Where Is....

my music player? I don't have it on my site and I can't hear the music! Can anybody else? Please let me know in the comment section!

What is Wrong with this Picture?

Okay, I'm going to be scrubbing toilets and dusting my house all day, and where are my parents? Celebrating their 41st Anniversary. (Well, Mom, I guess you aren't really 36 now, are ya?) At Disney World. Where it's warm and sunny. Where all the 'magic' happens. Where you take your children when they are very very good. They didn't take their children. I am their child and I am not at Disney World. What is wrong with this picture?

The basement is finally done, though, and that is a miracle in itself. Unfortunately, the paint color doesn't really match the decor, so I will be accepting donations to acquire new furniture, because there is no way that I am picking up a paint brush for at least a year or two. Unless it's on the floor and I need to move it to vacuum, that is.

I decided that I will leave the Leprechaun Song up a little longer for all of you Irish folk out there. Besides, I'm having a really hard time coming up with a song about toilets. However, if you know of one, feel free to direct me to it in the comment section.

What ARE the Lyrics?

1000 points to anybody who can tell me what the words are in the chorus of this "Leprechaun" song that I have on my blog. 20,000 points if you can decipher the whole darn thing!

Help...

Okay, Ken is getting back at me for my last few weeks, err...days of laziness. Would you believe he made me prime the entire ceiling, wash all the painting tools, paint one wall a grey-mint-green, wash all the painting tools, second coat the ceiling, prime the top foot of all the walls and then wash all the painting tools for the third time??? Believe it. Yes, I am quite taller than he is, but geeze, that ceiling stuff will rip your arms out of their sockets!

Not to say Ken wasn't doing anything, he cut-in the ceiling and the one grey-mint-green wall then washed all the walls. He sanded a little bit, too. And we did this all in five hours. Tomorrow we get to double coat the entire room, get all the stuck-on mud out of the carpets and try to pull the room back together. Then I can finally dust my entire house. That hasn't happened in a month and I am dead serious- there is no reason to dust when your husband is using a table saw or a sander or mudding equipment in your basement.

Shannon enlightened me a little bit about Leprechauns today, and me being a little colleen, well I guess I should have known. Apparently his classroom gets ransacked by Leprechauns on a regular basis and they are very mischievous little creatures. They like to mess up the teacher's journals and they NEVER clean them up. They misplace things and cause confusion for the teacher pretty regularly, too. They can be lured in by chocolate coins but after they eat them they are supposed to leave some golden coins behind. Unfortunately for the teacher, they never remember to leave the gold and she just doesn't have much money for all of the trouble.

Far be it for me to question a Kindergarten teacher, but I'm pretty sure that she has her Leprechauns confused with Gremlins or something. I mean, really! I've never met an Irishman who would be troublesome or mischievous in the least!

Well, there's Grandpa. And Riley. And Shannon. And Corey... okay, maybe she wasn't confused after all.

Mudding and Texturing Done!

That's it, the hard part is done.

Painting the ceiling tomorrow and maybe the first coat on the walls! If you don't hear from me for a day or two, don't be surprised. I'm actually allowed to paint. Technically, I'm expected to paint.

X-rated!!! (Don't read if easily offended!)

Okay, so I have three boys ages 7, 5 and 5. And we're experiencing some minor issues. Okay, maybe not so minor? Anyway you look at it, today was a day of some very dirty words.

It all started this morning. I woke up to the sun shining through the windows and the chatter of a very serious discussion coming from below. The boys were up early as usual for a Saturday, playing on the computer while quietly debating. For some reason (exhaustion?) I laid in bed and just listened in:

Riley: "I don't think it's a dirty word. It can't be."
Shannon: "Yes it is, it's privates talk."
Riley: "It can't be. It was in the Shrek movie."
Shannon: "No, I know it's a bad word. Brecken told it to me on the bus!"
Riley: "It was even in the song from Shrek. 'I'm too sexy for my cat, my pussy pussy cat...' "

Okay!!! Time to get out of bed! After coming downstairs, I asked the boys what they were talking about. Shannon immediately wanted to know if there was a bad word in the Shrek movie and I said, "Ummmm..." I went on to explain how cats used to be referred to in that way, and that some people distorted the meaning of it, so kinda/sorta.... "Could you just not say it, Shannon?" I managed to spit out. My greatest fear at the moment was a direct question about what the word meant and thankfully they didn't seem too curious.

A few hours later Shannon had a question for me. A serious one. I knew this because he began to whisper. "Mommy, I know that word was a bad one and I know that peanuts is bad too. It's privates, isn't it?"

------------

Well, I guess that's how it's going to go. Riley, two years older, obviously either didn't have classmates quite as advanced as Shannon, or knew better than to ask me when a dirty word was introduced to him. Either that or Riley has been very sheltered. Shannon sure seems to see it all, hear it all and question it all.

I knew that lately Shannon was seated near some boys who were more worldly (?) than himself on the bus, and he had mentioned that they liked to 'potty talk'. ('Potty talk' in our house means bad words or words like poop, diaper and pee-pee, words Corey is a little obsessed with, as you may know.) I didn't inquire too much at the time, but reminded him that he was not allowed to 'potty talk.' Every day after Shannon's confession, his laments about his day at school have been about the bus ride home.

Apparently Nick and Brecken, two boys from the bus, like to say bad words and Shannon told them he wouldn't talk 'potty talk' with them. When Shannon insisted they stop or they couldn't be his friends, they decided that they would talk 'potty talk' all the time just to get a reaction. On Friday, Shannon informed me that they were no longer friends and that he would always ignore them forever. I tried to counsel and console him, but he didn't seem to be too upset. He was pretty certain that they were bad and he didn't need to be friends with them anymore. Okay.

So that's where we're at on the 'potty talk' front. I'm trying not to make too big of a deal out of it, I think the boys have a pretty good idea of what they need to do to stand up for themselves, and I know that they're exposed to so much more now that they're in school. I'm not saying this is great, I'm just saying I'm not too surprised.

After all, as the youngest of five and way too worldly for my age because of it, I can recall sitting on the bus to St. Mary's Elementary School in the first grade. My best friend seated next to me was an extremely naive only child from a very devout family. In the nicest possibly way, I would lean over to her, cup my hand around her ear and whisper, "My brother told me..." You don't want to know where it went from there. She turned out okay, and I turned out... well, I'm almost normal. My boys will be, too.

You Smell Like Feet

It's the first Friday of Lent that I actually remembered to not eat meat! (It is SO hard to be a Catholic sometimes...) We just finished off our french toast dinner, one of the kid's favorite meals. I don't think it's the french toast they like so much, but the fact that I let them put cake 'sprinkles' on them. Whatever holiday sprinkles are on clearance, I buy them. Today we had Halloween sprinkles, which are very cool because we make spider webs with them. Once the black sugar crystals hit the syrup and start to melt I quickly slice the french toast with a pizza cutter and a web pattern appears. To top it all off, Corey usually eats all of his dinner when sprinkles are involved so whatever works for him works for me!

Today was 'Button Day' at Riley and Shannons school, where they could wear any button that had words on it, so last night I made a 'quick' run to Wal-Mart. (It's never 'quick,' but the intent is always there.) I could only find a three pack of buttons that each had a sarcastic bunny on them with various phrases. Typically I would have passed, the first two had the phrases, 'I hate everything,' and 'Like I need your approval.' But the third one was made for Shannon so I had to get them all. It read, 'You smell like feet.' This is only funny because just the other day he told Corey that he smelled like a dirty sock.

Ken's doing his last coat of mud tonight before he starts texturing the ceiling in the playroom. He wants to have the ceiling done and walls painted before the in-laws come on Thursday. A simple task aside from the fact that he has to work all week-end. I've been invited to help him start scrubbing the walls in preparation for paint! Lucky me. But if it means the project gets done, then I guess I'm game. I just don't know when I'll get to cleaning the house, but visitors around here are used to hearing that, right?

Good Fences Make Great Neighbors

Who wrote that poem, Frost? I dunno, but whenever I hear that phrase I think of the Wilson character from the "Tool Time" TV show. Now I have something else to associate it with!

Ken said the neighbors just told him that they were putting up a fence this spring! I have been going crazy lately watching the snow melt and layers (and I do mean layers) of doggie-poo materialize in its place. On top of the mounds of gifts my two neighbor dogs leave behind, they also scare the heck out of Riley and Corey and assume my yard is a dog run. Although I love the neighbors and they are great people, this situation would have had to come to a head by summer! Soon to be rectified, I hope.

Ken worked on the ceiling again tonight. I only had to rinse one chunk of drywall out of my eye for ten minutes today and I'm pretty sure there's no lasting damage. Thankfully the drywall is all up because I just can't seem to keep myself from looking up when assisting and I'm not smart enough to don protective eye wear. Oh well, now we're on to mudding and luckily Ken has no faith in my ability to do anything related to this task. Darn.

Music of the day is "Flash Gordon," in relation to the new "Shannon wants you to know..." feature on the sidebar. It was suggested that I let the kids enter things they might want you to know, and so far Riley and Shannon have complied. Shannon, in particular, had an interesting school day. Enjoy, everybody!

Uneventful Day

Today was pretty uneventful. We went to Mass this morning and we were the family that took the offeratory up to the Priest. Although Riley was mad that he had to pay attention to the service and Shannon was mad that I made him sit away from Corey, everybody did a nice job pretending that we were one happy family as we paraded down the aisle. Riley carried a container of hosts, Shannon carried the collection basket, and Corey held my hand nicely. After we passed everything over, Corey just pointed at the exit sign nearby before following us back to our pew, as opposed to making a run for it during Mass.

A major enlightenment occured this morning that was so amazing! Who knew that Shannon would be so well behaved at church if you just completely infuriate him during the entrance song, (which just happened to be Amazing Grace?) He glared with his arms crossed for half the Mass and didn't say a peep! It was a little embarrasing the way he was pouting, but it was so much better than the giggling and semi-quiet taunting that usually occurs.

Ken worked really hard on the basement today, just a little left before he begins to tape and mud. The boys are loving it, they never want to leave the basement now that Dad's always down there! Last night Riley and Shannon slept in the new bedroom for the first time. They did really well although Corey was a little confused this morning when he woke up first and couldn't find his brothers!

Ken's Ceiling Take 2

Well today I've been in a real funk, but Ken has the energy of all three boys put together! He tore down his low-clearance drop-ceiling that he'd just installed, (a compilation of hundreds of dollars and numerous man-hours,) and began hanging drywall in it's place. All I had to do to help him was to run to the tool rental store, unload the drywall jack I rented, and assist in stacking tiles as they were removed. I think I put 40 minutes into today's work and Ken put in at least 8 hours! After the bedroom turned out so nicely, Ken decided that textured drywall was worth deconstructing a months worth of work in the play room... and I think he may be right! He's become a mini-expert with drywall and this ceiling is going up extremely fast! To top it off, Ken decided to help the neighbor with his basement installation after an already full day and I haven't seen him in two hours.

The kids were pretty good today and I had plenty of time to sulk by myself. I don't know if it's the long winter, February in general, or just PMS, (it DOES exist,) but I'd slap myself if I thought it would cheer me up! I finally forced myself to do a little housework and to make an actual dinner, but even my 'Famous Dave's'-style ribs and cherry cheesecake dessert couldn't bring me around. Ken was starving at least, so the decent food made him smile. Of course the first thing Riley did when he got to the table was remind me that he hates my food and just why do I cook stuff like this?

Yes, the Mommy Monster materialized. Yes, Riley survived my wrath. Yes, he cleaned his plate.

Some day they will all learn the lesson my siblings and I never had trouble comprehending: Mom doesn't care if you like it or not, if it's put before you, you had better just eat it!