Friday, the kids came home with their school phonebooks. They were READING them in the car: Carly Shuster 15779 Smith, 5-7-7-9-9-9-0. It was pretty cute. I tried to put the phone books up when we got home, so that we could do something crazy like - oh, I don't know - find it later. GASP! But I was quickly corrected that they were THEIR phonebooks.
Oh really, kid? Well get YOUR phonebook off MY table. Nope, not on my pile of stuff on the island either. Nope, not on the floor either. That's MY floor.
I'm going to laugh in their little teary faces when they can't find them. But whatever.
So, this morning, when we decided it was time to start tiling, we figured we were going to do all the prep work and wait for the kids to go to bed before we started the big project. This is an futile effort to maintain the dignity of parenthood - making a better play area for our kids without screaming at them all while doing so.
So, the phone rings while I'm on the floor scraping stuff, and it's for Lucy. One of her classmates has also studied the new phonebook. And can she come over and play? Let's see, let me think. YES! Then we could get started ahead of schedule on the tiling. You bet!
Now Max wants to play. He wants to call all of his buddies. Whiney waa waaaaaa. Then he gets distracted and forgets about his priority of even balance - if Lucy can call someone in the PHONEBOOK why not me- and it's just so devastating and hard so I'm gonna whine about it because I'm 6 years-old and it's what I do. He forsgets all that. Still, I call one of my pals through Max's buddy at school. I explain the situation, and she's happy to host some play time. What? We can tile our own in the middle of the day?
But it turns out, as most home improvement goes - we had to remove paint from the floor first. So, Ricardo made the first unscheduled trip to Home Depot. And we got the kids to their friends' house. It also turns out that once you apply this paint remover, you have to let it sit. For 3-5 hours. Just in time to go pick the kids back up. Super.
Where's that phonebook?
"Oh, MY phonebook?"
"Yeah, that one. Get it, kid. Mommy needs a break from tiling. Go get it."
That's how I roll.
Did you know that, in the phone book, there are actually people that will come to your house and do that for you .... tile, etc.