...

It's been very sunny the past few days. Maybe it's cold, I don't know. I haven't left the house in fecking DAYS. The rage is beginning to unfurl from deep within. At first, I thought it was merely onset of more gruesome cramps, but it has a slightly different quality.

Yeah, so let's review: Q got pink eye on Weds. I started feeling ill on Thursday. Baby C was diagnosed with pink eye and dual ear infections on Friday. She started throwing up on Saturday, which is conveniently when things got bad for me as well. Sunday and Monday Q took care of all of us, and I'm feeling better (though not terrific) just in time, because he came down with this Gastro Bug from Hell last night.

A is either going to miss this one, or she's going to come last. We just don't know. It's part of the fun!

I Hate February, and I Hate Winter, and I Hate Germs. I'm really tired of putting my life on hold every few weeks to deal with some new version of Ick, and continually being behind on everything. Because ODDLY ENOUGH the world doesn't stop just because we're all fucking languishing over here.

Yeah yeah. Whine whine, bitch bitch.

Out of Synch

This is what happens when I start reading and browsing more than writing. I seem to be capable of doing either one or the other, but not both.

It's been kind of a tough week. For one, Cel has been a tiny terrorist. I suspect them thar toofers. Wednesday, she had a half hour tantrum when I refused the following request:

"Mama, I can has just a small glass of beer?"

She said this while gesturing with her fingers, "just this much?" It may have been my disrespectful laughter that brought on the rage, but I'm not really sure. Either that or she's become a raging alcoholic at the ripe old age of 2 without my noticing.

Secondly, this house, this house ... oh my god, this friggin' house. I pushed out the window. I cannot believe I didn't blog this, but it's not there, so I suppose I didn't. (ETA: I guess I did blog it, but didn't hit refresh, and wasn't sure I'd published it. Oh well.) This was on Wednesday, Super Tantrum Day. I opened my bedroom blinds, and decided to move my sun catcher. When I pushed the suction cup holder onto the opposite window, the entire pane of glass just broke under my hand and fell onto the front lawn.

Five minutes the exterminator arrived, to start treating for carpenter ants. I had to write him an enormous(ly painful) check to get him to start work. While he started drilling holes in our walls, our handyman arrived to put in our new storm door and fix the window I'd just broken.

He fixed the window quickly, but worked on the door for hours, and finally had to leave to go to another job. However, during that span of time, he'd left the glass on the lawn. The sun and the glass burned a giant rectangle into our lawn ... the lawn we've been spending money on to have organically fancied up. Yeah, that lawn.

Shortly after that came the tantrum, and in the middle of the tantrum, the Scientologists called me. And let me be the first to say that the Scientologists have The Stupidest Tele-Seller-Evangelists in The Whole Wide World. But that is, itself, a topic for another day. If they continue to call after that conversation, I think I'd be well within my rights to sue them for harassment.

The following day, back at MoneyPit Manor, Handyman came again, worked on the door for ages, and then gave up on it. He said the frame was too crappy, uneven, misaligned, rotted -- you name it, and it would take him way too long to fix and was out of his scope. So my husband put in the rest of the door, but it does gap around the edges and it's not level and all that rot. The handyman said he was going to pester our landlord about our crappy windows, which he patched up but seemed unhappy about. He's supposed to come back next week to do some other work, trying to fix our skylight which has a moisture problem.

The thing is, if we owned this house, even though fixing these things would be costly and a pain in the ass, they'd have been fixed Last Year. We might still be paying for those fixes, but we wouldn't be living with rotting windows and dampness and carpenter ants. You know what I'm saying? And I feel like we're spending too much money on rent to justify this shit.

And our hot water heater is now leaking.

I am starting to sink into a cycle of crossness. I made three appointments next week with window contractors for estimates, because my landlord claims that it's been impossible for her to get people out to give estimates, they're all so busy this time of year. That's not been my experience at all, as I got three appointments in less than 24 hours, but then, I'm just so loaded with Charm and Charisma.

*snerk*