You have reached Attitude Central.....

Ay yi yi.

Nobody told me there'd be days like these.

All I wanted to do today was go to the library to return the dozen or so movies that were due, maybe go to a park for a while, and then do some work in the yard. Easy right?

Ha.

They all woke up with attitudes. And I'm not talking just cranky or irritable or whatever. We're talking 5 full-blown selfish, picky, disrespectful, angry, antagonizing, vengeful, snotty attitudes.

I had told them what I wanted to do. They were excited about it for a few minutes. And then someone got cranky with someone else and it just went downhill from there. So I decided that they were going to do chores, and lots of them. And I told them that when they were done (to my satisfaction) then we would go to the library.

Both bedrooms got cleaned. Of course, there were a few temper tantrums involved. And maybe some yelling and stomping of feet. Those may or may not have come from me. But the bedrooms got cleaned. I straightened up the kitchen and bathroom at the same time. So at least things started to look better.

We did finally head off to the library - on foot. I thought that maybe getting them outside and into the nice fresh air would help.

Wrong.

They were still acting up at the library, so I grabbed a couple of movies for myself and we left - and the kids were empty-handed. They'll get over it.

We didn't go to a park, but instead went straight home, where I *thought* that I'd put them to work again.

My ghetto-riffic yard has been looking mighty, well, ghetto-riffic lately. I really wanted to get the area around and under the one front porch cleaned up today, so that was my main goal.

Those bushy things to the left are NOT supposed to be there. But they just keep coming back. I'm pretty sure that they'll survive any kind of apocalypse that may or may not eventually destroy the earth.

Make a mental note of that "gate" behind the downspout while you're looking at this picture.

When that gate was removed, this is what the area between the porch and the garage looked like.

Ew. Just, ew. I spent hours cleaning this out when we first moved in because it was just full of trash. But this is mainly stuff that I either didn't pick up the first time or stuff that the kids chucked down there, thinking that it would be funny.

Anyway, I got to work. It really wasn't as bad as I initially thought it was, but it was still a pain. I raked all of the crap out, tossed the garbage that I found into that box, and kept anything that was salvageable (basically the basketball and a birdhouse made out of a gourd). In the meantime, my neighbor came over and he helped me to get the leaves bagged up and out of there so it ended up looking pretty decent.

Oh and I decided I might as well clean out the gutters while I was out there getting filthy dirty anyway. It's not like it's a horrible job - jump up on the porch railing, over onto the garage, clean out maybe 10' of guttering, and hop back down. Although I do have to admit that I get some really funny looks from people as they're driving by the house and see me standing on the garage roof.

I just realized that I didn't get a good "after" picture from the front, but that's mainly because I was trying to escape from the conversation with the neighbor. He's a nice guy, but he can talk and talk and talk and talk.....and I really just wanted to get inside and get supper started because we still had a lot of stuff to get done.

In the meantime, Alex's father called and informed me that he was going to come get Alex for the night. Uh, hello? What happened to "I get my schedule on Thursday, so I can let you know then what my plans are for the weekend"? I not-so-politely reminded him that I need to know in advance when he wants to take him - I'm not going to sit around and wait for him to decide to show up, and it's too hard on Alex not to know what's going on, now that he's old enough to understand it.

Anyway, we finally got in and I got supper started and then Emily had to go to a costume birthday party - which I found out about LAST NIGHT. So she made the girl a present and we scrounged around for ideas for a costume and came up with something simple and cheap free. Would have been better with a football helmet, but it worked.

We took her to her party, and stopped at a little old cemetery that we drive past quite often. I knew that it was old, but I had no idea how old. So Sarah, Jared, Daniel, and I stopped and scoped it out. We want to go back with paper and crayons and do some rubbings because some of the stones were almost impossible to read.

Ex1 and I shifted some weekend time around so that he could take the kids on a camping trip in a couple of weeks, so I get the rare treat of taking the older three to my church tomorrow - they never get to go with me anymore, so I'm looking forward to it. I just hope that they all wake up in much better moods than they did today.



On a side (or bottom) note: it's 11:00pm, and I have a minimum of 3 loads of laundry left to do tonight. How does that happen?