The bathtub is out of my living room. Unfortunately it is not in the bathroom. It’s in the garage. At least until Steve comes home this weekend and we can do something else. I’m glad it’s out of the living room, but I was really hoping to make it into the bathroom.

Steve and his dad attempted to install it when I was gone yesterday to take the kids to cheerleading. I came home to find it in the garage and Steve says the bathtub will not fit.

But…

I didn’t see it not fit. By my calculations it should fit. And I’ve done a lot of moving organizing and I’m usually the one to figure out just how to turn something so it’ll fit. So. But I can’t do it myself and my hubby is convinced it won’t fit. I just need to figure out how to convince him we should try again without making him mad that I won’t take his word for it.

In Other News
Beth at work called me Interim Editor yesterday. I told her I preferred Slave of the Week.

The thing about being in charge of the newspaper is that everyone wants to talk to you and you don’t really have time to talk to them. And I’m sorry, but I don’t know why Tony decided to not run your letter to the editor. No, I’m sure it wasn’t because he supports Bush, I know he has a “Defoliate Bush” sticker on his car, and besides, his personal politics can’t be considered when deciding on letters. You’ll have to wait until next week and ask him. She suggested he put her letter was in a safe because it was THAT good. I chuckled, but she, it turns out, was serious.

On Wednesday (in the week that already is as full as any of my weeks could possibly be) my mom will be going to the hospital for outpatient surgery. She is having a biopsy because her doctor found a lump in her breast. I hope it was OK I blogged that. I’ve barely even told my children. Ah well, she knows I blog about everything.

Anyway, I can’t be at the hospital Wednesday morning because I have a meeting I have to cover and can’t get out of and can’t get Tony to cover. Which bugs me as a daughter, but at the same time, I know I have to go to the meeting. I don’t have any options. It’s already going to hurt to lose Wednesday afternoon at work. But that’s OK because I’ll get the newspaper done. I just hope the server problems we were having yesterday are fixed so I can actually get my photos and things done. I will be going to see my mom as soon as I get out of the meeting. My niece will be able to be there sooner though.

OK. I have to run. I am not getting anything done here blogging. Steve left this morning….

Oh, oh, oh… I almost forgot! I have two other BIG news items.

BIG news item #1: My brother, Keith, is going to be a grandpa, or rather a step-grandpa. My niece, Jessica (not the one that will be with my mom, but the one that got married last May, at least I think it was May) is pregnant. She’s due May/June-ish. Irene, my sister-in-law who is shorter than my daughter, will now be a grandma. It’s good timing because the 4 and 5 year olds in the family are starting to grow taller than her.

BIG news item #2: The Michigan Press Association announced the winners for the Newspaper of the Year awards. I won first place in the spot news category for my article about a middle school student that brought a handgun to school (it ended up being a BB gun, but looked like a 9mm). My column, I’m the Mommy, also won honorable mention. That’s the third time my column has won an award. Woohoo! I haven’t seen the actual award stuff yet, but the general manager of the company called me yesterday to tell me about it. Very cool stuff.

Now, gotta run. See ya.

This post could also be titled, Why my husband hates me. You already know about the tub in the living room. But you’re probably wondering how the tub got in the living room. Hubby and I carried it in. We also carried it down the hallway to install in the bathroom, but the tub had other ideas. So we gave up until later today. And in the meantime, it’s resting comfortably on its side in my living room.

But that’s not why my husband hates me. Or rather, is unhappy with my tendency to do 2.3 million projects all at the same time, making very little progress on any throughout the weekend, and turning our house into something that resembles…. Actually, I’m not sure what it resembles. Maybe some weird person’s very unorganized storage building. Because stuff is everywhere. Lots of stuff.

It started with the mudroom on Friday night. I decided to clean the mudroom walls. But they wouldn’t clean up and they were ugly. And it’s been 6 years since we painted the white walls. So I decided to paint. I had the equipment and I had paint. So I started. But before I could paint, I had to empty the mudroom. That involved removing about 20 plus pairs of shoes, at least 30 coats, including two pairs of snowpants. And about, let me see, 5 coat racks that had been mounted to the wall.

I piled the coats on a recliner in the corner of the living room. Add to that the pile of clothes on one of the three couches that were folded and belong to the children, but have not yet been taken care of. I finished painting Friday night, but I didn’t get the coat racks back up because I wanted to allow the paint time to dry.

Saturday morning I had to work. Then I came home, installed the coat racks, grouted tile that wasn’t grouted. At about the same time, I started going through my home-improvement materials to see what I had. So I hauled about 4 cardboard boxes of various materials like light switch covers, rope, razor blades, and all sorts of painting supplies into my living room and set it in front of that couch piled high with folded clothes.

While I did this, I had the girls upstairs in their room emptying out their toy boxes, which had become a pit for all of the things they threw into it when in a hurry to clean their room. Throughout the day, a daughter would approach me with some long-missing, much-loved toy, and exclaim, “Mom! Look what I found!” It’s amazing what you find when you clean.

Before the mudroom was fully back together and before I had sorted through my supplies, I decided to finally take care of the 10-plus Rubbermaid Tubs of Christmas decorations. Since out attic space is right by the girls’ bedroom, I was able to watch them empty their toy boxes. About the time I finished putting the decorations away, the toy boxes were empty. But the floor in front of the girls beds was covered. So I had them grab a trash bag and told them to start by picking up trash and dirty clothes.

I went back downstairs and swept and cleaned and what have you. Pretty soon it was time for dinner and I ordered pizza. The kids went to bed. The stuff was still on the floor, including trash and clothes because my children didn’t listen to me. I let it go.

The next day the kids went to Sunday School and two of the three girls went to someone else’s house afterwards. I decided not to make the third girl clean by herself, so I let their room go. Besides, I was busy.

Did I mention that my living room also had decorations from my kitchen that I had taken down last week and not yet found a place to put back up? Various display shelves and the items that were displayed on them.

That’s when I started painting the bathroom. I figured, heck, I’m in my painting clothes. Might as well get it done. I have the paint and the supplies. Go for it. I also painted trim.

Oh, and on Saturday I also purchased and Steve installed one of those at-the-faucet Pur water filters for the kitchen.

We brought in the tub and it wouldn’t fit. We tried for more than an hour, than decided to wait until the next day. We left the tub in the living room. We ate dinner. The kids went to bed after each of them took baths. Oh, and I broke our thermostat. Steve replaced it with a spare we had in the mudroom, which left a white 3×3 inch square on my newly painted tanish walls.

I’ve lost track on how many projects I started this weekend. By Sunday evening, Autumn couldn’t find her retainer and the living room, and the girls’ room was still a disaster. Steve came upstairs in the midst of this, and was surprised about the condition of the girls’ room. Seems he felt I should have supervised them more to make sure they finished it.

Ah well. Hopefully we’ll get the tub out of the living room tonight. And the rest of my house should be back together by the time Steve gets back home on Friday. Although I do reserve the right to make the girls’ room the exception. Because that room is seriously in need of serious aide and they aren’t quite motivated to take care of it yet. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go plant something in my yard. Or maybe build a shed. After all, it’s not like I have a lot of projects going now, right? Thanks for playing.