Yarn Balls and Cooking

I don't actually remember much about yesterday, probably due to the haze of exhaustion (and heat exhaustion) that we all existed in.  It was around 90 yesterday (and today), and it was awful.  Anyway, here's what I've managed to remember.

After I finished yesterday's blog post, I started to sort through my music, and then S actually decided to have that nap after all, so I was impeded from doing any meaningful sorting of music by the Toddler, who felt it necessary to get into everything he shouldn't, and then would go cry at the bedroom door at any mention of Mommy and Daddy.  This included banging on the door.  I forgot that he might need to eat, which turned out to be his entire problem.  I felt so bad.  S ended up getting up from her nap early because he became inconsolable and needed her, which also made me feel bad.  I still haven't finished my music sorting, either, because I've been distracted by other things, though I did manage to delete over 50 songs from iTunes (and also my computer) that I didn't actually like, so at least I got something done with clearing disk space for stuff I actually want.  This computer is slowly being turned into a music machine.  Whee.

Anyway, I downloaded a couple of free ringtones from The Sims 3 website yesterday, put them on my phone, and discovered that the bitrate on them was too large for them to be ringtones.  Yipee.  So I downloaded some open-source music editing software, discovered that it didn't do what I wanted, and found another open-source piece of software that does nothing but convert audio files to different formats, and also allows me to change the bitrate.  I only converted one of the ringtones, the one I actually wanted, and then entered the world of music editing.  My text message tone is now the Final Fantasy X victory fanfare, so every morning when I get my weather check, I win!  That's really all that can be said about that.  I'm incredibly excited about it, it's much easier for me to convert my mp3s into ringtones than try to find ones for purchase that will work with my phone on my wireless carrier's store, not that I can afford to buy ringtones anyway.  I'm not sure if that's illegal or not, but I'm not sharing them with anyone, so I guess it's okay.

Over the last few days, M has managed to get S addicted to Minecraft, and they decided to show each other their worlds on their computers and everything they'd built and done (it's actually pretty ridiculous), and the Toddler was being obnoxious and I wanted a cigarette, so we went outside to run around and play with dandelions (well, the fluffy ones, we don't have any yellow ones at the moment).  Because he's not very good at blowing the seeds off yet, only having the lung power of an 18 month old, I helped him by blowing some of them for him... which blew directly into his hair.  Between that and him rubbing them on his head, he ended up with a helmet of dandelion fluff.  It was really cute.  Just as we were about to go inside to show everyone, some of the people who live next door came outside with their daughter, who is only a month or two younger than the Toddler.  We tried to get them interacting, but it was to no avail, so we chatted for a bit and I showed the neighbor this really cool handshake we taught the Toddler a couple of weeks ago, and then we said goodbye and I brought him inside.  S was highly amused by his hair, then told me to get him outside and get it out.  Ha.  So I sat on the front porch with him in my lap, painstakingly picking dandelion seeds out of his hair.  I'm so never doing that again, it took forever to get it all out.

Late last night, W and A showed up out of the blue, with LW, W's two-year-old son.  I can't remember if he's been mentioned previously or not, so from now on, he's LW.  Anyway, they hung out and chatted and basked in our air conditioning and then they went home to their hot apartment, poor things.  They were supposed to be getting that fixed today, though, so hopefully the apartment won't be nearly as miserable for them now.

I didn't get to sleep until nearly one o'clock this morning because I just could not get comfortable (I desperately need new pillows), and then was jarred awake at 5:45 by Girl Child arguing with J about why she wasn't allowed to go downstairs, which was getting increasingly shrill and shouty, and I interjected with, "(Girl Child), shut up and do as you're told, I'm trying to sleep."  Then she tried the "you can't tell me to shut up" thing on me again, and I informed her that I just had, and then J yelled at her to get to her room, and she stomped off crying and slammed her door, which woke S up.  After all that, I was basically up for the day, especially after a subsequent argument with the Girl Child involving me asking her what she was doing when she was heading for the direction of the kitchen and the basement door, and since I had no idea what her intention was, I expected her to be attempting to sneak down there, as teenagers like to do, and this induced more shouting, of course.  I talked J into making coffee before he went to bed, though, which was incredibly awesome of him and meant that S could have coffee as soon as she was out of bed, which came along pretty quickly as the Toddler woke up as soon as J went into the bedroom.

Today was pretty much nonstop from that point onward.  I changed the Toddler while S showered, then he was breakfasted and we had things that sort of constituted breakfast, then I looked at all of S's mp3s to decide what ones I wanted from her that I didn't already have and made a list, and meanwhile, the Toddler was running around grabbing stuff and hitting us with books and generally being a toddler.  After awhile, we put him down for a nap and left him with a sleeping J (which worked beautifully, he slept until right after we got home, and since J was there, it was totally safe) while we went to the store.  S sat in the car and read one of her library books while I blitzed through the store, grabbing everything we needed.  Except, of course, the damn baby bottle brush to clean the Toddler's sippy cups.  Again.  That's the third week in a row.  Anyway, enough facepalming.  We got home, I managed to carry everything but S and her crutches inside in one trip, get the cold stuff put away, and collapse for 30 seconds before the Toddler woke up from his nap and demanded for someone to retrieve him.  We won't have this luxury in a few months when he gets his own room, though, because he'll probably have a toddler bed by then.

After J got up for the day, we ended up having to go out again, this time to grab him some work food for his lunch, get him some McDonald's, drop his blazer thingy off at the cleaners, and then to the gas station for gas.  This was an epic run.  I ran into Wal-Mart to get his food, discovered they were out of it, ran back to the car to tell S this, ended up buying the individual size of it instead, discovered that this Wal-Mart actually carries my pesto that I love and bought three jars and a box of penne, and actually remembered the goddamned bottle brush.  I had to write it on my arm to remember, but dammit, I got the fucking thing.  After that, we drove like crazy to the gas station, where I pumped gas for about the fourth time in my life, but it felt really good to do it.  It made me feel like an adult.  Anyway, after THAT, we drove to McDonald's, got J his home-food, and drove home, where I ran inside and dropped the food off before running BACK outside to go to the cleaners to drop off his blazer thingy.  Then back home to release the Toddler from his prison and let him run around a little. 

After I recovered, I spent some time with the Toddler getting the living room partially cleaned.  He helped me a lot, actually.  He is surprisingly helpful for still being a baby.  He put the dirty laundry that was on the floor in the laundry pile in the hall, put all the shoes away, helped put his toys away in his toy box, and picked up all of the trash for me that was on the floor before I vacuumed.  We have two vacuums, one is a bagless and the other is traditional, and I started with the bagless before the belt decided it wanted to die and burned itself up halfway through, so I had to switch to the older one that doesn't work as well to finish up, and ended up giving up on it before I got everything because it just stopped picking stuff up.  The Toddler even started to help me vacuum, he grabbed the handle and everything, but then he got too scared and ran back to the safety of S's lap.  At least he didn't cry this time.

Once the floor was cleaned up, I got the yarn balls that SM (S's mother, for those who have forgotten) made for the Toddler and played with him a bit while S was on the phone with a friend.  After she got off the phone, she joined us on the floor and what started as an attempt at an educational experience turned into a hilarious game of throwing the yarn balls at each other in fits of hysterics.  There was a ridiculous amount of screaming.  Then it was dinner time for the Toddler and the Girl Child went to finish off the kitchen so I could cook dinner.  (Yes, I actually cooked, don't pass out or anything.)

Cooking was an adventure.  The Girl Child and I had a huge, dramatic, full-out screaming fight about the dishes and her interrupting me when I was telling S what is left to do in there, which ended with Girl Child screaming that everyone hates me and that no one wants me to be here, which was probably the two worst things she could have said, since they're the two things I'm most insecure about.  Ouch.  Anyway, she was grounded, there was crying, I cooked and ignored her while I cooled off, and then she did a complete 180 on me and was totally nice and sweet and awesome like she usually is for the rest of the time I interacted with her.  As much as that fight sucked, I'm glad I actually stood up to her instead of just letting her talk to me like that.  And you know, I love her anyway, even when she says terrible things to me.

Anyway, I don't really want to think about that nasty incident anymore than I have to, so I shall continue on with the rest of the story of me cooking.

I overcooked the noodles.  It turned out great, but I was horrified at first because the noodles nearly disintegrated.  I've never had that happen before, and I've made this a bunch of times, or at least helped to make it, because it's my grandmother's recipe and I've known how to make it since I was three.  Anyway, I made a double batch so we can have it tomorrow night, too, and I also cooked up a huge amount of vegetables to go with it for tonight.  There's even enough left over for J to have some when he gets home from work tonight.  Tomorrow I'm going to throw some more veggies on, throw the second casserole in the oven, and make mashed potatoes to go with it.  Om nom nom nom.  Throughout the entire time I was cooking, I was also shouting myself hoarse at all the flies that are in the kitchen that we can't quite seem to kill or get to leave the fucking house.  I imagine it was pretty funny to listen to, actually.

Anyway, we all sat down and ate dinner, poor S has hardly eaten anything today, so she was starving, and the Girl Child even had some, probably because of the novelty of having potato chips as a dinner topping.  (This is a 1950s-style casserole.)  She decided to have an apple instead of the vegetables because she didn't like their texture, so S ended up having them when she had seconds.

I'm getting ready to head to bed in a few, even though I'm so keyed up I probably won't be able to sleep for quite a while, so I hope I'm suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion here soon so I can get a decent amount of sleep.

Anyway, I will write more tomorrow, if anything interesting happens.