Both the girls are asleep.  Both the boys are at school.  John is at work.  I should be cleaning up and doing laundry and getting other things taken care of.  But.  But I’m sick and more burned out on being the mom than I knew was possible, so I’m sitting here with my third glass of cranberry juice, orange juice and fizzy lime water trying to get my throat to stop hurting while I catch up on blog reading.  I feel like I’m cheating on my math test or something; not what I should be doing, really, but necessary for my ability to make it through the next few days. 

I have been so cranky and mean to my kids.  Possibly to my husband as well, but DUDE! when your wife has been battling ants in the house for the last few days, wipe up the fucking sugar from your cinnamon toast.  I’m just saying. 

See?  See how horrible I am acting?  Now I feel bad.  Not that my point was invalid, but I could have said it more gently.

I was cleaning the floor behind the toilet in the kids’ bathroom in a futile attempt to make it not stink like a parking garage stairwell in there, when I noticed something.  The floor didn’t look right.  Like where the floor meets the toilet base (is there a kids’ joke in there? "what did the floor say to the toilet base?  cool to meet you"  Clearly, I need professional help. . . ) it wasn’t flush.  (Heh, sorry, but it isn’t.)  I pushed down on the crappy (sorry again) lineoleum, and that floor is spongy, folks.  Major rot going on under there.  I hope hope hope hope hope that the toilet is leaking underneath, and that this is not the result of splashy baths or something.  I don’t want to be responsible, is what I mean, since we are renters.  Anyway, today is the second day that my favorite grizzled repair man has stood me up.  When he finally gets here I’m going to tell him that he owes me some flowers.  I am dreading that we’ll be down to one bathroom for a couple of days or more during the repairs.  And no tub, since the grown up bathroom has just a shower.  Maybe I’ll make all the kids, well, except Willow, use the little wooden potty chair.  That would be funny.  We could play Little House on the Prarie, and take baths in a big tub in the kitchen.

Speaking of Little House, I got an email from the people at the Laura Ingalls Wilder newsletter that we subscribe to, called The Homesteader.  (I ordered it last year for Lexy when he was first getting into the Little House books.  One time Nathan got really pissed off at me and tore them all in half and I had to tape them back together.)  They were writing to say that the winter issue would be out a little later than it was last year, because the woman who runs it took time off to care for her newborn son, Wilder. 

Willow just woke up and came and found me, without crying.  I love it when the kids do that as opposed to waking up from a nap shrieking.  I am done with shrieking.  Save it for enormous amounts of pain, children.  I think I’ll rock her and let her nurse while I finish my blog reading. 

Can people’s hit counters tell them if you are playing solitare while their page loads?  We have dial up and I have the bad habit of playing solitare while waiting for pages to load.  Sometimes the page loads and I finish out a game because I am a geek, and I don’t want any blog authors to think that I think they’re boring or something, cause they aren’t, I’m just a goon.