp of the experiment and the result so I'm hoping it will go easily for her.

Stickers finally gets back into her college art classes tomorrow after a long break. That will be good since I think maybe we've given her some sort of creative block. I've commissioned her to paint a new piece to go above our fireplace since she keeps mercilessly criticizing the one that is there now. Yes, she painted that one too.