I had a very insane 10 minutes tonight, but first I need to give you the back story. This past Sunday we had a small shin dig here at the house, and let's just say a house full of guys from your husbands fire dept plus rain leads to some nasty carpet! We had cleaned the carpet on Monday, but then that afternoon the plague settled into the house. What this means is this... the carpet cleaner was not put away in the closet (which honestly turned out to be a good thing), instead it was upstairs waiting to be put away. Also, a small cooler that had not yet been put away, but was also serving the purpose of holding a sick kids drinks and snacks like a table of sorts, had also not yet been put away. It was also still full of water from melted ice as I learned.
I've spent the majority of this week catering to one sick kid or another, or both, all while fighting the crud myself. I just had a different version of crud last week, so I'm pretty tired, and mentally drained as well. Today made day 3 of the boys missing school, so I emailed their teachers and asked about picking up classwork so they don't fall too far behind and that was our afternoon plan... catching them up. Well, napping, and catching them up.
The oldest is easy... easy in that he knows what to do on his own, difficult in that his math is starting to go beyond my ability! He's at the table working on his stuff, the youngest is running laps screaming like a banshee...he is past the plague, feels fine and has not had ample time to burn off the energy! Which leaves the middle one... ah yes, the middle child. To be fair, he is very diligent about his school work, he is very neat and meticulous. But considering we had more than one day to catch up on, and I had to cook dinner and get some cleaning done, I was not really interested in watching him color endlessly.
So I'm sweeping the floor, and answering questions regarding distributive property and helping come up with a list of things to be thankful that start with each letter of the alphabet when I notice that the carpet cleaner has leaked all over the place. I read somewhere years ago that laundry detergent is really awesome carpet cleaner (and it is!) but now I have a puddle of Tide on my floor. It's laminate flooring thank God, but it's still a slippery mess, and it's under the shoe molding, and has leached onto my area rug as well. Awesome. I abandon my sweeping, and start cleaning up the Tide mess. I practically shove the youngest downstairs, he's still running crazy, I'm still doing math and exactly what can you be thankful for that starts with an "I"... we never did figure that one out. Since the little one is mad about being redirected downstairs, he takes it upon himself to dump the cooler over. I hear the crying, head downstairs and there is a HUGE puddle on my carpet. About 2 ft long or so, maybe more... apparently there was still quite a bit of water in there! So I send him to his room, get a towel to soak up the water out of my freshly cleaned carpet, and attempt to resume cleaning up the Tide. After about 2 minutes I hear "I smell dog turd!!!" bellowed from upstairs. Turns out our pug was probably trying to gain my attention to go out, but in the chaos I hadn't noticed, so she used our bathroom instead. Or maybe she just didn't feel like walking downstairs... she's pretty well known in our house for thinking that she gets to use the bathrooms just like we do. I clean it up, and start a load of towels... including the ones now soaked in Tide, and the one soaking up water from my living room. All the while wondering exactly what sort of fun is coming along next?
We eventually finished the math, nearly finished the list of what to be grateful for, and somehow I managed to make dinner and even eat a bite myself. With any luck at least 2 of them will return to school tomorrow, and we can start again... this time minus the Tide/Water/Dog poop combination!
