Crazy Thursday

Yesterday it seemed like nothing went right.

I finally got all geared up to take the kids to the pool (we're running out of summer with school starting soon), and when we drove up to the pool, I thought it odd that NO ONE was there. Our neighborhood pool has been packed all summer every time we've been, and all of a sudden no one is there? Well, maybe we lucked out, I thought. To be sure, I left the kids in the open and running car while I made sure there wasn't some reason why no one was there. Sure enough, the pool was closed, with a hand-written marker sign taped to the gate and a giant chain with a pad-lock insuring no one would bypass the sign. I then had to go back to the car where my children were waiting in anticipation, wearing their cute little swimsuits, and tell them that it was closed and we'd have to go back home. But maybe we could still go swimming, if I could reach my friend who lives in the next neighborhood over. We've been swimming at their pool several times this summer. So I got home, left the kids in the open car again, and went in the house and grabbed the phone and started calling and went back outside. She didn't answer the house phone or her cell phone. We were out of luck. (There are other people who live further away I could have called, but I gave it a shot, and didn't want to drive all over just to spend a couple hours at the pool.)

I had already been planning to help my mom set up her classroom at some point in the day, so plan B, to soften the blow that we weren't swimming, was to go visit Nanna's classroom, which they usually enjoy. We had already passed her school on the way to and from the pool. She's an elementary music teacher, and usually has lots of fun instruments and things for them to play with when we're there. Seeing as it was her very first day back at school, nothing was set up at all, and she even had to go digging in her closet to find a box of something for the girls to entertain themselves with. I managed to set up 2 computers, connect her stereo, DVD player and VCR, and help move some furniture, all in about an hour, just long enough for the girls to start getting bored, so then we came back home. That was the only part of the day that really went like it was supposed to (although we should have been at the pool).

After that, we came home and the girls went down for naps. That's always a crap shoot around here. My big girl is really starting to not need them so much, and the little girl doesn't WANT to take a nap, no matter how badly she needs it. If I can just get them both to stay in their rooms and be quiet for an hour, I've succeeded. At least it's some down time (for me and them).

After nap time was over, I had to go get some oil-based glaze for my on-going table project. I'm finally far enough into the redo that I'm starting to see the end product, and it doesn't make me completely sick to think about working on it. I just need to get the faux finish on, then polyurethane, and then it's done. So I packed the girls up and we went to Lowes. I don't know if you've ever looked for oil-based glaze, but they don't have it there. You have to find a specialty paint shop for that. Of course, there weren't any all that close to where I was at Lowes, so I had to drive another 20 minutes to get to one. On this errand-running trip, I asked my big girl what she wanted for dinner (that's the hard part for me- ideas!), and she suggested tacos, so we had to stop and get the stuff for that on the way home from the paint store.

Between the paint store and the grocery store, my little girl fell asleep. Aparently she didn't really nap. She was drooly when I woke her up to get her out of the car. Poor baby.

At the grocery store, my big girl, who is mildly autistic (that's her special need, in case anyone was wondering), needed to go to the bathroom. Well, the poor child is sometimes afraid of public restrooms because they are much louder than residential flushers. (And don't even get me started on the auto-flushers!) Sometimes she does great with it in public, and other times are like yesterday. At the mere mention that she'd have to go at the store, she started melting down. I'm sure the lady coming out of the bathroom as we were going in thought I was being mean to her, but I was just telling her that if she had to go, it was here or in her pants. We were only about 5 minutes from home at this point, but I'm not going to leave the store, go home so she can potty, and then come back. We only had to pick up 3 or 4 things from the store. Anyway, the poor girl was screaming, "I can't go here!!" as she was going there. After she realized she had already gone, she was trying to calm down from that hysterical breathing, and she said, "I need drug!" She's into vocabulary, and in her mind she was saying she needed medicine to help her calm down. (We don't give our kids tylenol when they're upset, but I did give it to a friend's kid when he fell down the stairs and hit his head on the tile at the bottom. In that case, it was to calm him down, but mostly to help him with the headache that was surely coming his way.)

As if that wasn't enough of a crazy, nothing's- going-right kind of day already, when we got home, we had no electricity. The power was out for everyone on our side of the street, I learned from some neighbors outside. No tacos for dinner if I can't cook. (Even though we have a gas stove, I didn't want to light the burners with a flame, that just doesn't seem safe to do if it's not made for that.) So I called my husband on his cell and we met for dinner at Applebee's, where we still had some free kids' meal coupons leftover from VBS. If you're going to have your dinner plans change, going out is always a nice change.

When we came home from dinner, we still didn't have power, but we had a mission to accomplish. Our new sectional sofa was coming Friday, so we needed to move the old furniture upstairs that night. We've had our La-Z-Boy furniture since 2001, and the piping on the sofa has been fraying since about 2003. We like that stuff because all of it reclines, but it doesn't look like a recliner. What we had fit in our old house, which was MUCH smaller than this one, but it was pretty small in the family room of this house. So that stuff got demoted to the game room upstairs (pictured). The backs come off but then you still have to carry the bottom parts with the recliner mechanism inside. My hubby and I carried the chair up the stairs, with me huffing and puffing the whole time, and I knew after that there was no way I could handle the sofa. So we called a friend to help with the sofa. Keep in mind that we still had no power, so no AC. After all that, we were HOT, and didn't really have a good way to cool off.

During the furniture moving, I called my mom to tell her about our electricity issue, and to see if we could stay at her house if it didn't come back online pretty soon. We tracked down the repair man we had seen in the neighborhood and he still didn't know where the problem was, and it was getting to be bed time for the girls. So we bailed on our no-AC house, and went to stay with my mom (Dad was out of town on business).

And that was my crazy Thursday. Glad it's over.

This morning I had to be back home for the couch delivery (YAY! - see picture), and we have power again, THANK YOU, GOD!!

The current song in my head is "Chili Con Carne," a vocal ensemble arrangement. I have 2 versions of it on CD, one by One Voice (1998-1999) and antoher I can't remember who it's by. I haven't actually heard that song in AGES!