Ghoulies and Ghosties and Three-Leggedy Beasties

And things that sprout legs and walk away...

We have some new residents in our home...similar to those that used to reside in the comic strip The Family Circus. We have I. Dunno and Not Me living here. Welcome to the House of Damage!

This evening, I went to run the garbage disposer. It made a horrible noise, so I turned it off and stuck my hand down in there. Broken glass...lots of little shards of it. Cut my hand in three places trying to get it all out (although I'm not at all sure that it is)...and now the disposer is jammed. Of course, no one knew how glass got down in there. It looks like a little glass bottle that the children had been playing with. I asked Robin about it. She blamed I. Dunno. Ryan, of course, blamed Not Me.

Let's see...the top of Robin's toy box is broken off from children jumping on it IN SPITE OF daily admonishments NOT to jump on the bed or toy box. I think I. Dunno and Not Me were the gremlins in that case.

Robin mentioned that her expensive little nightlight lamp had been knocked over. Knowing how lightbulbs tend not to work after they've been knocked, I checked on it. The little bulb was not lit, but hot. Then it came on and blew out. It seems that the base of the bulb is broken off inside the bulb receptacle, and I'm going to have to figure out a way to get it out. How did it happen? I. Dunno! Not Me!

Methinks tomorrow there will be some damage control before the children are allowed to play. It gets frustrating to have them not respect their things enough to take care of them...

Monday was grocery shopping day. It is never a good idea to take both children to the grocery store, but they were bribed and were pretty good. Since Wal-Mart has school supplies on sale, complete with supply lists from all of the area schools, we picked up Robin and Ryan's supplies plus groceries. 'Twas an expensive venture.

Tuesday, the children played outside with Jack almost all day. Ryan looks like a hunk of raw meat. I won't let the kids play outside without being sprayed with insect repellent, but Ry's legs are so bitten and scratched up, he gets away without it every chance he gets because it stings. Poor baby! While they played, I washed down the kitchen cabinet fronts and walls. They were dirty!

Today, I gave the children breakfast, then waited for a SATERN friend from Chicago to come through from Dayton on his way home so I could hand off something I proofread for him. We all met at McDonald's (he and wife and two grandchildren, and me and my two)...and had lunch while we talked, then we went shopping for school shoes for Robin. Later in the afternoon, pretty close to supper time, both children came dashing in looking for food. "We didn't get lunch today!" Huh??? What do you think we did at McDonald's?? "Oh. We forgot."

And, as the late ham radio operator Walter Cronkite used to say, "That's the way it is!"