[10:57] I think I just broke the shower doors off their track and can’t figure out how to get them back on…That’s what I get for cleaning the bathtub….

[10:57] We’ll figure it out
[10:58] they are a little fussy. I knocked them off the track once
[10:58] so unless the rollers are broken, we should be OK.

[10:58] It’s off on the bottom, not the top
[10:59] Is this the part where you say “Don’t clean ANYTHING ELSE till I get home”

[10:59] are both doors off or just one?

[10:59] Just one; the other one will not move at all

[11:00] wow…impressive

[11:00] they were looking really clean too

[11:00] is the one off completely?

[11:00] It’s hanging on at the top, and the bottom is definitely out on the one end. Can’t tell on the other end.

[11:00] how did you do that?

[11:01] Windex

[11:01] just rubbing it?

[11:01] Well, there’s a lot of back and forth when cleaning those doors; first I did the inside and then the outside. Fortunately I was on the outside when this happened.

[11:02] reminds me of when you almost fell through the attic in our old house

[11:02] Are you saying that I should not clean unattended?

[11:02] just stay out of the attic!

I’ve always been a “morning person.” It’s a bad idea for me to hit that snooze button too many times because my best time of day is the morning. Today I made very sure to be up and at ’em at 5:15 because the neighbor kids were coming over at 7, so I needed to jump-start my day a little. (TheDad is supposed to get up at 5 so the alarm was set no earlier than usual–but I had to be inflexible about that snooze button.)

It was a busy day today. I babysat until 10:00 while tidying the dining room and washing the windows, and working up two practice worksheets on the subjunctive mood in Spanish for the student I am tutoring. Then I packed Little Brother’s lunch and we headed to Middle Sister’s school for our lunchroom duty, where I spent two hours tossing slices of pizza onto paper plates, hauling crates of chocolate milk out of the cooler, and wiping tables. I had a little down time after that, until it was time to pick up Middle Sister, take her to the nursing home for her class’s visit with the residents, shop at Walmart with Little Brother until she was done, and bring her back home in time to make and serve dinner and deliver her to her softball game. 15 minutes later I left for my tutoring job.

At that point there wasn’t enough caffeine in the known universe to keep me really alert. It was 6:30 PM and I’d been going, going, going all day. Big mistake. HUGE–as Julia Roberts said in Pretty Woman.

I meet my student at the public library. He’s a senior in high school. Every day that I have tutored him, he’s had curly hair and worn a baseball cap.

I walked into the library, looked around at the crowd and did not see my student. I sat down at the only empty table, behind a young man with very short hair. His back was to me. I picked up the books on reserve for me, started a crossword puzzle, and waited for him to show up. I waited 15 minutes. Just as I was about to get my cell phone out to walk outside and call his home, the young man at the next table turned a little bit–it was my student, with no hat and a very short haircut.

It’s going to take a long time to live this one down. Lucky for me, he graduates in 3 weeks so I will only see him twice more.

Boy, do I wish they’d allow us to bring coffee into the library. Either that, or I wish my student would meet me at 6:30 AM when I’m all kinds of awake and alert.

This morning I am watching Cutie Pie for a few hours while her mom attends a funeral and her dad’s at work.

Mary Poppins Not has a post just today about 3-year-old girls, and it fits Cutie Pie perfectly:

Three year old girls are a unique creation. It’s like they go from 2 to 12 over night. Strong willed, independent, argumentative, and bossy. But the big difference is at three, they are still oh so cute and chubby. And they are still small enough to be physically picked up and put in bed, or in the corner, or in a chair.

Three year old girls also change clothes a million times a day, and have very strong opinions about what they want to wear, what shoes go with the outfit, and what sort of clip ought to go in her hair.

Three year old girls hardly eat anything in one sitting. And they don’t like food they used to love. And they have a terrific pout.

…

Also in my experience, three year old girls with clear and enforced boundaries are sweet, cheerful and very energizing. When expectations for their behavior are clearly stated, they strive to please. When given a new task, they devour it with relish, and want more. They notice so many new things about their world, and they are very generous with sharing their insights. Bugs, birds and flowers are the new thrill around here, and it gets me excited all over again about the world I live in.

Cutie Pie has a lot to say, and she invariably has her audience chuckling the whole time. She’s as verbal as your average 5-year-old, giving a play-by-play of her day as she goes through it. She also insists that her sandals are much more comfortable when worn on the wrong feet. (Not worth the battle, I figured.)

Oh yeah, she’s humble too! She put on one of Little Brother’s hats earlier and was striking a pose. I played along. “Cutie Pie, you look FABULOUS in that hat!”

Posing again, and flirting a bit with her long eyelashes, she answered me, completely seriously: “Yes! I do!”

Consider this an APB for two things that I just can’t do without:
–my Swiss Army knife
–my Franciscan Crown Rosary

Every spring the ducks come to our neighborhood for a few weeks. We feed them when we see them, and we’ve known for a while that Mama Duck had again nested under our neighbor’s shrubbery.

This morning my neighbor told me that the babies had hatched and there were at least eight little ones! She expected, though, that Mama and the babies would be walking away from their nest soon.

She was right…when TheDad was making his lunch in the kitchen, he saw the duck family by our back fence. Mama wasn’t happy that I came outside for a last photo opportunity before she herded her ducklings through the fence on their way to the nearby creek. They’ve got to cross two streets to get there, and one of those is really busy. I hope they make it safely.

I counted 10 babies. If you click on the bottom picture to make it larger, you can see 9 right by Mama, and one on the other side of the fence in the top left of that photo if you look really hard!

It wasn’t my kids this time. It was me. But I will say that my mom is very easy to shock.

This year for Mother’s Day, TheDad spent a big chunk of the weekend removing the wallpaper in the bathroom and then painting it in the color of my choice. All the kids helped. It was a great present!

Of course, some new accessories must be purchased, since some of the old ones broke or were rusty. I was left in need of towel bars, a window shade, a curtain rod, and (most essential) a toilet-paper holder.

All of those things are not things you can do without if you intend the bathroom to be, um, functional. So for a day or so I was forced to improvise.

I brought in a coat tree to hold the towels. (So far, so good. Mom approved.)

I took Little Brother’s favorite beach towel (the one with the big, yellow, cartoon-y octopus on it), and opened the window from the top, stuffing the top end of the towel into the opening. That took care of window coverings.

Finally, I got one of those suit hangers with the bar that kind of “unhooks” so you can slide the pants on, then hooks back in so they don’t slide off. That worked for the toilet paper, for the time being.

I was patting myself on the back for finding creative and free solutions for a temporary problem (I’ll have the shade purchased and installed by noon today) and my mother was completely shocked that I would (a) think to do these things and (b) freely admit them to her.

What would she think if she knew I was telling you about it here?

Don’t worry, Mom. I’m just like you–I have to have all my windows open “evenly” and the bottoms of the shades must be even as well. So don’t feel like you failed or anything.

…that is, the belief of my Big Kids,

I do not booby-trap the freezer to keep them out of it.

If I did, I’d make sure that it wasn’t a bag of green beans that landed on someone’s feet tonight–it would have been a Perdue Oven Stuffer Roaster.

A job worth doing is worth doing well, after all.