afk for a while

Antibiotic poops suck!

It's Thursday night.  The dishes are done.  It's been a week since I posted a blog entry, and I've been jonesin', but haven't had the opportunity.  I have to go back to my "todo" list to remember what's been happening.

Ok, I don't want to bore you with details, but here are some highlights:

Saturday:

It's my Lovely Wife's company holiday party, and it's an important one.  I've bought a tux (at 75% off, thanks Jos. A. Bank), and finally feel like I'm dressed appropriately for these engagements.  "H" shows up to watch the boys...she's an awesome babysitter, and gets some smiles out of the Benjamin before we go.  He's whinging, but you can tell that he likes her, and will settle down once we leave.  We get to the event early, and have a drink with one of the attorneys in from out of town.

He tells one of my favorite jokes:

Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac?

He lays awake at night, wondering if there really is a Dog.

I fed him a follow-up:

So, a dyslexic walks into a bra...

Is it ok for an ASD parent to do dyslexic jokes?  Maybe not...feel free to commnet, dylsexics.

Anyway, the event goes fine.  I'm touched by the firm's camaraderie, and impressed by the service that these folks do.

Monday:

styrofoam is fun to break into little pieces

I buy Lovely Wife a mini-fridge for her bar as a Christmas present.  She's a cocktail aficionado, and this will give her a place to store her lovingly prepared syrups and mixers without clogging up my fridge.  OK, that's kind of a selfish gift, but she'll like it.  Turns out that things aren't so simple...this thing needs a real grounded socket, and our 1950's house doesn't have one any place practical.  I ping bro-in-law, and he diplomatically suggests that he do the electrical work for it, rather than me.  I take him up on it.  I kind of get electrical stuff, but fear burning the house down.  This is yet another thing that will distract him from getting the rest of his work done.  As it turns out, the socket that we replace is tied into a switch.  Now, instead of flipping off a switch to turn off all the lamps in the living room, we'll need to turn them off individually, or else the mini-fridge will go off too.  Doh!

Tuesday:

This is Bubba's 10th birthday.  Mildly hectic.  He wants to have it at Nickelmania, a retro arcade.  I arranged for a sitter for Ben weeks ago, but she cancels, realizing that she has to meet her bishop for her upcoming wedding.  Forgiven...having a wedding around xmas would drive me crazy.  All other sitters are out o town, so Lovely Wife steps up.

The birthday party goes well.  There's a little craziness, but I'm not free to share that.  I can tell you this though..Gauntlet still rocks.  At the start, all the kids wanted to do was get "tickets" -- play the arcade games that aren't really games, but let you gamble for tickets.  The tickets would buy you cheap toys that you probably could have gotten for less money by just buying them for $$.  I pulled Bubba aside and got him to play Gauntlet with me.  It was great!  We got through the first two levels and I got a little daring...I asked another kid to play with us.  For a minute, I thought he was really bad at it, and then it turned out that his joystick wouldn't go to the right.  Our game was screwed.  We could have waited for health counters to tick down, but we didn't have the time. *sigh*

Wednesday:

blargh, it has 3 legs, too!

OH NO!  Ben is sick.  He spends the morning throwing up.  He's in the midst of antibiotics, so that rules out a few things.  There's some "stomach flu" going around, so maybe that's it.  Lovely Wife takes care of him, while I replace the toilet off our room with the one from the basement (newer).  I run into problems (rusty toilet bolts), but we resist calling a plumber and wait for bro-in-law to arise.  When Bro-in-law arises, he walks me through things and progress is made, with only one parts run needed.

By the end of the day, we've been through the "tablespoon of gatorade every fifteen minutes" regimen, and are up to two working toilets, and aesthetically pleasing ones at that.  Sis-in-law arrives sometime during the night.

I awaken at 4:00 a.m..  Someone has used the bathroom, but I don't hear them flush.  Of course, I have turned off the water supply, so they would have to go to extra measures to do so.  I lay in bed, listening for them to flush.  It doesn't happen, and I drift back to sleep, dreaming about the opening scene from Lethal Weapon 2.  In my dream, there's no explosive wired to the toilet, there's just someone sitting there, waiting for me to bring them toilet paper.  Hmmm.


Thursday:

OK, here we are, back to Thursday.  More progress has been made.  We have a few outside xmas lights for the first time ever (nothing on the roof..I'm not crazy).  The floors are almost done.  The house is fairly tidy (now).  We're almost ready to have a few folks over tomorrow night.

No holiday cards this year...sorry.  Maybe we'll do new year's cards or something.

Best thing:

Ben has started saying "Momma look!".  He's been doing stuff and trying to show it off to people...he hasn't really done that before.  I'll take it...even when he calls me "Momma".

Alright, it's 11:45...I'll go put some stuff in the dryer.

Cheers y'all.

Household tips:

If you have a clogged drain, get a pipe snake.  It should cost about $15.  You can clear out all kinds of nasty stuff without calling a plumber.

If you have a clogged toilet, get a toilet snake.  It's very similar, but has some protection so you won't scratch the porcelain.  Trust me, it's worth it. 

If you do, somehow, use a pipe snake instead of a toilet snake and scratch your porcelain just  before you have people over to your house, there is something called "appliance paint" or "appliance epoxy" that you can use to make your toilet look much better.