In a Cloud

In a cloud of dust and fury.

Yep. That pretty much sums up my evening after Elaina went to bed. Bad days are unavoidable and we all have them. I don't claim to have the corner on bad days. I don't even really want to use my blog space as an outlet for airing my complaints. (Although it happens.) But tonight is a different story. And you, my loyal readers, get to read all about it. (Unless your wise and click right on over to Colin's page right now.... I wouldn't blame you.)

It all started when I took Elaina upstairs to get her ready for bed. (Reminder: the carpenter has still been working daily on installing our doors and hardware.) When I happily reached for the new door knob to open the door to Elaina's bathroom, I nearly lost my breath in the heavy stench of sawdust in the air. There was sawdust everywhere. Eric has been great, no- make that fabulous and terrific about vacuuming up the wood shavings and dust at the end of every workday, but I don't think he had been made aware of what mess awaited us on the other side of this door tonight. I called down to Eric to ask him to kindly come upstairs to take a look at the bathroom. Every inch was coated in sawdust from the carpenter carving out the door locks and fitting them into the door casing. What a MESS! While I'm well aware that home improvement projects always require lots of work and clean-up, I guess I thought it would have been considerate of our carpenter to give us notice to cover some of our belongings prior to the dust storm. Not the case.

Eric was awesome and went right to work taking care of the bulk of the dust in the bathroom while I got Elaina ready for bed. We soon switched roles and I scoured the bathtub, floor, sink and walls while he read and did puzzles with Elaina. Just before she was ready to go down for the night, Elaina came to get me for some hugs and kisses. In front of Eric, I explained that mommy was cleaning like a neurotic freak and that one day, when she's all grown up, she'll get to be so lucky and become the same out of control clean freak that mommy is. Elaina repeated, "Lucky." As Eric was kissing her goodnight, Elaina handed him her binky and said, "Uckie. Wash it." Rolling his eyes, Eric realized his defeat and that her fondness to all-things-clean has already begun. ( Yeah ... high five Elaina!!)

So... moving passed the fact that I ended up cleaning Elaina's entire bathroom and our bedroom coated in dust, (yeah, that was just a bonus!) I drug my bedraggled self downstairs, all ready to begin blogging and make my bedtime goal of 10:00. (Which I haven't done since the flu virus of '06.) As I was stuffing more clothes and linens into the laundry room, I noticed a wet stream on the area rug in the kitchen. The wet stream led me directly into the back foyer where a large puddle covered the bulk of the floor. Yep. That was courtesy of Keegan. He must have a bladder infection. He peed all over the floor. Great.

Without so much as a request to Eric, he pulled out the industrial mop and cleaned the floor while I finished changing the sheets upstairs. Ughh. One bonus on top of another. I can't wait to see what tomorrow holds in store for us. I've gathered all of Elaina's stuffed animals and blanket inventory and stuffed them into her closet and have readied old sheets to cover all of her large pieces of furniture. Who knows when her door will be drilled.... but we're ready already. I've even taken to covering the bedding in the spare bedrooms as well. I guess this is the price we have to pay for wanting the luxury of bedroom doors.

This wasn't the most horrible day, it was just about two hours longer and four complications more than what I really wanted to deal with today. These are the times when I just want to bury my head under the covers (the ones not covered in sawdust) and wake up once the squadron of maids have finished their work. And that, my friends, would be only a dream. This morning, I woke up tired and really just want to be sleeping. So, that's all I ........ zzzzzzzzzz