.....Here we go again! My, My! (But don't tell THEM that, it would just make it worse.)

In fifth grade choir, I learned a bizarre song that was stuck in my head for twelve years.  Twelve years.  Anytime my brain fell idle, it would subconsciously pull the weird lyrics of that song to the foreground and I'd run it through my head for a few days until I couldn't handle it anymore and had to sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" out loud until I felt I'd been cured of "Aye, yi, yi, yi, In China they never grow chili..."  In fact, just writing those words, I'm having a relapse.  I thought I was alone in this never ending oddity, but I have since learned otherwise.


My sister-in-law, Susie, came to visit last spring, and she and her three kids must have listened to the Mama Mia! soundtrack all the way from Portland to Kaysville.  As far as musicals go, that one isn't on my top fifty list of favorites, nor do I think that Peirce Brosnan or Meryl Streep are particularly talented vocalists; but to each his own.  By the time they arrived, both of Susie's boys knew every word to every song on that CD.  I can still hear Jayden singing, "Don't go wastin' your emoooootions..."  It was a lovely rendition, but not all that pleasant to hear over and over again.  After about two days of listening to the Schmitz Boys performing the songs of Mama Mia!, my own kids started to sing along and I had to cringe.  Mama Mia seemed a little too girly.  Not that I'm worried that my boys would start wearing skirts and obsessing over shades of lipstick or anything, I'd just rather they had some other musical selection imprinted in their brains, because here's the real stink - it's been six months since our house was invaded by little boy voices endlessly chanting, "Mama Mia!", and it remains the only phrase of any of those songs that my kids can remember.  So they just sing those same two words over and over and over and over again.  

I now know exactly what hell will be like when I get there - I'll be forced to sort through stacks of third grade homework without the aid of Cherry Coke while the Mama Mia! soundtrack is playing in the background, stuck on that one phrase like an eternal broken record.  Thanks, Susie!  Love ya!

I have no words.

Today was one of those days where I found myself grateful that I have forgotten how to load our shotgun, because my legs are definitely long enough that I could pull the trigger with my toe.

I can't really say exactly what made the experience of being alive so unbearable today. I'm sure it was a lot of things. Like nasty people on the phone. Or maybe it was my husband thinking I would never take him seriously if he sent me an e-mail saying that he got fired. Or maybe it's that I haven't been to bed before midnight in forever. Gathering all of the scraps of my intelligence together though, I would deduce that it was all of these things, plus a few more, laced with a hefty dose of PMS. That's right - I'm pulling the hormone card.

But let me ask you... If your living room looked like this:



...would you have even a shot at a peaceful day? Nope. Cause that is what we call a "giant, friggin' sanity-robbing mess". See all the crud under the couch there? Yup. That's my favorite part. I was actually looking forward to working my tail off during the kids' nap time today, and I ended up being robbed of that pleasure by a man named Jeff. When I was done speaking to Jeff on the phone, I took a few moments to silently wish for his premature death and then used Google to look up "how to make a voodoo doll". By then, nap time was over and I got to change three poopy diapers. The kind that require use of a clothespin, half a bottle of Fabreeze and two scented candles.

I won't go into the rest of the gory details of my day, but I will tell you how I'm going to try to fix it. I'm going to put the kids to bed in exactly twenty minutes, (after I change one more dirty diaper), and then I am going to give this house a lick and a promise, (as my Grandma Kay would say), and settle in to watch The Office and Flashforward while I fold clothes and eat cookies and cream ice cream. Too bad Andrew is working, cause I'm sure he'd like a Norman-size bowl of that ice cream.

P.S. I haven't showered yet today.

Whining, a lot.

Losing my mind.  Still have not unpacked from our trip because there is just too much taking priority over it.  Sold car, delivered documents to the doctor who butchered Andrew's vasectomy so they can pay his hospital bills, (hopefully), mentally died over and over while trying to physically survive all the kids running around here, and have drowned in undone housework that I can't get caught up on while being followed around all day by 2 needy babies and one very naughty toddler.  Lost the hamburger buns that I needed for dinner tonight, then realized that they had been left in the car, along with 18 eggs and a loaf of bread, for 36 hours.  Good-bye eggs.  I was also told that Cameron was sent on vacation with the wrong homework, so after doing 9 pages of math that he did not understand, (we both had break-downs while fighting through it), he now gets to do the nine pages that should have come before the ones we had and that would have helped him to grasp the torturous concepts of rounding numbers to the nearest thousand.  Helps a lot if you start with the worksheets that explain rounding to the nearest ten.  But then there's Ethan, who's teacher sent his homework from last week home with him yesterday, so now he also has two weeks worth to complete in one week.  I don't know if it's harder on the boys or harder on me, who has to help them through it all without letting all the curse words I've ever heard explode from my mouth in a shocking display of Turrets.

If ever the homework gets done, and we can stop spending 3 hours a day on it, then everything will get back to a normal level of chaos rather than the debilitating level we are at right now.  All the kids are now in bed, so I will do the dishes, glare at the suitcases that cannot be unpacked while the kids are sleeping in their rooms, and then watch mindless television in the hope that it will aid me in fending off the urge to light myself on fire and run, screaming through the streets.

And this will be the last time that I complain about feeling overwhelmed.

For at least a week.