Your Mess? Your Job.

Two nights ago after my boy brushed his teeth, I pulled out a Clorox wipe, handed it to him and pointed to the toilet.  He looked surprised and asked why he had to clean the large yellow spot back behind the seat.  I informed him that if he makes the mess, he's going to have to clean it up (I've only made him do it a few times in the past...my bad!).  His response was, "But it wasn't me!"  Uhhhhhh.  I played Captain Obvious and reminded him that his sister can't miss and hit the toilet back there and that he's the only boy who uses that bathroom.  Not surprisingly, his answer changed: "But it's not from today."  Uhhhhhh.  It was still you, buddy.

It was actually fairly amusing to watch him cleaning up that spot.  He very gingerly held the folded-over wipe with two or three fingers and put almost zero elbow grease into it, doing only - and I mean only - the bare minimum needed to get the job done.  He tried to hand the wipe to me and I quickly pointed at the garbage can.

After his little chore was done I pulled out another wipe and did a quick wipe down of the bowl's rim and seat as I told him that he's going to start doing toilets.  He was about as THRILLED as a diabetic on Halloween.  Too bad, kid.  It's happening.

Out With The Broken & In With The New

What's wrong with this picture?

a) dirty spots on the wall that won't wash off

b) whoever painted didn't get the bottom of the pipes

c) no washing machine

d) all of the above

A couple of weeks ago I was doing my favorite chore of laundry when the washing machine started making horrendous noises.  I checked it out and found that the agitator wasn't working.  Very agitating.  We had a repairman come out to diagnose the problem and ours jaws just about hit the floor when he said that the transmission was shot and that it would cost $577 + change to fix it. OUCH!  We didn't hesitate for a milli-second...no repair needed.  We'd be buying a new washer.

After an evening of research, I set out the next day to find a new washer.  After stops at four different stores, mission accomplished.  I was initially 99% sold on one at Lowe's but at my final stop, I found a slightly better machine on sale for $50 less.  Making the deal even sweeter were the facts that they were waiving sales tax if you used your store account (which we already had) and we could pick up the washer that afternoon instead of waiting a day or more for delivery.  In the end, I got a better washer and saved over $100 compared to the one at Lowe's.  The final cost was less than $13.00 more than the cost to repair the old one.

When Max got home that afternoon he took our broken washer away in his dad's truck and came home with a shiny new washer (which I managed to scratch the front of within 48 hours) to take its place.

I love, love, LOVE my new washer.  I'm sure that no one wants to read all the details about it so I'll just say this: bigger capacity + high efficiency ($$$ saver) + cleaner clothes = one happy chick.

Oh - and we musn't forget the very best part of getting a new appliance...the box!

It's been three weeks since I got my new toy and the kids are still using the box.  They play house in it.  Hudson plays his DS in it.  Claire takes her animals inside.  It's the perfect toy.  As usual, the adult is excited about what came in the box and the kids just want to play with the packaging!

RANDOM TIDBITS FROM TODAY...

The first two things I'm going to blabber on about today have to do with my all-time fave chore: LAUNDRY.

First. As of this morning, I had three hampers full of clean clothes (approximately 5-6 loads)sitting in my laundry room. They had been sitting there for 2 or 3 days. Calling my name. Staring at me every time I glanced in their direction. Begging me to fold them and put them away. But you know what I did for those 2 or 3 days? I left them sitting there. And it wasn't like I just didn't remember. I actually put forth effort in doing so. Avoided them like the plague. Kept telling myself, "I'll do it later." And then I didn't. But this morning, the state of my laundry room (and kitchen) finally got to me. I pulled those baskets of clean clothes and towels out and folded every last piece. Want to know how long it took me? All of about 15 or 20 minutes...if that. How lame am I? I spent a few days mulling over the fact that I wasn't doing the laundry. I probably spent over an hour thinking about how I should have been taking care of it. I need someone to remind me of that next time I consider putting it off.

Next laundry issue actually came up yesterday but I dealt with it today. Here's the deal: I have a 2-year old. This isn't an issue in and of itself but how her clothes end up as dirty as they do is a true mystery to me. When I went to pull an outfit out of her closet yesterday, I discovered that a few of Claire's shirts had obvious grease or oil stains on them. And they had already been laundered. This poses two questions. 1) How did I miss the stains the first time around? 2) When did my daughter roll around in a tub of Crisco? I mean, these stains were all over the place! End of story goes as follows: I pulled her hamper out of her room today and washed everything except for the tops with the grease-stains (which are sitting on the counter overnight being obliterated by a stain remover). But I know in a week or two, I'll discover another shirt or six with unnoticed stains on them. Maybe I should just put a raincoat on over her cute clothes every day.

Last thing...a couple of hours ago, I was up in the kitchen making a quick pizza sauce to set in the fridge. No biggie. I made the sauce, poured it into a jar, put the jar in the fridge, cleaned the pieces to my little mini-food processor, and wiped the counter down. I then did what any other person would do: I walked over to the fridge, opened it, and started to put the mini-processor on one of the shelves. Just before I actually set it down, I realized my lapse in intelligence and took it to its rightful home in one of my cupboards. Please tell me that you've done things like that...

LAKE TAHOE: PART II

The remainder of our time in South Lake Tahoe proved to be rather laid back. Both Claire and I ended up getting the fever/bug that Hudson had come down with at the beginning of our trip, so that definitely held us back a bit. Thankfully the fever only lasted about 1 to 1 1/2 days for each of us so it was relatively short-lived.

We did venture out to Virginia City one day. It's an old mining town with a plethora of tourist-trap shops and candy stores. We did go on a little mine tour in town and took the big open-car train ride in the hills. In spite of the billions of stores, we only made a few minor purchases. The kids each got a little bit of candy and Hudson ended up using his $10 from Grandpa to buy a fossilized sand dollar and a pretty blue stone of some sort from The Rock Shop.

The only other real outing that we ended up going on was a brief trip to a local beach. Guests at our Marriott are given free passes to get in so we took advantage and all of us mommies (and Grandma), Max, my brother Dave, and all of the kiddies headed down there mid-morning on Thursday. Being so used to the sand at the ocean (aka "the real beach"), I was shocked at how coarse the sand was at Tahoe and found that it actually hurt my feet a bit. Claire didn't like it, either...after a single moment of standing on it, she refused to touch it again the entire time we were there. Thank heavens for the big play structure that she was able to run and climb on.

As I said before, other than our little outings, the rest of the week remained pretty mellow. When we were in good enough shape, we put the pool and "coolest" hot tub to very, very good use. Claire absolutely loved the "wall-ah" and Hudson was a good sport, going back and forth between the cooler pool (if you call 85 degrees cool) and the hot tub with his crazy mommy. Oh - and another miracle occurred on our trip (the first being my time behind the wheel on the drive out)...Max actually got in the pool with us. Unlike my guppy children and myself, he's never been a huge fan of going swimming, especially in public (too crowded & all...can you blame him?). It was so much fun to be out there together as a family and I know that both our kids and some of the cousins who also swam with him were thrilled to have him there.

Since we were to check out Friday morning, we spent much of Thursday afternoon doing laundry, packing, checking under furniture for Legos, doing more laundry, etc. I always hate feeling like such a chunk of my vacation time is taken up by packing up at the end but it's a necessary evil.

In this process, I learned a very valuable secret: If you ever stay on the third floor of the Alpine building at Marriott's Timber Lodge in South Lake Tahoe, you cannot rely on the washer on the right to start when you push the button or the dryer on the right to...wait for it...actually dry your clothes. While we did have our own washer and dryer in our condo, we decided to take advantage of the guest laundry room just down the hall. I set both washers to do their job and when I went back an hour later to transfer the clothes to the dryers, I discovered that the aforementioned washer on the right had never started and wouldn't start no matter how many freaking buttons I pushed. I had to shut the thing down, power it back up, and re-set the whole cycle before it'd do what it was supposed to. So, while that washer was running, I threw the other clothes into one of the dryers, turned it on, and headed back over to our place. Another hour went by and I ran over to change the 2nd load over to the dryer. I then discovered that the first load that I had put in the dryer was warm but still almost as damp as when I had put it in there. So I tossed the second load into the same dryer with the first, set it to a higher heat setting and longer duration and once again left. When I came back from dinner over an hour later, all of the clothes were still totally wet. Warm, but wet. I think they would have been drier had I laid them all out over the dining chairs in our condo. I ended up taking all of the clothes back to our place where our very reliable in-house dryer did the job the right way in less than 45 minutes. If I had just done those two loads in our condo the first time around, all of our laundry would have been done and folded prior to our going out to dinner. Note to self: don't ever buy front-loading washer and dryer by GE.

We were up plenty early on Friday and should have been packed, showered, and ready to go by checkout time at 10:00 a.m. Not so...it was a rough morning with Hudson acting out and Claire constantly fussing and crying. Not exactly ideal conditions when trying to get things done. We finally made it out the door by about 10:30 or so and instead of heading for home, we followed my sister and her kids down the mountain in the opposite direction...

LOOK WHAT I FOUND!

So, as I slaved away at cleaning up my craft room/office last night, I kept finding all kinds of precious little treasures. Some of my favorites...

The Blue Day Book: my mom gave me this a few years ago. It's a really fun little book. Good for at least a few smiles and giggles. It's full of pictures of animals with a single line written below each (like the one with a pictures of a monkey sitting on top of a cactus and the line, "Maybe work is a pain in the butt."

An unopened copy of Anna and The King. It's a fantastic movie. But we already owned it when I received this copy when I was sick a little over a year ago so I tucked it away. And I mean really tucked it away. It has been sitting in the tornado alley that is my craft room for just as long.

I also found a baby teether that no one in our house has needed or used for close to a year.

Then there was the Pez dispenser with Santa's head on top. He's kind of a strange looking Santa...he has these white stripes on his face that I'm sure are supposed to be a moustache but they have light blue lines on them. What's up with that?

Oh - and Elmo's hand. No, we aren't doll/toy destroying weirdies...it's a paper hand that was ripped out of a board book we have. There's a pop-up Elmo at the end of it and his hand was apparently torn off when some excited child (aka Claire) was "reading" the book. And it wasn't the first time it had been amputated, either. It's totally covered in tape - obvious evidence of skillful tape-surgery on my part when Hudson was a tike. Now I just need to locate the book and perform my magic again.

Next we have my 2-lb. weights. Bought them years ago when I was working out to an exercise DVD a few times each week. I'm actually really glad I found them because I need to dust that DVD off and get crackin' on working out again.

There is also an old card that I found many years ago. It's a picture of Han Solo and Leia going in for a kiss. Her thought bubble says, "I'm the luckiest girl in the galaxy." and his says, "She's the luckiest girl in the galaxy." I still find it amusing.

Next we have a little plush bunny on a ribbon. It goes to a "plush"/fabric book that my mom gave to Hudson when he was just a wee toddler. You're supposed to move the bunny from page to page as it goes about getting ready for bed. Can't really do that when the cute little rodent hasn't been attached to the book for at least a couple of years now, can you?

Lastly is a little pair of white, tan, and pink argyle mittens that I purchased from Crazy 8 for Claire...about 18 months ago. Still new with tags. For some reason, I don't think she'll be using a pair of size 6-12 month mittens anytime soon.

Anyone want a DVD of Anna and The King or a pair of baby girl's mittens? Both are up for grabs and if you're the first one to leave a comment claiming one, it's all yours. I'll even pay the postage.

In my mission to clean up my messy room, I went through my old records and paper files (and I mean OLD) and found just a few things to shred.

The sink that my shredding stack is resting in is about 6 inches deep...nearly 5 inches of that is taken up by the papers. And speaking of the papers, I found some interesting stuff there, too. Like the sales contract and a copy of my insurance information from when I got my Land Rover Disco II. Not such horrible things to have. But I bought it back in 2003 and traded it in for my Expedition back in 2005. Not so sure that I need the paperwork anymore. I also found some documents from when we replaced all the windows. In our old house. Before Hudson was born. Uh....

The one thing that I found interesting in my going through all those papers (no paper cuts, by the way, thank you!) was a number of old bills from hospitals and documents from our insurance company showing the cost of some of the "stuff" we went through back in 2007 and early 2008. Here are a few fun figures:

Hospital charges for 2 nights/3 days when I had Claire:

Mine $4,729.85 (and that's before my OB or the anesthesiologist)

Claire's $1,473.63

MRI of my 1st spinal MRI back in November 2007: $1745.94 (one of the "cheap" MRI's I've ad)

Charges for my spinal surgery in November 2007:

Neurosurgeon $6,676.90

Hospital $49,632.81 (if I remember correctly, my tiny little titanium implants were around $5,000.00 alone)

Anesthesiologist $2, 925.00

Assistant Surgeon $4,000.00 (it was more than that but I can't find the paper now)

Charges for Max's hip resurfacing in February 2008:

Physician $5,225.00

Hospital $48,711.07

Charges for my brain surgery in March 2008:

Hospital $23,105.52

ENT $9,640.00

Neurosurgeon $$23,531.27

Anesthesiologist $2,111.00

I left out Max's two hand surgeries that were in September and October of 2007...didn't see any of the figures on those. All I can say is thank the heavens above for insurance, adjustments, and having met our out of pocket before my surgery in November '07. Granted we had to meet it again in '08 but that was taken care of with Max's hip surgery.

P.S. Also found some AWESOME recipes that had been hiding with Anna and The Kind in my ironing basket (where else should I have put them?). You can bet I'll be posting a few in the next week or so!

WHAT I SHOULD BE DOING...

I have a hankering for writing a really fantastic post right now. But, as so often happens with me, I am hitting a wall when it comes to material. Recipe? Posting one on Friday. Story about the kids? Too many to pick from. List? In the works.

So, instead of writing some brilliant piece to add to my blog (which we know all of my posts are), I'm going to do what I should be doing. What will give me a sense of accomplishment. What I should have done months ago. I'm going to clean up and organize the mass chaos and horror that is my craft room/office. Ugh. Guess I'll turn on some tunes and take a spoonful of sugar to make this medicine go down. Speaking of which, we watched Mary Poppins in the car the past 2 days...good flick!

AN ORDINARY TRIP TO COSTCO

Shopping at Costco is risky business and never turns out as planned. It's like going to a candy store to pick up some chocolate - which, of course, is very much needed - and leaving with more chocolate than was needed. Along with two pounds of Holland Mints, some caramels (they just looked too good), a large lollipop, and a pack of discounted Christmas colored jelly beans. Do any of these things go un-eaten or un-used? Is it wrong to buy them? Are you a bad person for perusing the aisles and looking at each item? No...but that is what makes Costco like a giant black hole that sucks away any logical thinking and the ability to follow any list or plan you may have had. And this happens the second you flash your card at the door.

My all-time cheapest, least risky, and most successful Costco trip happened some time ago. I went in for a bottle of Kirkland's generic Motrin/Ibuprofen and came out with...a bottle of Kirkland's generic Motrin/Ibuprofen. It cost me less than $9.00. I was so proud of myself, I think I actually called Max to tell him about this.

On the other end of the spectrum are the numerous times I've gone there to pick up 4 items and came out with 12, only 1 of which was on my original list as I ended up forgetting to get the other 3 items.

Here is today's Costco experience: Max had the day off because of the holiday today. We didn't have any plans for the day but we did have a short list of things that we needed to get at Costco (no really - we did need them). So we all hopped in the car and set out for the Black Hole. We didn't forget anything and came home with everything on our list. Plus a bottle of olive oil, an extra case of water bottles, ravioli, disposable cloths for our dust mop, Go-Gurts, and a berry smoothie from the food court.

Unexpected purchases at Costco...if that isn't ordinary, I don't know what is.

MY LAUNDRY LIST

Just after hauling 20 loads of wash into my laundry room the other morning (OK - not that many), I was remembering a definition that I once read for the word laundry:

"Clothes or linens that need to be washed. Articles of soiled clothing that seem to multiply uncontrollably when left in a hamper."

I was smiling to myself about this cute little snippet. I opened the washer to transfer the clothes to the dryer. I stopped smiling. On every single piece of clean, wet, DARK clothing were tiny little pieces of Kleenex/facial tissue. When I say tiny, I mean minuscule. The first thought that came to my mind was that a few were probably just the right size for a mouse to use. But for the most part, these lovely little embellishments on my clean clothes were roughly the size that a baby cricket would use to wipe his runny nose (do crickets have noses?). As I cursed myself for not checking all the pant pockets prior to putting them in the washer, I threw the clothes into the dryer, already looking forward to the joy of emptying out the lint catcher.

This whole tiny tissue experience got me thinking about another aspect of laundry: All the things that I do not like to find in the washer. Or even worse, in the dryer. And so, I give you a little "laundry list" of some of the things I have found in my dryer:

grass
chewing gum (stuck to the crotch of Sonny's swim trunks)
rocks
chap stick
hair/bobby pins (who are those from?)
acorns
a credit card
crayons
paper
cell phone
remnants of stickers (small pieces stuck to several items of clothing)
toy cars
pens
money (my personal fave...finders keepers)
sand

I'm sure that some of you have seen (or scraped off, or vacuumed out, or sworn about) much worse. I don't envy you. But I sure would love to hear what these things were so that I can feel better about the things that we've left in our pockets around here. Leave your "laundry list" in the comments section if you want. That way, everyone else who reads this can feel better, too.

Now, I folded the aforementioned clothes this morning. Most of them are now free of tissue thanks to my rockin' dryer. However, a few items - such as Sonny's navy blue sweatshirt - are still sprinkled with cute little pieces of Kleenex. Maybe it will come in handy...like when we hear that baby cricket sneeze.