DIY HACK - how to shrink your bathroom

The renovation was upon us, and I fled.

I felt guilty about fleeing, but the man and I have a traditional arrangement: I do most of the things-which-keep-children-alive, and he does most of the things-which-endanger-children. This means I'm the one getting red in the face and hauling tantrumming toddlers around, but it also means I'm not the one peeing in a laundry sink while the bathroom gets tiled. The kids and I spent the weekend eating my mother's food, and the man spent the weekend tiling until he damaged the nerve in one of his fingers - possibly undoing the long-term savings of doing this ourselves. Chop it off and replace it with a hook, I always say.

DAY 1: tiles torn up, cheap water-damaged tile ripped from wall (up to the sink, anyway), old tub with its grody underbits exposed.

DAY 2: room emptied, walls primed, backerboard installed, panicky texts sent about how long it is taking.

 

DAY 3:  The bathroom shrank by half. Considering new design theme: Dollhouse Miniature. We can have giant plants and spindly furnishings, so everyone feels as if they have wandered into a pocket of dimensional displacement.

So, there still isn't any grout. Or plumbing. But we haven't crashed into the basement yet, so this counts as a wild success.

Earthy

The youngest cousin turned 8, and festivities were held at my aunt's terrifying apartment above Pearl Harbor. 

The birthday boy was stumped and unexpectedly shorted out when I said that if he wished for something that could happen, it would happen. Sorry, kid. Wish for "unlimited money and wishes" if you want, it's your day.

My mom was all, meh, cake. I clutched the edge of the table, because the window was open a crack, and it goes straight down for about 40 floors. Nope.

I've lived here almost all my life, and still haven't been arsed to figure out who Prince Kuhio was, but we get the day off because of him, so I got to stay home and learn to garden.

Actually, still trying to find the garden. The back yard is going to take a while.

I loaded up the kids and we walked to the hardware store for fertilizer and tools, then turned up all the dirt in the front yard and treated it. My weak pudding arms flapped around and embarrassed themselves, but they did the job. I dumped miracle grow on everything and yelled, "engorgio!" Should probably plant something in the dirt.

Expecting latent gardening super-talent to activate any time now. 

Pencil and chalk

Mechanical pencil is being agreeable tonight. May have something to do with breaking lent and having a beer because it's the eve of a state holiday. Am relaxed and getting liberal with my chalk.

I should be painting

But oil paint isn't in the budget yet. Neither is illustration board. Or yarn. Or time spent on non-household projects. So I must use remnants, and the end product must be a functional item. It's not as fun as art for art's sake, but industry is fine.

This week I made a sort of doily for the dinner candles, so they'll stop dripping wax on the tablecloth.

And the runner has been finished and blocked, and looks pretty good.

How many knitted things can I really stuff my house with before I start yarnbombing the bed posts and making tiny storm trooper sweaters? Madness lies this way.

Nose, nose, EYES.

An excess of appliances and a happy kid

One of the things my family is firm on is cake frosting. There will be no powdered sugar or shortening or jars of processed goo. No. You have to make Julia Child's buttercream with boiling sugar and whipped egg yolks and unsalted butter and NO EXCUSES. Which is exactly the reason I buy bakery cakes for most celebrations. But on this occasion, I was determined to re-create the kittycat & Smarties cake my mother made for me when I turned two - a thing so magnificent that I can still remember it - so I hauled out Mastering the Art of French Cooking and did the thing. It was not a perfect execution - the hand mixer died and I had to employ my old Kitchenaid, because my other Kitchenaid was in use, and I had a moment in the kitchen there, staring at my two Kitchenaids chugging away and wondering what kind of monster I had become. Gavin decorated with m&ms. And put candles on for nipples. The end result was homely and funny, and both the pre-teen boys insisted that I make them the EXACT SAME cakes for their next birthdays. What they lack in sophistication, they make up for in don't-give-a-damnness. It earned them the candy-encrusted ears when serving time came around.

The birthday girl reveled. She was the happiest little very-serious-toddler in town. This child is fierce in the way fierce meant before evolutionary linguistics got hold of it. She's kind of a lot of toddler to handle as a parent, but then she'll hook an arm around your neck, plant a hard kiss, and say, "I LOVE YOU," in a way that is both charming and indisputable. She's not buttering anyone's buns. She will not say she's sorry if she isn't sorry, she will tell you straight if she is, she will study things very hard and laugh when she figures them out, and she will rage incandescently if things tip over the edge.  Which they tend to, when the world is full of sewing scissors and irritable cats and brothers with Lego ships they won't share.

But not on this day.

My daughter is not a sweet little princess. She's a tiny Granny Weatherwax, and that is just as she should be. Happy birthday, Zenny! You are completely wonderful.

2

Mustering meager party skills to execute toddler birthday. Have already set the smoke alarms off, trying to use the ancient oven for the first time. Finished the cakes in the toaster oven. Waiting for backup to arrive for decorating duty.

Never been so relieved to see one of my kids turn two. Instead of the usual delighted shmoopiness that my babies are growing so fast, I feel an overriding relief that she survived the year and hope that she is now sturdy enough to make it smoothly to three. I feel positively Victorian. 

Bilious

My sinuses have undergone some painful transformative process, and now appear to be producing novelty ropes of joke-shop slime. Am rummaging in the candy baskets for the other half of whatever Wizard Wheeze I have evidently consumed, and eating one of everything just to be on the safe side. I've kept the baby home with me, which does nothing to speed my recovery but plenty to restore my spirit, which has been scraped thin across the weeks of payroll lag. Payroll lag is reprehensible and unconscionable. Working full hours for no pay while expending extra money on gas, childcare, and no-longer-deferred loans has left everyone haggard and miserable. Soon, I am trying to coax them. Soon there will be money for more living space, more food, a replacement for that broken appliance, that airfare that needs to be booked, that movie the kids want to see. I warned them that the 6 weeks might be delayed and turn into 8 weeks, that it would be hard and miserable, but that we have to stay on target. Now the ships are shaking and threatening to veer off and explode, and I'm trying to hold the formation. Stay on target!

I feel helpless and sick and responsible. But today I'm home with my baby, and I'll run the vacuum, sneeze through a whole box of  tissues, catch up where I can, and hope for the best.

Update on wizard mouse

This morning the little cage was foggy with steam. The little animagus was huddled inside under the ramp. It did not smell as cute as it looked. I texted the man before skipping to the pet store for a cage and tunnel system, and he said something something cats something diseases, so I tromped out into the far bushes and let the little thing go. Which is a bit closer than the two miles it recommended on the box, but still. If he comes back, I get an adorable smelly little diseased pet. Win.

tmi

On Saturday, I took sick leave after conducting storytime with my face swollen up like a boxer. It wasn't too terrible, except that I really wanted to snap shut Green Eggs and Ham and lob it at the loud chattering knot of parents who were not minding their children. I was a bit sore and tetchy, maybe. After the weekend, I shuffled back into work with my jar of antibiotics rattling in by bag. One of my co-workers caught sight of my face, and the conversation that ensued was the worst I've had since I last gave birth.

"You're better!"
"Yep."
"Was it an infection?"
"Yeah. It was an abscess."
"Oh! Why do you think that?"
"Because it popped."
"Wow! Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"How do you know?"
"It was in my mouth."

I turned red, my co-worker started laughing, and suddenly I threw my arm out and yelled, "OH MY GOD DON'T FREAK OUT BUT LOOK OVER THERE." There actually was something there, too. It was a mouse. A mouse to whom I am indebted, because my revolting face was immediately forgotten and there was a scramble with boxes and rulers and brooms. I knelt in front of the crack in the shelves and shielded the little beast before anyone could get the glue traps or club it to death. "Don't hurt it, don't hurt it! I will catch it and keep it. My son wants a mouse anyway." They gave me that sad dog-with-its-own-leg-in-its-mouth look. "We can get shots," I said. So they knelt with a box, poised to scoop it up, and we gave it a prod with a ruler. The mouse suddenly liquified into the air, becoming a streak of flying rodent, and it shot out of the crack and into the wires under the desk as if it had been spit from a straw. "It's a wizard!" My co-worker flailed over backward. I was sent to purchase a humane trap. I suspect they slipped glue traps behind the shelves while I was out, but they let me bait the little cage with peanut butter crackers and put it optimistically in front of the crack. Because what I really need now is to spend $300 on a mouse habitat.

Run! Be free, wee sleekit beastie!

Retrieved

My mother has been retrieved from the hospital. Her room had a view.

That view was of a cemetery. "They'll be taking me out there in a wheelbarrow if things turn south," she said.

But things went well, she is safely home, and has given me half a bottle of prescription ibuprofen. Because while all this was happening, I took a sip of coffee and the lovely hot liquid triggered some sort of explosion in my teeth. I sat with my forehead thunked onto the dining table, weeping, until the kids poked me with a fork. My dentist has an ongoing grudge against my wisdom teeth, and sent me to a specialist to finally have them cut out. The specialist, who apparently minored in odontological divination, told me that I was just going through a stressful life event and had ground my teeth until I traumatized the ligaments. I was told that for the next 3 months (WHAT) I need to eat soft, tepid foods, load up on pain killers, stop clipping my bottom tooth against my top tooth when I speak, and get a $750 bite guard. No. My budget is limited to pilfering drugs from surgical patients right now, I explained.

Tho I haf been tryi'g to keep my teeth from clicking - with ith making me thound like a thwee yeaw old - when Unchained Melody came on the radio, and I started singing along at top yowl (because the meds had kicked in) and I sprained my fucking philtrom. Which is a thing that you can do, evidently. 

So the word on my mother's surgery is that my face is broken. 

And that is why I am not a reporter.

Waiting

The hospital would not return my mother, despite the success of the longer-than-anticipated surgery. I am pleased to report, however, that she managed to get two cups of coffee delivered to her outside of the mandated post-op diet, so it seems likely she'll be set to go in short order. "I am ze squeaky wheel!" she texts. That's ok, then.

In the meantime, I'm changing her bedding and cleaning the fridge and vacuuming the house to get the place ready for convalescing. Also drinking all her Sumatran coffee and eating her furukake chex mix.

Here are some things from this week:

I made a pillow. 

quilt-as-you-go log cabin, with Anna Maria Horner fabrics

The boy lost three teeth in two weeks, and scared me with a grinning mouthful of blood. The tooth fairy rummaged my quarter jar. Damn it. She should plan ahead.

Teeth are exhausting.

Zenny started washing dishes. It's really weird.

Gavin is finishing the school year at my mom's, so I only see him on the weekends, and I know that's more than I would see him at Hogwarts, but it is not easy. He's got a special bond with her, though, and I'm glad he has his very own adult while I'm overrun with little people. 

I am bad at crusts. But good at spinach pie.

I frogged the Shetland and made something simpler. Kind of.

Strange dark sky of clouds and wind on this subdued post-surgery day of waiting.