Old Lady Perfume & Building a Barn

Earlier this evening, I allowed my oldest 3 kids to destroy an entire large roll of Xmas wrapping paper. Any overworked overtired parent (which is really every parent) can tell you that there are many small sacrifices you make just to have several glorious minutes IN A ROW where your children are completely occupied.  It was well worth the mess to give me some sense of sanity since I knew A.J. was working late. The roll of wrapping paper had made its way up to our main level yesterday via Sawyer who had followed me to the store room when I was gathering supplies for my art class. For an entire day Jimmy kept telling me that this was "the Xmas wrapping paper" and I needed to take it away from Sawyer. That was when it was still wrapped in plastic and Sawyer was really just using it as a weapon/broom/hockey stick.  By tonight the plastic wrap was partly unwound and Jimmy decided to make a "belt" out of a strip of paper.   Add Sawyer to the picture and the paper became more and more unrolled. I knew from the start that this entire roll of wrapping paper would end up in the trash. I embraced the moment and the kids went crazy. My job at that time became ensuring Bart's safety because I was worried he would get stepped on in the tornado of paper and kids. The amusement kept them busy for close to thirty minutes straight. A small victory at the end of another crazy day living the dream.

The first chunk of my morning was spent on the phone attempting to find out information from our county about permits and requirements for building a large shed/barn structure on our back yard.  In addition to that, I attempted to get some rough estimates to the cost of concrete slabs and concrete foundations.  Being that today is Thursday and by now, the week’s sleep deprivation is catching up before my weekend recharge, I am getting a bit punchy.  While some people talk slower when they are overtired, I tend to talk at warp speed when I am super tired and injecting the coffee pretty much straight into my veins.  I did actually ponder what it would be like to just stick my mouth under the keurig, in the style of doing a keg stand, but I don’t even think that would help.   Though if I was upside down it would get some more blood flowing to my brain.  Hmmm.  Maybe I will try that tomorrow morning.  Back to my point.  I essentially googled concrete companies in our area and called each to get estimates.  By the third company I had my whole spiel down and flew through my rambling story only to hear the woman on the other line of the phone say: “Ma’am, we’re a commercial construction company.”  Me, gulping: “Oh sorry…” My bad!  But to my credit, it was amazing I made any sense at all because while I was making these calls, Jimmy and Sawyer were entertaining themselves with the nerf dart guns, shooting them at the ceiling, whining until I peeled the darts down for them.  I was just happy no one took a dart to the eye.

After I finished the calls, I was rushing as always to get the goonies ready to meet my sister Yvette and her daughter Katarina at their mechanic.  The Gray Goose has been making a weird noise, not exactly like the brakes going, but after the guy at Jiffy Lube could find nothing wrong with it yesterday, he still said I might want to get it checked out at a shop where they could actually take the tires off to make sure everything was okay.  I also had the fear that there was now some sort of electrical short thing happening with the brake lights when I would hit the brakes because when A.J. had hit our neighbor’s mailbox, we only had the light fixed so there is still a dent that collects water right by the passenger rear brake lights. 

 Due to my lack of time management skills and my morning on the phone, I resorted to an extra dose of perfume instead of a shower.  Unfortunately I had grabbed an old perfume I haven’t worn in a long time.  After several spritzes, I realized two things: 1.) perfume must have a shelf life and 2.) I smelled like an old lady.  The smelling like an old lady part was later confirmed by my sister.  I later got my second “Ma’am” of the day when the very nice mechanic told me that they could find nothing wrong with the car.  Phew!  The Gray Goose rides on.

In other awesome news for today, A.J. surprised me this afternoon with news that he had gotten us a personal loan to build our two story barn/shed or one story sunroom/whatever- building- we -end –up- with that I will be using for my art studio space.  WOOHOO!  My studio dreams and dreams of teaching classes and having an open studio to combine all my loves of working with people and art are getting that much closer.  Side note we will also be using the space for storage and for A.J. to have some sort of office space or “man hut” space.  A.J. caught me so much by surprise that at first I thought he was just saying he had applied for a loan for us.  When I didn’t seem so enthused, he repeated himself.  If I weren’t so tired, I’d be celebrating with a nice glass of wine right now.