Series of Unfortunate Events

This morning I was full of optimism and go-gettitness. School is over, and I have all three boys at home. Yet I was all set to Accomplish, and Do, and to smile and dance and whistle my way through it.

Before lunch I vacuumed the house, cleaned the bathrooms, mopped the kitchen floor, did a load of laundry and hung it out to dry. With the kids. I was superwoman!

And then the kids went down for a nap, and I decided to keep painting the garage - a project I'm about a third of the way through.

Last night, Puck got locked in there - apparently he hung out as I painted and didn't take the hint as I cleaned up, turned the lights off, and left the room. He peed in a trash can lid which was housing a couple of used ink cartridges - the kind you aren't supposed to throw away, but you can recycle if you take them to the post office. I don't know what to do with them once they're drenched in cat piss. I didn't even know how to start cleaning the mess. I just placed the whole thing in the corner of the deck so that I could rinse it all out when the boys were playing outside.

Puck also pooped in a handful of kitty litter which spilled out of a punctured bag. I found a second pool of pee on a bag of salt. Lovely, huh?

After nap, while I was folding laundry, Andy found the mop I had put out to dry - a new one I had used only once, to replace the old one which was covered in fluffy mold the last time I tried to use it. He then tried to mop up the cat pee from the lid of the trash can, which was sitting in the corner waiting for me to wash it out.

I attempted to transplant the tomato plants from the indoors to the vegetable patch. Andrew, for the first time in his life, didn't want to be out. But apparently he wanted to help plant the tomatoes, because half of them ended up hacked with a plastic shovel while my back was turned. When I went to fill the watering can to water the poor things, Andy had found a wad of chewing gum which had been warming in the sun, and had it sticking to both palms.

I burned supper because I was busy trying to clean out the mop. I gave the boys too much milk in their cups, and then Nathan accidentally knocked his over. Half of the milk ended up on the floor I had mopped earlier with my new mop now soaked in cat pee. The other half of the milk ended up in my lap.

And after dinner, Gunther re-mopped the entire section of the floor between the sink and the trash can with his tongue.

All things considered, I wonder why I try.