It's a squirrel...it's a ghost.....it's a.....?

So I was sitting here earlier tonight just a-typin' away, with the long fake nails clacking on the keyboard, and I heard it.

Chewing and scratching. And it was loud.

I couldn't tell where it was coming from, so I grabbed the broom and started tiptoeing around the living room - because a broom is going to protect me from all that is evil, right?

*snort*

Anyway - whatever it was, it was loud. Now, I've had issues with squirrels or something in my attic, but this sound came from floor level so if it was a squirrel, I had a real problem. And I've had issues with a ghost in here too (don't laugh - I'll tell that story at some point). And of course, I've had issues with mice.

I knew realistically it was a mouse, but it was kind of entertaining to come up with the crazy versions of what was happening too.

Anyway, I narrowed the sound down to the area around the couch, so I pulled it out from its spot.

Mice.

*sigh*

Honestly, I had hoped for the ghost or the squirrel. If it was squirrels, the professionals would be called in to deal with it, and I could just go hide somewhere until it was gone. Like it was really going to be a squirrel....

If it was the ghost...meh, I've been dealing with him for a while. He's annoying, but other than occasionally throwing random objects around the house or appearing as a flying .... thing ..... he's harmless. He doesn't really bother me all that much.

But no, it has to be a mouse. Which means that I have to get traps. And I have to set them. And then I have to deal with their little dead carcasses and all of the other crap that goes along with going on a mouse hunt.

And because I tend to go overboard at times, while I had the couch pulled out from its place, I decided to tear the bottom off of it to try to fix the padding that came away from the one arm of it. I don't know how in the heck it happened, but when I sit on *my* end of the couch, there is absolutely no padding on the arm of it - it's just the fabric and then the wood underneath it. And it sucks. So I tore the bottom of the couch apart (tried to put a screwdriver through  my hand in the process) and put the padding back in place over the wood. So much better to sit there now! And then of course I had to vacuum under the cushions. And mop under the couch.

In other news of the day, Daniel and I just basically hung out. I was (overly) tired from the bazaar yesterday, so we opted to stay home from church and relax this morning. I did some laundry and cleaning (go figure) and we just chilled. Later this afternoon, we took off to get some grease and salt at the only fast food joint in town that has a playground so he could run off some steam and I could sit and relax some more. Of course I sat there and made a to-do list and balanced my checkbooks too. But he played and had fun.

We went later in the afternoon, thinking that it wouldn't be busy, but it was packed. And loud. And full of kid who were completely obnoxious and unsupervised. Really though, I should have expected it to be packed since I went out dressed in full Domestic Goddess attire - oh yeah, I was *that* mom today. And I didn't really care.

After we left there, we took the van to the carwash to vacuum the past few months' worth of crap out of it. Oh, it was ugly. But I figured that while I only had one kid and already had some of the seats pulled out of it, this was the perfect time to do it. I have no idea how many times I had to put more quarters in the vacuum - I think at least 3 - but the interior was clean when we left. After we got home, I put the seats back into it and then worked on getting the rest of the craft stuff from the bazaar put where it belonged. I got invited to set up at another one in 2 weeks, so I'm trying to decide if I want to do that one or not. I guess ultimately it depends on if I can get someone to watch the kids.

I swear, there's never a dull moment around here.

The bazaar...

So today was the bazaar at my church. I set most of my stuff up last night, tweaked it and added a few things this morning, then settled in with the hand sewing that needed to be done on the quilt to finish it.

The crowd was steady and sales were good all day long. I brought home considerably less than what I took in, which made me happy because those boxes of jars are HEAVY! My arms are sore from carrying them around - I am totally out of practice for these shows.

While I didn't bring home quite as much money as I would have liked to, I still did very well. I'm happy with it, and it already enabled me to  pick up a few little extra things that I wanted (hello, flash drives for digital picture storage) as well as a few things that we needed (hello, toilet paper).

The Dude was a huge help. He kept Daniel all day while I worked the show, and he came and got Emily from me (she was helping) and took her to Ex1's church for me so that she could attend a wedding over there. He took Daniel back over to his place while I packed everything up and brought it home - and I literally just dumped it in the middle of the living room floor before I went back over there for a while. I want to go through and sort some of it out a bit better before I actually put it away - but I'm planning on doing that tomorrow after church (if my sore muscles will let me go).

Alex won't be home until tomorrow evening, so it's just going to be me and Daniel during the day tomorrow - I foresee lots of cleaning and organizing, and maybe a nap thrown in just for good measure - and because he's the only kid who will still take a nap with me. The boys don't have school on Monday, so I'm looking forward to maybe sleeping in a little bit that day.

We'll see if that happens or not.

What am I up to this time?

I mentioned something over on the facebook page earlier tonight about starting another project. It's not really one that I'm starting, but let's just say that I'm starting to finish it (finally). I don't even remember when I started it, but it's been a while ago.

I have a bazaar/craft show on Saturday, and I remembered that I had this - so I'm going to see if I can finish it (without going insane like I did on the last quilt that I finished) before then. This one is considerably smaller, so I'd say I have a shot. Plus, I'm not going to set it up on the big frame to quilt it since it's smaller - I'm just going to do it normally. We'll see how it works.

So I might be scarce for the next day or so while I work on this. I have it ready to start the quilting, and I'm going to just get it started tonight to see how the machine handles it before I make any final decisions on how I'm going to do it.

Tomorrow, I have to get up early enough to actually get dressed *gasp* before I take the boys to school so that I can get Emily to Wichita bright and early for a doctor appointment - this should hopefully be the final follow-up on her back, which should release her back into sports - just in time for basketball season.

So it'll be yet another busy day. Imagine that. Woohoo!

Success at the bazaar

What a long day!

What a good day!

It was so nice to walk into the church this morning and have my table already set up and ready to go. I just had to tweak a few things on it and that was it. The morning was cold and windy, and since I was set up right inside the door, I did spend most of the day freezing my butt off every time the doors opened - which was a lot! There was a fantastic crowd, almost right up until the end.

I made lots of sales, and had quite a few repeat customers from years past - always a good feeling! I haven't totalled everything up yet, but I think that this might have been one of my most successful shows ever.

Oh, and can I just say

SCORE!!

Yes, that is a 31.79 fl. oz. bottle of real Mexican vanilla that I purchased for a whopping $6.00. I need to bake something now.

I love vanilla. I love real vanilla - not the imitation stuff. So I can't wait to test this out and see how it works.





So, once I get everything put away, I have a new project that I want to start - it's going to be fun (I hope) but I have to get it done before the older 3 kids get back on Wednesday.

What is the project? I'll give you a clue....

It's behind Door #1.

Whoa. Where did that come from?

So after being all sick and whiny, I was hit with a sudden burst of energy today. I'm still not feeling 100% - I'll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say that some of my innards are still not cooperating with me - but I do feel better.

The day started off with me catching sight of this little guy on my front porch. Forgive the crappy pictures, but when taking it through the window and the screen, the chances of it coming out clear are slim to none.

But I did manage to catch him in action - if you click on the picture to zoom in and squint just right, you might be able to make him out as he jumped up onto the railing. I thought that he was going to snuggle down into the stroller, but instead he cruised along the railing and jumped onto one of the trees and took off out of sight.

He's lucky he wasn't hanging around at the height of the Animal Control trap-fest....which does appear to have been successful, as it's been at least a week since I've seen any feral cats running around. Last I heard, she still hadn't caught the pregnant one, but hopefully she ended up catching her too so that we can eliminate all of them in the neighborhood. For now.

In between all of the normal kid running I did today, I managed to fold about 87 loads of laundry (don't get excited - I still have about 42 loads left)....and then the kids came home. I had to rush to make supper (thank you, Hamburger Helper) so that I could get the older 3 back out the door with their father for church, but in the meantime I started the prep work to get some more strawberry jam made (sugar-free, this time). I'm doing a bazaar at our church on Saturday so I needed to get some made, plus I was really sick of moving the garbage bag full of frozen strawberries around in my freezer - so it was time.

Besides, I hadn't made enough jam yet this year. I got two more batches made up this evening and have just a little bit of strawberry mush leftover that I can use for other stuff. I think I'm about jammed-out right now.

So of course, in the meantime, my kitchen got trashed (go figure) so I ran about getting everything cleaned up (and it actually looks pretty good if I do say so myself) and getting the dishwasher loaded. I started to fold more laundry, and then realized that for some odd reason the load that I was folding was still wet, so there went my momentum in that department since I had to chuck it all back into the dryer. Ugh.

Then I managed to get Alex and Daniel ready for bed and read Alex's library books to them - and got them settled into bed before the older 3 came back from church.

Things are a little crazier than normal here because instead of the older 3 coming back here after school tomorrow, they are going with their father and stepmother to her parents' place for a long weekend (they're skipping school on Friday) so after I drop them off at school tomorrow morning, I won't see them again until next Wednesday. Boo. But, they'll have fun. Yay. Without me. Boo. Yes, it might be bugging me a little bit.

Ah, the joys of co-parenting. *sigh* Sometimes, it just really sucks ass, to put it bluntly. But we have to do things that we don't necessarily like to do in order to keep the peace. The kids are looking forward to going, and although I'm not thrilled about them missing a day of school, I'm ok with it happening once in a while. Their grades are good enough that it's not going to hurt them, and it's a long-ish drive so it'll be good to leave tomorrow after school.

The weather has turned to crap, as I expected. It was 73 degrees yesterday, and it's now snowing. Yes, snowing. It's not going to accumulate or anything, but still....blah. Don't get me wrong - I love snow - I just don't love the temperature going quite this psychotic quite this quickly. It makes me hurt. And when I hurt, I get crankier.

Anyway....I'm going to go attempt to climb the final mountains of laundry so that I can maybe walk into the laundry room without killing myself....hopefully my energy burst will last a few more hours so that I can at least get it folded tonight, then I can deal with putting it all away tomorrow. Yay. Then it'll be time to start organizing for the bazaar on Saturday.

Here's hoping I sell lots and lots of stuff - that's Christmas money, kids!