Hodgepodge

1.  The kids got their flu shots on Friday and oh the drama.  Liam was understandably nervous about it and it bothered him enough to wake him up in the middle of the night.  I worked it out with him with gentle words and lots of cuddles and some lost sleep on my part.  When we went to the doctor's office in the morning he did just as I asked and sat still while the nurse did her thing.  When it was over he said, "That didn't hurt at all, Mommy!  It was great!"

[headdesk]

I'm glad it was better than he was anticipating it would be but I would have preferred to keep my sleep.  I did point out to him that next year he didn't have to be so scared.

Unfortunately, the kids then proceeded to spend the next 36 hours doing their very best to be their very worst.  I am honestly amazed that I did not spend those 36 hours screaming my fool head off at them.  Slowly, oh so slowly, I am learning patience.

2.  I raked up 20 bags of leaves this weekend.  TWENTY.  I have completed about half of the front yard.  I haven't even touched the back patio yet.  I hurt all over and my hands are covered in blisters.  I HATE RAKING LEAVES.  I detest it.  I abhor it.  I loathe it.  I despise it.  It is an abomination.  I am sure that the total number of bags I will rake will be 666 for this chore is The Beast and that is his number.

In other words, it is evil.

3.  I made apple pie today.  Homemade crust, northern spy apples - the whole shebang.  Om nom nom.

4.  Jamie believes in safety first.

 

5.  Pittsburgh has its own lexicon.  After living here for 10 years, I am still learning new and interesting jargon.  Just this week I learned about "dippy eggs."  (That's over easy to the rest of us.)  Well, I ran across this at a local Dunkin' Donuts this week and, well, only in Pittsburgh would someone do this:

"Caution: Wet Slippy Floor"

6.  It bears repeating:  Raking leaves is the devil's chore.

7.  I'm going to go eat pie now.

Technology Saves the Day

As much as I dislike it, we generally live our lives in totally disorganized chaos. I grew up with my parents constantly nagging me to pick up that, clean up this, and sort out the archaeological dig that was my bedroom.

As I've gotten older, those early bad habits have followed me and I'm not the best housekeeper in the world. In fact, I'm pretty mediocre. With two small kids, things get even worse. I really fell off the wagon when I got pregnant with Jamie and the morning sickness hit about a nanosecond after I peed on the home pregnancy test. I'm not good at being pregnant so we struggled through my pregnancy, I gave birth, and Jamie promptly turned our home into his own little Gitmo with his propensity for sleep deprivation.

The housework suffered further.

Life only seems to get crazier as time goes on and the kids get older, but I find that I feel less harried and out of control if the house doesn't look like a bomb filled with toys, unfolded laundry, and dirty pots went off inside it. So, for the last couple of months I've been struggling to crawl back up on the wagon and and take the reins away from that wench who's been driving lately. I divided my weekly household chores out over the days of the week and I try to keep to it - even though I haven't been so successful at it. Plus, there's all the ferrying of children and running of errands and doctor's appointments and haircuts, oh my!

And then I got an iPod touch.

Oh, you handy, slick little piece of technology, you have seduced me with your colorful screens and your oh so useful apps.

I went looking for something that I could use to keep to-do lists and I ended up downloading a free app called "Errand." You can set it up to schedule items daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly; it allows to push an item to the following day; it comes with a file of stock clip art and you can assign each task its own little icon and you can also use existing personal photos for the same purpose. When you're in the home screen of the iPod, it will tell you how many tasks you have left to complete.

I'm in love. I think I need professional help because every time I get to touch that "errand complete" button and I get a sick little thrill. Yay! I did it! I found myself thinking today that it needs a short little celebration animation for when you've completed all your tasks for the day. This app makes me want to do my housework just so I can hit the button.

So, ya got any chores for me?