Blogging + Kids = Null

My gosh it is quiet around here this morning.  School has started late this year and with an amazing number of days off and 1/2 days.  So as of today - I have had only three days in September without a kid home.  And Tuesday is a half day for one and Wednesday is another day off school for the other!  Can't a working parent get a break!?

Given that summer camps all stop about August 15th - that has been a pretty long run without a break to actually work.  I got so desperate to catch up some that I had a little army working putting stickers on bags and things like that - but they are highly distractible and if a better offer comes up - they are off that task.  The bar for a better offer is pretty low of course!  And usually it is something that causes chaos around my working conditions.   And while my office is way upstairs and has a door... you never do that with stinky boys in the house.  During this time, the robot challenge came out and they have been prototyping and more stinky boys arrive (better offer than labeling kits).  I just can't leave them in the basement doing this alone and out of hearing distance... so I trudge to the first floor and listen as they make a heavy cube and ball shooter to launch these projectiles into a 4 foot high box (I could just kill the game designers every year).  I have to monitor what they are saying as they are quite creative to try to solve the problems.  "No, you can't make a slingshot in my basement!" "Hey - I heard that ball hit the ceiling!"  "That better not have made a dent in the wall!"

So you can imagine how excited I was when the first day came last week that I would be alone to work, but the painters called and said they would arrive in an hour unexpectedly.  I had been waiting for three months and they were finally able to start.  Couldn't say no.  So no less than seven rooms and the two staircases were draped in plastic and tarps, including my workroom and packing room.  Fixing the snow dam leaking damage from last winter. (crazy thing - they said I was the first to get painted from snow damage - they had been backed up with work from the explosion of people who wanted work done after the recession started to lessen, the snow damage hasn't been paid out yet by insurance - so no one will get contractors for the next year as they are already all quoted out for a year).

I don't know what to do first! Put my workroom back together again after all the contracting? Pack boxes? Fill orders? Finish instructions? Get things up on the shop website?  I am running around like a chicken with her head cut off with the shear possibilities of GETTING SOMETHING DONE!   Exciting stuff is piling up here that people have been wanting - I have casket feet, new type of caskets, new threads (and some big surprise threads), the frosting club registration pages to go up...  Yikes!  The boxes around here have been piled high for weeks - yet I just couldn't get some things out of them for the shear stinky boy bodies that were everywhere.  (In my house if you have one stinky boy - you have three - it multiplies by attracting more stinky boys).  Then my sister-in-law's dog gets excited by the stench (she is living with us until her contractors are done with her water damage!  Nine months and counting now) and jumps around them - which sets off the parrot (yes - another freeloader pet living here due to water damage).  At that point it is pretty hard to get anything done with the dog barking, kids running around with snacks and balls and robot parts, and the parrot adding its opinion.

So today the quiet is almost deafening - it is the most amazing sound I have heard in a long time!

It kinda reminds me of that classic commercial!