The art of getting nothing done
I think it all started when I decided, “hey, I’m hungry, I think I’ll make some chicken for breakfast.” Yes, I’m the mom, I can have whatever I want for breakfast now… especially when breakfast takes places at 10.30am. Anyway.
I get the chicken out of the freezer and realize I need to wash the pan first since I used it the night before then ran out the door and didn’t get home until late. So I’m washing the pan and I get another phone call. Phone call ends, open fridge. What do I see there?
Yup, Elijah apparently actually listened to me for once when I said, “and that is the last of the bread, there is no more, no more until we buy some, that is your last other peanut butter sandwich until we get more bread… okay?” And he decided to save what was left of it. Smart boy, but by the time I’d found it - within a half an hour of it being put there - it was already stale. So Rimshot had a treat.
Of course, I thought this was so cute and I was distracted, so I took that picture. I went to turn on some music to play on the desktop computer for while I washed dishes and stuff and thought I’d unload the picture (as well as last night’s) at the same time. It was then that I noticed that my media card reader wasn’t working… again.
I restarted the computer and got the stupid “time and date not set” problem again. I’m so mad, because this is the third or fourth time and so I called Dell again. They had me on hold so long, I got on the chat with them. I’m annoyed with this because I’ve only had this computer since December and while everything else has been fine, this media card reader has been nothing but problems. I’ve had to open the silly thing several times and re-hook the cable to get it to work. I shouldn’t have to do this. The Dell guy has to call me back because I have to restart the computer. I’m told that I have to open it up and take out that little motherboard battery for a bit and then put it back and re-set the stuff in the bios. I’m not sure what that’s going to do because I also reset the cable while I was in there. It’s all working now… (Speaking of peripherals…) I guess we’ll see.
Yes, your eyes are glazing over by now. Imagine how distracted I was? Somewhere between the chat and the time they called me back, Elijah started screaming. “TOWEL, TOWEL! GIMME TOWEL!”
I meet him on the way to the bathroom where he’s holding out his hands with white stuff all over them. At first I can’t figure out what the stuff is but then I realize… paint. Paint.
That means… he somehow found the paint-can-pryer-opener that we keep put up out of his reach and opened the can alllllllllllll by himself.
I got him washing his hands and found the paint can. It was wet in places on the sides and still basically had the lid on, the pry-thingy on top of the lid with paint all over the end. I get the lid back on and take it into the lower room, everything seems okay. Maybe a little bit on the floor, I can’t tell if that was there before or not (we still don’t have the carpet down, have a few things left to do/buy).
I tell him, “you’re in BIG trouble, Mister!!?”
The response? “NO I NOT MISTER, I NOT TROUBLE!!! GIMME TOW-WEL!!!”
It was only later that evening when I was sitting in the chair, turned towards Steve who was on the couch, talking to him, that I saw this:
Need a closer look?
Yeah, I about fainted. I just stopped talking and kind of gasped. Steve was looking at me saying, “What? What?!” All I could do was point. Yeah he was really upset. Our new wall. I think I’m going to cry just looking at it now. We were barely going to finish the room with the paint we had, now it looks like we’re going to have to buy more - I hope they can match the color accurately so that we don’t have to paint the whole thing again!! It’s going to have to be chipped/sanded, that white stuff is very thick and textured.
I don’t think he blames me (which is sometimes the response dads give moms: “well where were YOU?”) - this thing usually doesn’t happen. Usually I catch E before it gets that far, the kid has never colored on walls or anything before, not with crayons or anything. This is so depressing though!
The rest of the day? It was about like that. After all this and then the phone call from Dell I realized I was really hungry. I went into the kitchen and… well, there was my chicken still sitting on the counter. *sigh*
