The Week of Pure Chaos

It all started with pink eye.

Beautiful, glaringly red-shot, but still stunningly blue eyes with an enormous amount of yellow goop perpetually building up and just sitting there till I, mom, took care of it.  Hopefully that image will make you grateful I did not take a picture.  You should also be grateful he stayed promptly at home, washing his hands every 3.5 seconds, while I washed his bed sheets every night.

The things you do.

And luckily, after all that, it only spread to Mitchell's other eye.  Not to Ali, not to me, not to mike, not to the public.  I'd call that a win, honestly.

A win, except for I'm the mom who thought pink eye was simply annoying and highly contagious (seriously, at least I knew that much).  And I couldn't figure out why everyone was asking if I had "drops".  Um, yes! Red-eye relief over-the-counter drops. I had no idea there was a mandatory prescription for this nitemare.

So I call my pediatrician.  The one who, A. I'm sure thinks I'm completely an idiot.  And B. has the worst after-hours message and I was on the phone for what seemed like a lifetime.  Also, his office is, basically, on the other side of Utah.  And because I'm me, I don't really feel like finding a doctor over here.  Because overall, I actually really like my pediatrician.

I (finally) talk to the doctor on call and just tell him I want a prescription for pink eye.  "let's talk about why you think he has pink eye" "his eyes are, uh, pink"  "yeah, that sounds like pink eye.  bring him in if it doesn't get better."

awesome, thank you.

Meanwhile, I have ants.  In my kitchen.  This is the first time they've made it into the house, though I've dealt with them in the garage.  Which for some reason, is a surprising fact to my mother, but it's true.  My usual MO is dumping a lot of vinegar on those suckers and usually I only have to do that 2 times a year.

So when I found them in my kitchen, I vacuumed them up, and then went to mop the floor with vinegar, but I'm out of vinegar (which sounds like a weird thing to be out of, but it's also my favorite tub and sink cleaner.   Which is probably why my bathrooms are, currently, preeettty terrible).

I go online and google "how to get rid of ants when you don't want to go buy anything" and apparently cornmeal works great.  It attracts the ants (that part didn't really 'click') and then they eat it, carry it back to their little colony and then they can't digest it so they all die.   This sounds really mean, but I'm not in the best mood, and I have corn meal, so away I go!

I sprinkle cornmeal around the perimeter of my home, while on the phone, and I'm sure at this point the neighbors think I practice witchcraft or something.  After the perimeter of the house is all covered in cornmeal, I promptly take it to my kitchen pantry, and yes, dump it all over the freaking floor.  And go to bed.  Yay!

You all see where this is going, I'm sure.  I wake up to the huge ant colony I invited into my home.  With my vacuum, I again,  vacuum those suckers up.  I go to google again, and search for "ant deterrents" since I finally realize that's what I'm *really* looking for.  I found a couple of interesting things. Borax=ant killer.  Salt=ant killer.  If you vacuum ants, you better vacuum some salt or borax unless you want the ants to be happily living in your vacuum.

Look.  I could have lived with the ants living in my vacuum, I think.  I'm not trying to be a heartless ant killer, I just don't want them to find their way over to any part of my house ever again.  My brain, however, is pretty visual and upon reading "ants living in your vacuum" I immediately pictured scenes reminiscent of Arachnophobia and swarms upon swarms of ants crawling out of the vacuum (that is to say, the bottom, the bag, the handle, and the hose,) and then taking over my house.  That is exactly what I thought was going to happen.

So, yes.  I dumped all the salt I could find onto my kitchen floor.  This included the salt shaker.  And instead of taking the bottom out, I just started shaking salt onto the floor. (Cue: now my kids think I'm insane).  And instead of just dumping in a pile, my panicked state had me dumping salt all over the kitchen in a psychotic dance sort of way.

Meanwhile, Ali takes my brand new tube of tinted moisturizer and rubs the entire thing of it all over her naked self. Then rolls on the couch.  She's orange and says "Look mom.  I so pretty"

But anyway.

Then I vacuumed the salt.

And then I went back to google.  Cinnamon, Garlic, and Bay leaves are all deterrents of ants.  I'm 99% sure each of those things work perfectly fine alone, but I wasn't taking chances.  And I had all three and dumped all of them, one after the other, along the perimeter of my kitchen.  Let's just say that the smell of that is enough to deter humans as well.  And guess who does not have ants! ME!

And while THAT was happening, I was doing a load of laundry, of Mitchell's sheets.  I tell you.  This whole thing is only over a 2 day period of time.  I thought my washing machine was on the verge of a melt down for over a month now.  And when I say that I mean, because my clothes were still soaking wet, then dripping wet, then actual pools of water (at the bottom of the machine), I figured the motor or whatever makes that thing spin was just getting worse and was slowly breaking.  And then I realized that if it's spinning this fast, that's not the problem.

*lightbulb* THE DRAIN PIPE! yes.  It has to be.  Obviously.

So I'm pretty proud of myself for figuring out my laundry problem.  The drain pipe is an easy fix, I say to myself.

And I pull the washing machine out from the wall, and yes.  It's the drain pipe- the drain pipe has 2 severe kinks in it.  With the ants and the pink eye- I'm so happy I can fix something I could cry.

After I realize the kinks are pretty permanent (they were, you know, progressively getting worse for over a month now) I unlock the drain pipe and a bunch of water splashes to the ground and also mold.  Mold! The smell of mold reeks the air and it's so bad I run the pipe to the garbage and call Mike and tell him to pretty pretty please bring home a drain pipe.

He says yes and it's actually called a drain hose.  After a few tries, we cinch the metal belt on it real tight and I continue washing sheets.  I'm leaving for girls/business/awesome night and everything looks great. That was easy! I ask him to move the sheets to the dryer in 45 mins.  I kiss him and run out the door without looking back.

Mike texted me about an hour later.  Apparently, the metal belt we cinched really tight was too tight, and the water pressure had loosened the seal or *something* but he texted me that he was swimming laps.

So I call him and ask if everything is under control, and he assures me it's fine. "I'm just dandy", he says, without a hint of sarcasm and is sort of laughing (I suppose I've finally rubbed off on him). He used every blanket and towel he could find ("not the quilts!" I say.  "Do you think I'm an idiot!?" he says.), the carpet (it was just old pretty gross to begin with carpet on concrete not glued down or installed or anything) was "drying" in the garage and then mid sentence he says to someone "oh you're fine honey. just go to bed." I look at the clock, and it's 6:15.  "Mike", I say, "who is going to bed?" "it's fiiiiine babe.  I've got it alllll handled.  Have a good time!"

Um, okay.

I call him about 1.5 hours later to make sure everything was, indeed, okay.  And I asked him who he put to bed at 6 "Ali.  And she didn't go to bed.  She just got a mosquito bite or something" Since mosquito bites don't hurt immediately, I ask if it may have been a bee sting? "oh, maybe!" he says, "she did say a bee hurt her"

Nice.  So I (eventually) take Emma home with me to spend the night.  It's around 10:30pm, so everyone is fast asleep, including Mike, since he goes to the gym and starts his days at obscene hours.

We open the garage to find the carpet wadded up in a ball and soaking wet.  This is not good.

We open the door and walk downstairs to find all the contents of my laundry room/office/sewing room/studio moved to the toy room, except some random things, and the carpet along the opposite wall of the washer.  I step on that carpet, and about half of it is soaking, soaking wet.  So I grab an empty laundry basket and start putting these random pieces of carpet into the basket, so as not to ruin the (installed and matching) carpet on the stairs.  It's so heavy it takes both Emma and I to carry it, and while we climb up the stairs, water, draining from the holes in the laundry basket, flood out of there like crazy.  It sounds like Niagara Falls is happening and we sprint up the stairs and throw the rest of the carpet in the garage.

Naturally, Niagara Falls left some evidence all over the stairs and entryway to the garage. And because all of our blankets and towels are currently sitting in an empty shower, I frantically start grabbing old t-shirts to mop up the water.

And it was at this moment, I realized I had not yet walked upstairs.  And I had not checked on the kids. And then I remembered Ali may have been stung by a bee and my brain promptly showed me a picture of Ali swollen up and not breathing (I usually love my imagination.  Not this week.)

So without another thought, I dash upstairs, and slip on the water, spun around a couple times, and hit my head (and toe, and back, and practically everything) on the sharp corner of the wall.  It was pretty painful and I don't really remember what happened, but Emma woke Mike up because apparently my eyes were dilated and I wasn't making a lot of sense, or finishing any thoughts.  And the whole thing is pretty blurry.

But I'm fine.  And have a goose egg the size of kansas on the back of my head and have been icing it constantly.

And Emma checked on Ali, who was sleeping and 100% okay.

So the next morning I woke up pretty exhausted, but fine.  I did 5 loads of laundry, and plan on washing every washable thing we own because moldy water sounds gross.

And then Ali, as of yesterday, has a huge fear of bees.  Of course, that fear as also spread to include ants, spiders, flies, any little black thing (like the black seed in her watermelon), and also just the word "bee"  I'm talking shrieks of terror, sprinting away, and clinging to me so hard it feels like she might as well become a part of me. She wouldn't nap by herself, so I laid down by her.  I'm so glad Emma was here, though she probably wishes she wasn't, haha.  And after 8 hours of Ali crying at nothing, we had a little talk about bees. They help make pretty flowers and they make honey.  And then we all had some honey on bread. But it only stopped the terror for about 10 seconds.

I was worried this was going to be a permanent and forever, but surprisingly, she's been perfectly happy and normal today.

The upside to all of this is we've wanted to replace that basement floor since before we moved in, so this just gives us a little motivation.  And we don't have pink eye.  And I don't have ants.  And if they're smart, I won't have ants ever again.