Baby poo, cat pee and tampons. Not necessarily in that order.

I usually don't have enough creative juices to produce two entries this close together.  My family has become a most enthusiastic muse.

Let's see, the hair cutting fiasco was Friday.  You would think that God, in his infinite goodness, would have granted me (us) a bye for the weekend.  I guess he really enjoys reading my blog and wanted to give me more fuel.

Saturday started the usual way.  Theron and I woke with the baby around 7:30, laid in bed and talked about the day and how we should get up and be doing stuff already and then the kids all piled in with us, one by itty-bitty one, and soon we were a mass of writhing, tickling, wrestling, screaming, panting Perezes. 

I eventually managed to untangle myself and headed to the kitchen to start some bacon, and make some warm, carmelized apples to go with our spelt buttermilk pancakes.  (Yes, it was all super delicious.  I miss that breakfast.  I want to eat it again.  Now.)  Everyone ate heartily and then Eva and I vanished with Ty to go shopping and drop off some dry cleaning and Theron took the boys out to run a few errands.

Eva and I won because we arrived home first.  Although, I'm not sure it's winning if you're the first to discover the wretched smell of cat urine in your family room as soon as you enter it. 

Some of you know, and some of you don't, that previously our van had been ruthlessly urinated in several times by our furry home companion, Murray.  Murray is our 9 year old, yellow tabby cat.  He was lovely before we had kids and now he's a huge pain in my tush.  I'm not an animal hater.  I love them.  But adding his maintenance to that of the children's, compounded by the fact that he's not all that nice to them and you've got a grumpy pet owner.  But I digress...

Murray peed in our van on more than one occasion.  How did this come to pass, you ask?  We park the van in the garage and I used to be in the habit of leaving the side doors of the van open.  (NOT ANYMORE!)  Once, when I was taking groceries out of the van, the sly little kitty got into the garage AND into the van without my knowledge.  I shut them both and promptly forgot about him until the next morning.  He mercilessly peed on the carpet between the driver's and passenger's seats.  That was an easier fix because we just took out the mat that was there and the problem was solved.  But AFTER that, he got into the van again via his usual route of escape into the garage and since  we didn't know he was in there, he was shut in there all night.  Where else should little kitty relieve himself but in our family-mobile?  It happened so many times, I felt like an idiot for repeatedly leaving the van open and our van was beyond embarrassingly smelly.  Theron and my dad ended up replacing the carpet in the entire van one Saturday.  (Yep.  You can do that.  It's not as easy job, FYI.)

So, lesson learned, we now keep the van doors sealed tightly against the infidel .  You can imagine my horror at being confronted by that singular odor, but this time, in my home!  The first phase was denial.  I called Theron immediately and told him what I was smelling.  I wandered around the play room, into the living room, into the dining room, wondering if it was my imagination. 

I went outside and came back in.  It was faint.  But it was there.  No mistake.  Ugh.

Theron came home shortly after we spoke and he found the offensive patch right away.  Here's the thing.  Just a few days before, Sully had spilled a good bit of water on that very spot.  The water must have activated a long dormant animal fluid from the previous owners and the cat took offense to it.  (Ah, most vexing chain of events, how I loathe thee!  More on that later...)

We talked it over for a full thirty-seconds before it was decided that instead of trying to steam, spray, baking soda, scrub, and/or sweat that smell out, that we would just rip up the carpet.  We'd been down that road with the van, and it just wasn't worth it.  Plus, we had been looking for an excuse to take up that carpet anyway.  It was pretty darn gross.

Without further ado, Theron began ripping up the carpet.  This was NOT on the to-do list for Saturday, or for the next six months.  Such is a day in our lives. 

I shut off the centrail air and opened the windows and sliding door.  I knew this whole process was going to make at least one of us sneezy.  Within minutes I was violently sneezing and my eyes were unbelievably itchy.  I vascillated between fury (at the cat) and deep, dark despair (at our ruined day and our soon to be darker living space).

The floor underneath was what we knew it to be.  Dark, ship plank-esque, wood flooring.  It's real dark, it's real funky, it's worn out and I really don't like it.  I like it better than carpet, I suppose, but I really don't care for it.  The carpet was a light color.  It brightened the room.  One entire side of the room is brick fireplace and wretched paneling.  Now over half of the room is brown.  Much like the kitchen, which is probably 75% brown.  And the rooms are adjacent to one another, and make up about half of the first floor of the house, which means 25% of my house is dark brown. 

Hang on.

I think I might lose it. 

Deep breaths. 

The good news is that the carpet is gone and we're that much closer to our dream of a nicer downstairs, whenever that may be.

The bad news is that Theron has some projects that need to be completed before the brown goes bye-bye.  We bought a camper in the spring that needs some work before we can take it out.  With summer a little over half over, that's top priority.  When that's done, he has to finish ripping out the shower in our bathroom and installing a new one to ensure no leaks happen in the room we just ripped the carpet out of.  Then, he'll be able to rip out the brown paneling in the pee room, replace it with dry-wall, and then and only then, will he be able to replace the floor.  You see.  Chain of events.  So, so, so, so, so much fun.  So much fun, I wanna cry.  Because we all know how much spare time my overworked husband already has for projects of this nature. 

The good news is (Yes! There's more!) we'll get an area rug to cover most of the offensive brown and I won't give a rat's behind what happens to the ugly dark, faux ship planking in the meantime.  (I'm clinging to this knowledge tenaciously.)

I also want to be clear that I'm not ungrateful for our home.  I love where we live.  It's a lovely neighborhood and a lovely location on the creek.  I have running water and indoor plumbing.  My home is warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  I am clothed.  I am loved.  I want for nothing. 

But I am also an artistic person who deeply appreciates a certain asthetic in her surroundings and five years ago we left a townhome that was pretty close to exactly how I wanted it for a home that needed a lot of change.  It still needs a lot of change.  We've changed the things we could afford to and when I list them all, it really is a significant amount of improvement and that's encouraging.  But my kitchen is as dark and brown as it was the day we moved in and I spend A LOT of time in that room! Changing the curtain above the window from time to time hasn't done much to improve it.  I thought we were moving closer to painting it and getting new counters, but things like cat pee on a carpet we didn't intend to rip up for a little while, has set that goal back even further. 


The day sucked it out of all of us, so Theron suggested we go out to dinner. (YAY!)  We went to a buffet one of his coworkers had told him about.  It was a large place with a large and eclectic selection.  (Frog legs AND tacos.)  I'm surprised we're not all sick with food poisoning yet, but there's still time. 

When we were nearing the completion of ingesting all sorts of things that I don't normally let our family even smell, Theron commented that the baby, who was happily resting in his lap, was quite gassy.  Uh-oh.  He then picked him up to find that he had actually pooped up the entire back of his onesie and onto Theron's clothes.  Time to go.  I changed the baby in the bathroom, which smelled really odd, although I'm not surprised given the wide variety of food offered, and after we left smelled a smidge worse given the volume of said baby poop.

We got home and threw the kids in bed faster than you can say, "G'night."

On Sunday, the Lord was merciful.  Nothing crazy happened.  At least not that I can remember.

Today is Monday and it's become our grocery day.  Grocery day, by it's very nature, is tiring.  I hate grocery shopping, although I'm learning to like it more.   I usually end up taking all of the kids, unless it's one of those random days Theron has off and then we ALL go.  The little boys stay with me while I shop, and the older kids go to the Fun Center and are watched, for free, for an hour.  Tis bliss.

My bliss was siderailed today in the middle of my list by the baby, who, again, needed to be changed.  This meant going back to the front of the store, sloppily parking the gigantic cart, meant for women with annoying amounts of children, near the bathroom, unstrapping Quinn, unstrapping the baby and hoping the family bathroom inside was not occupied.  It was. 

Once inside, things got much, much, much worse.

I was nearly done changing Ty when I turned around to find that Quinn had opened the trash can for sanitary napkins and had pulled out a tampon applicator! There isn't enough hand sanitizer in the world, folks.  I shrieked and told him to put it back and to never, ever, ever, ever touch one of those again!  He looked bewildered.  It's understandable.  My reaction was pretty intense. 

When I left, I called Mom to tell her because I pulled a similar stunt when I was a little bit older, but with one of her applicators and I was going to take it to show and tell.  True story.

A mom with a sense of humor overheard me telling Mom the story and started laughing.  She then apologized to me, but I told her it was fine.  It you don't laugh you'll cry.  I kept running into her after that and each time we'd share a knowing chuckle.

I honestly wonder what my life will be like when the kids are less crazy.  When they're old enough to not do things that are intensely amusing, gross, and adorable without realizing it.  I long for and hate the thought of that time coming, all at once. 

If they keep up at this pace, I'll be blogging a lot more often and their stories will be immortalized on the internet.  I can't wait.