Keeping busy

When Chad is out of town, something inside of me gets all ambitious and makes Big Plans. I have a project list a mile long and I'm sure I won't get through half of it this week, but I am darn well going to try. I don't just mean the mediocre, keep-the-house-running things, like making the kids dinner (though I did, last night - the aforementioned salmon, to make up for McDonalds on Monday) and bathing them and then spending the evening after they are in bed scooping the litter box for garbage day. No, I mean the projects that have gone undone for months if not years, that suddenly seem to need to be done y.e.s.t.e.r.d.a.y. Over the past few days, I have overheated my paper shredder twice as I have purged years worth of documents from the filing cabinet (goodbye, 1997 tax return and warranty on the TV we gave to the Salvation Army two years ago). I also went through the tote bins full of toiletries that have been clogging up our linen closet and tossed, tossed, tossed. Out went the industrial-strength bug spray we took to Peru in 2002: it didn't stop me from getting chiggers then, and I'm sure it wouldn't now (not that I even have such an exotic trip to look forward to anytime soon...) We went to the fabric store to pick up a remnant for a little project I saw on Martha and want to try. I made a couple of gifts and some cards. And I've been enjoying my new environmentally-conscious Shaklee cleaning products just a little too much, getting rid of marks on the walls that have been there so long, we don't even notice them anymore...It's a good thing I got on top of my list so early in the week, because this morning I took Liam to the doctor's for a follow-up on his ear infection. I almost didn't even keep the appointment, thinking we had better things to be doing, and that Liam is fine now. Unfortunately, the verdict from the doc is that there is still fluid behind Liam's eardrum and that the likelihood of recurrence is quite high. This is NOT what I want to hear when I am alone with the kiddos this week; I can just imagine Liam waking up with a raging earache at 3 a.m. and me having to make the trip to the ER with both him AND Mallory in tow. Not so fun. I have a supply of Children's Motrin on hand and if that happens, I think the best thing to do would be to give him the painkiller and then wait for a morning appointment at the doctor's office... assuming this happens either today or tomorrow, when they are open. Ugh. Let's just hope it doesn't come to that.

Having made such progress on the mediocre part of the to-do list, there are some more enjoyable things planned for later in the week. We picked up a DVD on our walk this morning (for me - I don't think the kiddos want to watch Once, though I did get them Disney's Tarzan at the library on Tuesday), we are going on a road trip on Friday and I have something planned for tomorrow, too, though I had hoped to find a child-sized rolling pin prior to starting it. Where the heck do they sell those things, anyway?