Have you ever played the game Katamari Damacy?  It’s pretty much the reason my hubs bought a ps2.  The gameplay is simple– you roll around the house/the world accumulating stuff on your little ball.  The ball gets bigger and bigger and at the end of the level the king of the cosmos throws it into the sky to become a star.  To give you an idea:

Anyway.  Before he throws it into the sky he tells you what you collected the most of and the name of the star is based on that factor.  Maybe Japanese food is what you got the most of and your star is then named Blowfish Star.  When it’s toys he calls it Bratty Star. 

In my quest for organization, I have to wonder what it is that I have the most of all over my floors.  I think it just might be laundry.  My katamari would definitely be made up of dirty laundry.  What kind of star name would that be?  Tide Star?  Polyester Star?  No, Racing Stripes Star.  Yes that is it.

Got your attention, eh?

Seriously, though.  Yesterday was one of those kind of days that made me understand why living in a commune or something would appeal to a person.  With three kids under 6 and too much house to take care of, I get kind of lonely sometimes.  I don’t really want to drag them places because they are so much work when I do, I’d rather just stay home.  

But it get’s lonely.

It would be nice to have a few other ladies around just kind of all the time to chat with, to share household duties with even spar with just to create some drama.  It would be nice to have extra hands around. Imagine this conversation:

Me: Hey wife number two, and three, can you watch the children so I can go get a pedicure?

Wife #2: There’s a lot of children between the three of us.

Me: And there’s two of you, I am sure you can handle it.  Besides, Joan up the street has like 15 kids and her husband only has one wife, so I know between the two of you 12 kids is like nothing.

Wife #3: I get to go tomorrow, right?

Me: (knowing dinner would be ready and the house would be clean when I get back) Sure.  See ya in a few hours! 

Yeah, that’d be nice. 

P.S. No comments about how in real life polygamy stinks and all the alleged abuse and all of that.  I get that.  I am being totally facetious. 

There is something about being so sick, being so debilitated that you can’t do anything that kind of knocks the lazy out of a person.  All of a sudden, I NEED to do EVERYTHING.  But I CANNOT do ANYTHING.

For the past few years weeks it seems like I waste A LOT of time on the internet.  I waste a lot of time doing stuff other than clean my house, play with my kids or do my business.  Lately I feel like I haven’t been able to accomplish very much.  And then BAM! I am flat on my back (head elevated enough to keep at least one nostril free of blockage) unable to do anything but surf the web. 

And it infuriates me.  "I am just wasting time!" I think to myself.  And yet, when I am well, I don’t mind wasting the time at all. 

Think the man upstairs has a lesson He’s trying to teach me?  I do not think getting sick was a coincidence.  I done been schooled.  Knock that lazy out of my house.

A Haiku 

Babies hatched this week
Two Starling nests in my roof
Cheeping everywhere

There are two separate sets of starling families that have built nests in the eaves of my house and their babies hatched this week.  Add to that the sounds from my chicks and there is muchly bird noises.

It is sort of annoying. 

Unfortunately, I am not the type to shoot animals. 

As I came downstairs this morning, to find the baby covered in carrots, I was reminded of a page from one of my favorite children’s books:

It is the first page of the book Five Minutes Peace, by Jill Murphy.  The page reads, "The children were having breakfast.  This was not a pleasant sight."

So my life. 

I have had some requests for house pictures.  So here are some of the things I like (and don’t like) about our house in the Rainy Place.

The view from the street:

The previous owners left this pig on the front door step.  I’m not sure if I like it or not.  Kind of cute.  Kind of ugly.

But my door mat is really cute.  I got it from the tar-jay.

Let’s see, so here is a shot of my dining room: 

Notice the light fixture, it used to have another layer, but before we put the furniture in Charming kept hitting his head on it.  Of course, before we took off the alternating glass and plastic pieces it did match this better:

Notice the tree outside the window?  Beautiful!  More than I can say for the chandelier.  And speaking of ugly lighting:

These are sooo going as soon as I sell the other house!

Let’s see, what else?  Oh well, we have my pretty room:

The place where we watch tv:

I’ll take suggestions as to how to deal with the window coverings.  I HATE mini-blinds.

My strangely painted, pink countertopped, love the huge bathtub, why isn’t there a shower, master bathroom:

(yes the walls really are yellow…)

We have a toy room:

  It will be cutely painted someday, but this is pretty much all you see anyway.  Oh and you must see the shelf I just bought and put in my office:

And now, what you have all been waiting for:

Yes, the curtain is hiding the big hole in the wall.

 Yay, HOUSE!

Yesterday was a day of much festive cleaning around here.  Kathryn came over to my house with her brood for day one of the cleaning swap.  Today, I will take my clan and go help her house sparkle like mine does.

But hopefully we will not have another incident.

We were having such a good time, DYM and me.  We were getting so much done!  My house was so clean!  The laughs!  The good times!  I guess we were a little too distracted.

Spider came down the stairs with hair all over her back.  I brushed it off and said, "Oh, you’ve been playing with Rosie, have you?"  I thought nothing more of it, and with our cleaning wrapped up, Kathryn went to retrieve her children.

"It’s not Rosie, Stephanie!" came the cry from the playroom.  "Sugar is a bald man!" she declared as I walked upon the scene. And there they all were, Laylee in the barber chair, Magoo looking like a refugee, and Sugar ready for Nascar with her mulletousness.  (All choice phrases from the Daring Young Mom herself.)

And then I peed my pants. Well, almost.  The situation itself combined with the way Kathryn described it, was too much.  I excused myself and when I returned I was still laughing too hard to express my seriousness to the offenders. 

This picture doesn’t even do justice to what the hair looked like.  But don’t they all look so guilty?  As I uploaded the pictures this morning, I asked Sugar about what happened.  

Me: Who cut your hair?
S: Laylee.
Me: Who cut Magoo’s hair?
S: Laylee.
Me: Who cut Spider’s hair?
S: Laylee
Me: (Aren’t you guilty of anything?)Whose hair did you cut?
S: Laylee’s.

As Kathryn was leaving I told her I was sorry and hoped she wasn’t mad.  She said, "at least none of my kids has a mullet."  And it was true.  We have always struggled with Sugar’s hair being mullet like, and our little Barbershop Quartet did nothing to keep her out of the trailer park.  They cut only the top and left the back as long as ever.

Mulleted.

And I was left no choice.  I made an appointment for her and Charming and then I left for a meeting.  I wasn’t even there for the cut.  Not there as my baby’s ringlets fell to the floor.  Not there as they chopped off her girlish locks.  My first glimpses of the new style were as Sugar lay in bed asleep.  I stroked her little head and cried on the inside.  Her beautiful, crazy curls, gone.  No more pigtails.  No more twisting fingers in the baby-fine softness.  No more brushing and combing exchanges with Mommy and Daughter. Just this:

But at least she’s smiling. 

Dear Method People,

Thank you for the lovely party with the other Seattle Mom Bloggers.  It was great.  

Thank you also for the new t-shirt.  I love it.  However:

I could not find a clean room in my house to photograph myself in wearing said shirt.  I am a mother.  The example above is how I clean.   Therefore the phrase "Cleans Like a Mother" though clever and funny, may not be the best ad choice as it does not necessarily indicate a high level of cleanliness. 

Just thought you should know. 

…just so you know.

I was reading some other blogs tonight, and I was thinking, "wow, they are so… deep."  And, "wow, look at the dramatic life experiences they have had," and "wow, good writer."  And I was thinking, I don’t really blog like that.

I am a much better editor than I am a writer, and since I don’t always read my posts before I click the publish button, my blog is not my best work.  I can be deep, but I am not always on my blog.  And my life?  Not that dramatic.

Truth be told, I live kind of a charmed life.  It’s true that I drive a ten year old minivan that we bought with a dent in the side and never fixed it.  It’s true that I shop with coupons.  It’s true that I buy generic toilet paper.  My shoes are from Payless and I do my own manicures, and yet I am incredibly blessed.  I have health, beautiful children, a supportive husband, great friends and loving extended family.  I have it all.

And the most dramatic thing going on in my life right now, is that my finances are falling apart.  I am rapidly going into debt because I own a beautiful house in Utah that no one wants but me.  And I own a someday-beautiful house in the Rainy Place with a mortgage the size of the Titanic.

I miss my house.

It’s not that we haven’t gotten offers on it.  Oh no.  It’s just that people keep trying to swindle me out of my first home.  They offer like, 50,000 less than market value so that they can get a deal.  Or make an investment.

That house is not an investment to me in the financial sense.  The only thing I invested in that house was my heart and these people keep making disgusting offers and it hurts.  There is a real person on the other end of this transaction, why can’t they see that? There is a real person who not only has feelings, but also needs the equity from that house in order to survive this more ummm… expensive town.  I mean, that was my first house.  We picked out the cabinet colors and the tile and the carpet.  We picked the upgrades.  We painted it pink.  I spent waaaaayyy too much money on cute border wallpaper in the kids’ room.  Two of my children were babies in that house.  And even though I cried when we bought it because it meant we were going to be in Utah for awhile, I loved that house.

Moving back to Utah was one of the hardest things I have ever done.  Moving to the place where we bought that wonderful house was a humbling and difficult experience, that turned out to be one of the greatest blessings of my life.  I found greater happiness there than I had found in a long time.  I made some of the dearest friends.  I had my best birth experience.  I started three businesses.  I had a wonderful time there. Hard to believe that moving there was one of the hardest things.

Moving back to the Rainy Place, beloved home of my childhood, was harder. Is harder.  But I love it.  I love seeing my sister twice a week.  I love the weather.  I love the scenery.  I love the Teriyaki.

But I don’t love the fact that we are bringing in a six figure income, and I don’t have money to buy groceries.  Thank goodness for credit cards. The debt I have worked so hard to be free from, is definitely gonna suck. We’re making more money than we ever have and are poorer financially than we have ever been.  Every time I open a bill and it is eight times more than I thought it was going to be, I bawl my eyes out.  I’ve been good.  I’ve been.. prudent.  I have avoided debt at all costs.

We felt like moving up here was the thing the Lord wanted us to do.  

And now, I am not so sure.

I know things will work out, like they always do.

But I am not so sure.  Not so sure at all. 

We’ve been in the new house nearly a month. 

I like my new house.  I don’t love it yet.  I love what I see that it will become, but no love for the current state of it. 

In fact, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, there are things about my new house that I do not like at all.  I am glad that we have a house, happy that we aren’t paying rent and very thankful we are not transients anymore.  But why is this house the way that it is?  I hate so much about the things that this house chooses to be…

I have a hatred,  A HATRED, I tell you for the oven.    The oven is at least 13 years old, and has taken on quite the teenage attitude– it burns everything it touches.  It has a sort of obnoxious dial for adjusting the temperature:

See how there is only a mark for 350, 450 etc.?  And only a mark in between for the temperatures ending in 00?  What about 325?  375?  And it’s not like you can really tell which temp you are on even if you are going for one with a mark.  There are about three postions that could all be 350, or at least the oven wants you to believe it’s 350– the 350 mark (as I am discovering) probably really means 400 or more. 

Curse you Whirpool!  Curse your poor design skills!   Curse your inability to make appliances that hold up over time!  Take your oven back to the fires of Mordor where it was formed! You must pay for what your Satanic teenager has done to my bread! 

The flatness, yes, my fault.  But THE BURNING!!!!!  It tastes okay, I guess.  A little burny. 

The oven officially sucks.