Overtired = Prone to Shriekiness

The day after my descent into the bowels of parenting hell both of my children happily got dressed and skipped into their new school. Not a single tear was shed. Not even by the 2 year old and that kid’s been launching a protest every morning for 3 ½ weeks. Some people think The Lion King represents the circle of life. I say it’s mornings like that. Worst morning ever followed by easiest morning ever. That’s life, baby. Sometimes you just have to wait out bad stuff to get to good stuff.

In celebration, I drank soda late at night and couldn’t fall asleep at a decent hour Friday or Saturday night. You’d think I’d have been smarter about it on Saturday after it happened Friday. But you’d be wrong. Because I’m a twit and I like to repeat those sort of mistakes. Heck, I may do it again tonight just for good measure. Because I didn’t do it last night and feeling well rested today has made me all “I can conquer the world” and odds are I’m going to take it for granted. Whatever.

Despite being tired this weekend, I cleaned my daughter’s room, the kitchen, the dining room and the living room. Not soap and water cleaned. Just picked up crap cleaned. Because my house is constantly overrun with crap. The story of my life now reads: Do laundry. Pick up crap off the floor. Do laundry. Pick up more crap off the floor.

I’ve discovered recently that I now evaluate toys by how much crap the thing contains. One giant piece of plastic now rates higher in my mind than 100s of small pieces of crap that can and will end up strewn about my house. I currently despise Lincoln Logs. Primarily because no one plays with them. And that’s primarily because those Lincoln Log people are lying through their teeth when they claim they are for 4 and up. My 4 year old got some for Christmas and even grown adults found it hard to build the house on the box. Now they get used as “chicken nuggets” in the play kitchen and annoy the crap out of me by turning up all over the house.

My children rewarded my efforts by dancing happily around our clean living room and I decided that I loved them 22% more than the day before. Right up until I went to lay in bed and read for a few minutes and came out and found them making their own Kool-Aid. They found the powder in the cupboard and figured out to add water. I found that mildly impressive since neither one can read. Although I also found it mildly annoying since Kool-Aid puts pictures on the package to facilitate children doing this.

There may or may not have been some shrieking when I saw the Kool-Aid. I don’t even feel guilty about it because it was busy staining the hell out of my kitchen floor and my children’s hands and feet. All I could think was “Everything I hold dear is stained red because there's no way these two freaks managed to keep it contained in the kitchen.” I began rushing from room to room expecting to find it dripping down the walls.

Except the universe must have still been feeling sorry for me from last week and the Kool-Aid didn’t get on anything other than skin and fugly retro kitchen tile. It was amazing. One of them even carried a cup of thick blood red Kool-Aid into the living room and set it on a table. That’s like getting sprayed with bullets Rambo style but none of them hits you. Wild.

To celebrate we made more popsicles. I even pretended to be super mom and let the 4 year old push the button on the blender. I’m still sort of amazed I make popsicles. I have a system now and everything. Mostly the system involves frozen strawberries and water. But I defrost the strawberries ahead of time and gave up adding yogurt. Defrosted because it blends quicker and no yogurt because they were turning out too creamsicle-y. But still. That’s pretty good for me. I even keep the blender in the cabinet over the counter I like to use to make them. That would be the counter that allows the least amount of access to 2 children. If I could figure out how to let the kids help without letting them touch anything or enter the room, I’d be all set. Which is odd, since, in my head making popsicles is an activity for them.

Then we made dinner and I managed to get it on the table before midnight. Everyone was tired by then though and I was still feeling warm and fuzzy so I announced we could all go lay in bed and watch TV while we ate. In my head, lights out and under the covers means you are dear to me. It also means I can see who Dan nominated on Big Brother. The kids mostly chattered and spilled black bean noodle mish mash on my beloved duvet. I’d like to pretend I didn’t shriek and wig out over the duvet spill but, let’s be honest, that duvet is like heaven and those freaks were wrestling over who got to sit on my side of the bed when it happened.

Apparently overtired = prone to shriekiness. So I tossed everyone in bed and medicated myself. And it was good.

P.S. Did anyone not know Dan was going to win that luxury competition? He's the only one with half a brain in his head. And I’m not just saying that because one of his competitors calls himself a professional “Mixologist.”