When we moved into this house in 1998, the building inspector required we have lights at every exterior door. We put in the outlets and had them working into the switch, but for some reason we never actually installed the lights. We have a mercury light, so we didn’t really need them. And I think when we were doing the vinyl siding, we didn’t have the proper light box.

But we bought it within days. Still, we never installed the lights, because by that time the siding was up and we were in a “hurry up and make do” mode.

Yesterday, Steve installed the light. When we made our garage door smaller, we removed a lot of siding, so it was oh-so-close to being undone where the light outlet is at. So I suggested. And when I came home last night, our mercury light wasn’t on. But as I got out of my vehicle, my exterior light flipped on. I have light! So now the second switch in the mudroom actually has a purpose.

It took him a bit to locate the special vinyl siding light box, and the outside light. After all, we’ve been moving them around for the last 6 years. There is still, however, that switch in my office that doesn’t do anything. But that’s from when my office used to be a foyer and had an exterior door that required a light. Now that light would just light up the side of the house because there isn’t a door there anymore. Not that I’m complaining. I have light, after all.

The siding still isn’t up on the garage, but that’s because I had a meeting last night. Steve did get the Tyvec up, so hopefully tonight, I can help him put up the siding.

Last night the kids went to a magic show. It was family night at their school and usually we don’t go to family night because I always seem to have meetings on the same night, and Steve doesn’t relish the idea of taking all four kids by himself to something he suspects he will be the only dad present.

But last night the kids really wanted to go. So they suggested Grandma Sherwood would take them. I called and asked, and she agreed. But it was a pajama party family night and any adult not wearing pajamas had to pay $1 to get in. Grandma opted to pay the $1. But the neighbor lady, Sue, went too and she wore her pajamas. The kids all wore their pajamas too. And they got disappearing ink and a plastic whistle shaped like a bird that you fill with water to use. Autumn tried to dump the disappearing ink on me this morning, but I stopped her just in time.

Getting four kids out the door in time for the bus is about all the magic I can muster in the morning.

In the midst of all of this home improvement I’ve been slacking in my duty as Children Homework Monitor. Amanda missed the deadline for an assignment to do a brochure on Houghton Lake. It was due last Friday. I found out about the project when I went through Amanda’s bookbag on Tuesday. It was a wadded up note in the bottom of her bag saying, “Dear parents.” It told everything about the project except the DUE DATE! Amanda didn’t know it. (Why am I not suprised?)

But Amanda’s friend’s mother knew. And Amanda missed it. We live in Merritt, just 13 miles west of Houghton Lake. She claims she doesn’t know anything about it. Yeah. The thing is, she thinks because the due date has passed, she doesn’t have to do the project. Enter me. As soon as I have time in between home improvement and work requirements, I swear the CHM is going to woop some child into doing her duty!

In the “I’m such a bad mother” category (as if my neglecting CHM duties aren’t bad mother habits) I managed to maim a child yesterday. Justin is now sporting two, make that three, scratches on his face, thanks to my fingernails. We were in his room, and he was sitting on his knees on the floor with pajama bottoms on and no shirt. I was standing above him. I had him hand me his pajama top so I could turn it right side out. As I handed it back to him, he popped up, and his face met my outstretched fingernails. Tears and guilt flowed freely.

Later, after the children went to bed, I managed to stab Steve at least three times in less than 10 minutes. This is the number one reason why I liked fake nails. They looked nice and when I stabbed someone they didn’t hurt them. But my real nails are sharp dangerous weapons. This morning I clipped them back to fingerlength. It’s not like they were lethal length to begin with, because I type a lot and that tends to break them off. But still. My poor family.

Now, I’m off to work. Later Dude.

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.

I started last weekend cleaning my office. For the most part, my office was clean, but I had some papers that I needed to sort through. So I started. It soon turned into a major rehaul of my entire filing system and every paper in my office, as well as supplies and 3-ring binders. Which led to five bags of garbage.

That’s right. Five bags of garbage came out of my 8×8 office. And the thing of it is that by looking at it now you can’t tell that there is five less bags of stuff in it. Sure if you open the filing cabinet you might notice, but for the most part, no change.

But I feel so much more organized. I feel ready for the influx of school stuff now that I’ve finally put away last year’s report cards and school stuff.

Our school doesn’t start until September 8, which is after Labor Day. And as I read about other bloggers that are starting school, I just feel so glad that for us it hasn’t started yet. The summer is still in full force even if the weather isn’t cooperating.

The news reported this morning that the temps we’re having this week our more like mid October temperatures. That’s just depressing.

Oh great. Now I’ve made Autumn cry. This has nothing to do with filing. She wants to go to work with me. I told her no. She asked again, and again, and again. All this morning since she woke up convinced that I would take her. And I answered no nicely repeatedly.

I even explained why today is not a good day to go to work with me. I have a very full day including meetings, and basically it’d be very boring for her. She promised to be good and keep herself busy. I still said no.

And as I sat here typing, she once again asked, “But why would today be a bad day to go to work with you?”

Which is when I made her cry. I was no longer polite, and frankly, I was quite perturbed. I’ve explained and explained and I’m not going to change my mind. I’m not known to cave.

She’s now curled up in the corner of my office, crying with a very sad look on her face. Good, she walked out to go blow her nose.

Now the guilt hits, which is just dumb. I never said I was taking her to work. I never agreed or made any comments to suggest such a thing. She just woke up this morning with a bug in her butt and expected me to meet her expectations. Argh. Now I’m the bad mom who won’t take her daughter to work with her.

I blame this all on that “Take Your Daughter To Work Day” crap. Autumn has wanted to go with me to work since she was 8. But at 7, she was under the age and I was working until 2 a.m. then. The next two years I wasn’t working out of the home. This year, we didn’t do it because I don’t think I worked in the office on the day.

I have taken her to work with me, although not on the designated day. And it was also a day when I cut my day short and I had time to talk/do things to keep her busy. She also supplemented her day with frequent trips to the dollar store down the street.

And I know that this is more about getting away from her siblings and being able to go to the dollar store. She’s tired and ornery. OK, she did come over and hug me. Then she said she woke up this morning all excited thinking she go to work with me, picking out her clothes and doing her hair so that she’d be all set to go.

OK, now she’s pouting on the couch. I have to go to work. Argh. You’ll have to hear about my fabulous new filing order some other time. I’m sure you’ll be delighted.

In the meantime, I get to go to work full of guilt for absolutely no good reason. guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt….

Oh, and I have no milk in the house for the kids cereal because they drank it all yesterday for lunch and dinner. A new record for a gallon of milk – less than 36 hours and they were sleeping for at least 12 of those.

The window above my sink was ugly. I’ve wanted a new one since we moved in here in 1998. I tried to make it look better. First I painted it. We had a lot of projects when we moved into this house and the kitchen was the biggest project. At first I just did what I could to make it look nicer. It had ugly brown cupboards, it was carpeted, and had a very ugly countertop. Ewww. I changed the cupboards and pulled up the carpet immediately.

Through the years, I’ve made changes and some of those have changed again. Because that’s the thing with home remodeling, you’re never done. But I discovered that when I painted it in my hurry, I painted it shut. So the window didn’t work. Years later, I tried to sand the paint off the window trim. I discovered there was about 10 layers of paint and that the window frame had been about 8 different shades. It was very hard work and I never did finish removing all of the paint. Instead, I gave up last fall when I decided we just needed to replace the whole thing. By then, the window was extremely ugly because the trim wasn’t completely stripped. Frustrated and without time to fix it, I put a big mirror in front of the window.

Which really helped hide the ugliness. Except the morning after I placed the mirror, when I walked into the kitchen, I jumped at my reflection, thinking someone else was in the room.

But I still missed the light that had came in that window that was now blocked by the mirror. My kitchen is a bright sunny place (even with this window blocked) but I wanted more. In February while we were in the remodeling zone, I bought a window for above the sink. But there was snow and cold and we opted to wait to install it until the weather was better.

For the past two months I’ve been nagging my husband to help me install the window. If it’d been closer to the ground outside I think I would have attempted to do it myself. But it wasn’t, so I couldn’t, so I nagged.

At one point my nagging was so successful that he promised to do it the very next day. Of course, the next day he became extremely ill. So still no window installation. He even missed two days of work, so I’ll concede that he wasn’t faking.

But I wanted the window installed. Badly. So I called my friends Glen and Tammy. They’re the ones that helped me work on our attic remodeling. And on Saturday, while Steve worked on his racecar, Glen (with a bit of help from Tammy and I) installed my new window.

Which left me to go to Home Depot yesterday to buy the trim and I also decided that around the outer part of the window I would use tile. I had hoped to find tile that matches the custom tile on my counter on either side of the sink, but alas, they no longer make that type of tile. So I bought something a bit different. The tile installation isn’t finished yet, but I took the pictures to share with you where I’m at. Even with all my tools and junk on the counter, it looks 250 percent better.

I opted for vinyl encased trim for the outside of the window. That way I don’t have to paint it and the vinyl protects it from water and weather. I’ll still need Steve’s help to help me line up the vinyl siding correctly. Hopefully we can do that when we do the garage area, which is still supposed to happen this summer.

And as long as I’m doing tile work, I figure I’ll do that little spot on the floor between the mudroom and the kitchen that I had slate in, but pulled up. Apparently, Steve isn’t the only one that postpones these home improvement projects.

So now my home improvement list is as follows:

1. Paint bathroom.
2. Paint mudroom.
3. Finish painting new bathroom.
4. Tile new bathroom.
5. Stain staircase.
6. Paint living room.
7. Finish vinyl siding by garage and the new kitchen window.
8. Repaint kitchen cabinets.
9. Touch up girls’ room.

For our living room, we’re going to paint it using the sandwash in the “Crystal Bay” color from Home Depot. The kitchen is staying the same colors, just getting fresh paint.

Then there are the long term projects that I want to do:

1. Replace second kitchen window with French doors.
2. Replace front door.
3. Replace sliding glass door in my bedroom with French doors.
4. Build bookcases, shelves in the living room along one wall.
5. Replace living room and hallway carpet with Pergo flooring.
6. Paint my office, trim bookcases to look built-in.
7. Build permanent, customized cabinetry under staircase.

Steve probably doesn’t know about all of my long-term project ideas, although I’ve mentioned most of them to him. For that matter, some of my to-do list for this summer might surprise him too. I had bought tile for the new bathroom floor, but it was the sticky tile and actually it was the same design my mom just had installed in her laundry room. We’d used this type of tile before and it really didn’t stand up well in my kitchen so Steve said no, he didn’t want to use it in the bathroom. So we’re going to pick out some floor tile for in there and I’ll do it that way. I was thinking the peel and stick would be quick and easy and over quickly. But he’s right. In the long run, the ceramic tile will look a lot better, even if it does mean more work. However, before I do that floor in there I am either going to get or rent a wet tile cutter. Because this cutter I have is also labor intensive and it doesn’t do complicated cuts.

Then there are the more decorative things I want to do to our house.

1. New living room furniture.
2. Decorate girls’ room.

Which really sounds like a lot and it is, but a lot of it probably won’t happen for several years. And by then, I’ll probably have added quite a bit to my list and a few things might have to happen again.