My little pig droppings

For some odd reason I was reading an article about Annie today (I think they're putting it on in Sydney again soon or something) & it dawned on me that in my current state I totally remind myself of Miss Hannigan!! I am not proud of this but all the signs point to yes. I just want to sit around in my little corner of shabby luxury but my wretched child keeps coming up with schemes to drive me insane. Replace her booze with my hormones & I think we're a match! Keep your singing orphans & runaway dogs out of my way please - wait, let me think this over a bit more. She had them cleaning all the time, didn't she?? I'm in the midst of some Friday cleaning myself & could use some little urchins to make my floors & toilet shine like the top of the Chrysler Building. Ah well, I guess Miss Hannigan is on her own for this one.

Was I the only kid that thought Miss Hannigan was awesome? Screw being a mouthy singing brat, I wanted Miss H's clothes & wild hair. Ah well, at least I've got her way with kids these days!

With a total lack of segue here, I think we're well on the way to having Ben's first bee sting any day now. Every morning there's a bee buzzing around some of our flowers for a little while & Ben is fascinated by it. Fascinated is actually an understatement - I was taking the sheets off my bed & could hear him screeching in the backyard so I ambled back there to check it out. He was just standing by the plant screaming with joy while watching this poor bee do his thing & every time the bee ducked out of sight further into the plant, Ben got all befuddled & started his "Where is it?" routine, only to be tickled once again when it would dart out of the plant. I haven't really told Ben about the possibility of stings, just not to crowd the bee or poke it or anything - I really hate when little kids are terrified of getting bitten or stung by something so turn into crazy little bug avoiders even if they've never had a bad experience (sorry, I told you I was in Miss Hannigan mode). I can understand being spooked if they've been stung but heaven knows I had a few stings in my day & it was not a big deal. I will regret these words when it turns out Ben has some awful allergy to them or something but for now I'd like to keep his interest alive.

He is really strange when it comes to animals. Both Marcel & I were animal fanatics as kids - if there was a dog within a mile radius of me, I would find it & fall in love with it. Luckily I was taught how to approach dogs appropriately & had good luck except for the pit bull that attacked me when I was six. True story, a gazillion stitches, lots of drama, but I digress. My point was going to be that Ben doesn't seem to care for dogs at all, just ignores them in general. He loves the neighbors' cat now but even that relationship started out rather coldly with neither of them wanting much to do with the other. I'm perfectly fine with this because we do not want a dog anytime soon & we're thrilled to have the neighbors' cat (Harley) around for his visits without having any responsibility for him. BUT Ben is crazy about little things like this bee & oh my goodness snails. He is hysterical around snails - loves nothing more than having a snail crawling on his hand. Marcel took him to Sabbath School last week (just like Sunday School but for Sabbath goers, obviously) & he was ignoring whatever the teacher was talking about because he had already started coloring but then Marcel said "Hey Ben, she's got a snail." The boy took off like George Costanza trying to escape the fire, ploughed over the other kids & got up in the teacher's face so he could get to that poor snail. Something tells me we're going to be the family with lizards, spiders & creepy crawlies instead of the cute & cuddly puppies & kittens. Maybe Fonzie will be different.

Speaking of Number Two, I'm finally starting to feel a bit uncomfortable. Still not too bad & shouldn't really complain because I know a lot of women have it much worse but I'm getting the shooting tailbone pain when I'm walking around from time to time now & rolling over in bed is an epic adventure that would be much easier with a crane or some sort of hoisting mechanism. I think my stomach doubled in size two nights ago so it's in another very tight stage & it appears that my bump may have challenged my thighs to keep up with it as they are growing too. I could live without this particular development but I feel a bit silly doing my squats now - I could have done with a little foresight I suppose.

I'm trying to avoid sitting on the couch as tempting as it is (& yeah, that's where I am right now) & I'm attempting to keep up & around as much as possible, even if it's just meandering around the house or getting groceries & stuff like that. You'd think this would go hand in hand with keeping my house clean but somehow that's just not working out! Making some progress today, washing sheets, dusting bedrooms, anything but cleaning that stupid bathroom - I'm afraid if I get down on my hands & knees to scrub the shower I may end up getting stuck there FOREVER. I don't want to give birth on my bathroom floor smelling like eucalyptus mint cleanser - please promise you won't let that happen to me.

Now that our house is pretty much clear of the plague besides a few sniffles & occasional sore throat from the girl who can't take cold medicine, we are kicking into full gear on the house rearranging & redecorating. Marcel finished painting Ben's new room (the old Office of Mystery) & we're renting a steam carpet cleaner this afternoon to clean the three bedrooms, which are the only rooms that are carpeted. Also going to use that sucker to clean my car & Ben's carseat while we're at it - let's face it, I'll steam clean anything that sits still. I'm dying to get a steam mop too by the way for the craggy tiles in our bathroom & kitchen. They are gorgeous or would be gorgeous if I could get them nice & super clean again! Normal mopping just doesn't cut it.

Anyway, I hate when I find myself talking about cleaning so much. Reminds me that I'm such a typical housewife & not the kind they make TV shows about. Back to the moving & grooving of our lovely little Rancho Relaxo - hopefully will get all of Ben's room moved over this weekend after our carpet cleaning adventures & get the guest bed moved into his old room. Our guest bed, which currently lives in pieces in the garage, is unfinished wood so I'd like to stain or paint it too while we're at it so it actually matches. And I'm designing a picture wall for the guest room. So far I have frames but very little art to go in them. I'm trying to scale down on family pictures, especially since we'll have to get all new family shots with our new little Fonzarelli anyway. I'm in a very artsy fartsy mood but unfortunately that requires artsy fartsy money so I'm doing a lot of scouring the internet for free art to hold places until we have a bit of money to buy what we truly want. We don't actually know what we truly want but we're keeping our eyes on etsy.com & 20x200 for affordable, special pieces. And by "we" I mean me - Marcel may not even be aware that we're in any kind of art hunt at all. And hey, did you know that if you go to Banksy's website (http://www.banksy.co.uk/) you are welcome to download & use whatever you want from his website for your own personal use? You obviously can't sell it or anything but I'm going to have a piece or two printed for our walls, I know that. Thank you Banksy!

Anyway, I should go hang up some laundry to dry & let Ben know we're not having hot mush for lunch today .... we're having cold mush.