Marshmallows, Ants and Hairballs - Oh My! (June 22, 2006)

Well, kids, we're about a week into the blogging, and overall, I deem it a huge success!! I am learning a few tricks to get some traffic to my site. For example, the day I blogged about The Wiggles, my hits more than doubled. Either everyone has PG-13-related thoughts about Anthony, the drummer, or I come up on a search engine somewhere for blogs about The Wiggles. I should now mention them in every blog to ensure a lot of hits!

I didn't blog yesterday because I am involved in a cleaning frenzy to get ready for Georgia's first birthday party this weekend. We will have both sets of parents, along with Eric's sister and her husband and daughter. I get very nervous when I have company, especially my mother because she is an immaculate housekeeper. And I don't just mean clean. We're talking obsessive-compulsive perfectionist. (And I mean that in the most loving way.) Still, I secretly think she pulls out a white glove when she enters my house.

So today after dropping Eli off at preschool, we came home and vacuumed, swept and mopped. Normally, I am under the delusional impression that my house is marginally clean - maybe a little cluttered - but clean. Well, that theory was shattered today when I got to my son's room. The boy had apparently taken a bag of marshmallows from the pantry, and hid them in his room. This would not have been horrible if they had still been in the bag. But they were everywhere, under the bookcase by his bed, and (my favorite) covered up by the Lego box. This is how I know he meant to hide them. Unfortunately, by the time I discovered his little hiding place, the ants had beaten me to it. Not cool! Especially when my daughter was right behind me, and her eyes lit up at the sight of marshmallows. Woo hoo - snack! I could see it in her face. So, she started eating those things faster than I could sweep them up. I finally put her down for a nap, so I could finish deconstructing the ant feast. Then I pine-solled everything. So I think that killed all the little buggers. Now I'm back to the delusion that my house is reasonably clean.

I say reasonably because I still do not know how to get Sharpie marker off a wood floor. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? I know nail polish remover works because that's how I get it off my son's face, but I'm thinking that wouldn't have a good effect on the floor. So if anyone has any ideas on that, please shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment after the blog. I'm also looking for a good mop. I have found the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser mop works quite well at cleaning cat throw up. Unfortunately, I have to replace the mop head every few moppings, and that's $6.99 a pop. I'm all about saving money, so I'm up for ideas.

Speaking of cat throw up. Grrrrr! I bought myself a new pair of pants last weekend. This is a big deal. I hardly ever shop for myself, but I found a very cute pair of capris. They're stripy (vertical stripy), so they're slimming, they go with a lot of my tops, and they fit perfect. It is a very rare occurrence that I find such a pair of pants! So, I bought them, came home, took them out of the sack and laid them out on my bed because I hadn't decided if I wanted to hang them up or fold them and put them in a drawer. Then I got busy with kids, yada, yada. A couple of hours later, in comes my husband. "I have some bad news. You're really not going to be happy about this." Oh, God, what?! Eli spilled grape juice on the carpet? They cancelled Lost? What?

Then he pulls out my new pants from behind his back. Apparently, my cat Marcel, found them a perfect place to puke up a hairball. My favorite part is that it wasn't just one spot on the pants. He had spread it around to three or four spots. Eric had nicely tried to scrub out the stains before I saw the pants, God bless him, so that kept me from hunting down the evil cats. How would they like it if I threw up all over something of theirs, where they slept, for instance? Although, that would be my couch, so it's really a lose-lose situation. Never mind.

I'm off this weekend to try my hardest not to mess up anyone else's house. (Did you like that segway?) Saturday night is Heather's engagement party. Someone asked me if she was offended that I'm blogging so much about wedding plans. Fortunately, I think she's so busy with wedding plans that she doesn't read the blog. I'm sure she'll let me know if I'm wrong.

Anyway, on the way home from dropping Eli off at preschool today, Georgia and I drove by the house of Jim's boss - he and his wife are the ones throwing the party. I knew it was a nice house in Prairie Village, and I just wanted to make sure I knew where we were going. Plus, I was curious how nice the house was after hearing Heather oooh and aahh. So we drove by. Twice.

Sweet holy Christ, these people have marble lion statues in front of their house, on either side of their doorway, and there was a carpet and upholstery cleaning truck in their driveway. So, not only are they rich, but I'm now extremely nervous I'm going to spill something because I know everything has been professionally cleaned. So, I called Heather and left a rambling message on her voicemail. She just sent me an e-mail that said, "Oh, they're really nice. Try to enjoy yourself . . . and don't ogle the $14,000 chandelier they just had imported from Italy. Holy Mother of God.

I'm just going to get comfortable in the fact that I will spill something. Probably red wine. Luckily, as evidenced by the truck in their driveway, they probably have a cleaning service on speed dial.

Pull those plastic covers over the couch. Neila's in the hizzy!