Vacation?

Steven took off Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week, to stay home and take care of some things around the house that have been needing to be taken care of. Including, but certainly not limited to: 1)Finish painting the cabinets and shelves in my studio; 2)Painting the laundry room and; 3)Painting the stairway and the rest of the upstairs, minus the kids' rooms. That means he has 5 days to do these few things...FIVE days...FIVE whole days! I was going to be able to finish up a couple of purses that I owe people; work on the Doll Quilt for the swap; and work on things in general that need to be done, like PUTTING ALL OF MY FABRIC AWAY IN MY STUDIO AND GET IT OUT OF THE HALLWAY, along with the sewing machine, soldering iron (!yea! So I can actually use it without worrying about burning the house down!)-basically, getting all of my stuff organized, plus working on some other little artsy/crafty things.

Today is Saturday. Day FOUR. Ninety-six point seven percent of our time has been spent dealing with the kids who are fighting over things like who gets to vacuum what, who gets to wipe the baseboards along the stairway to remove all the dust so the tape will stick for when we paint, and who gets to sweep under the kitchen table. Of course there are other things we have to do with them, like, keep them from killing each other. Sometimes I'd like to just say, "Have at it! Survival of the fittest!" But, I think CPS and the police would become involved. But I know you are reading this thinking, "Her kids are fighting over who gets to sweep and wipe the baseboards and she's complaining???" My kids will fight over ANYTHING. Particularly anything that involves taking something away from the other.

Claire absolutely loves to clean things with wipes...anything, anytime, if she can just use a wipe. She must get high off the smell or something. Wipes clean up baseboard dust really well, so, when I said, "Hey Claire! Go get a wipe and wipe the baseboards up the stairway for me.", that pretty much ensured a fight between Claire and Ethan, because he only wants to take things away from his sisters. If I had said, "Hey Ethan! Go get a wipe....", it would have been a whole different scene. The crying, the whining, the falling down because his legs just cannot hold him up one second longer, the "you make me do eeevvvvvvvvvvvverythiiiiiiiiiiinnng!"...in short...The Death Scene. But, by my asking Claire to do it first, there is fight that results in needing 2 adults, 1 psychiatric professional, usually some kind of First Aid-maybe even stitches, and lots and lots of meds to resolve. So, there goes 96.7% of our time.

We do need to eat occasionally, so there goes another percent. I've only had one shower in the last 4 days, so I'm not using up a lot of time on that. But, Steven and I do have to clean up after ourselves, and what we can't get the children to do...I'd say, what, 2%? Sounds good. And saving the best for last...sleeping! What's left, about 1.3%? Yep, that sounds about right.

So, how much has actually been accomplished these last 4 days? Well, the laundry room got painted. And Steven is painting the shelves in my studio as I type. I have yet to complete a project. A small portion of the baseboards got dusted and taped off...a very small portion. Not a drop of paint has hit those walls yet, though.

Silly me! And I thought Steven and I would be able to actually sit down at night and watch a few of 'The Soprano's' DVDs that I got him for Father's Day!