Survival of the Fittest

I'm 30 hours in to Cousin Camp and am doing alright. I was Mary Poppins on Tuesday night with all the kids at the baseball games (though my mom came to help and thankfully took over the port-o-potty duties). I had a bag of tricks (many water bottles, fishy crackers and Tootsie Pops) so they girls had a great time playing in the dirt with Whitney (during Landon's game--he did great by the way) and just running around being crazy. They were filthy when we got home at 9:00pm so that meant 5 separate showers for all the kids.

I was like a seasoned professional, feeding kids in the kitchen, supervising shower techniques (Tess didn't use soap until I triple checked with her?!), slicing strawberries (they couldn't eat them fast enough), providing towels, directing jammie dressing, setting up the beds for the night, and pouring more cereal. I did all of this without feeling flustered or fatigued, woohoo.


But today I woke up feeling grumpy...that's just not right. I just couldn't shake my irritability, though there was no reason for feeling that way. If anything I should be rejoicing because Randy is the groove buster no more! He started two different jobs this week (a strange, but good set up with part-time design work at two places, plus free lancing from home) so I'm on my own again.


Annoyance number two (the first being the unexplained grumpiness) this morning was that the little blow-up pool we bought last night would NOT inflate! It has 4 separate layers, so if there is a hole in one of them the rest should still inflate, but nooooo, I couldn't get any of them to blow up. The girls were in their bathing suits by 8:45am and were watching me and offering their "helpful" suggestions. Landon even tried to take over for me as if I didn't know what I was doing (aargh!). It never did inflate.


Later in the day the girls were so desperate to make it work they propped up the sides of the pool with chairs and put water in it anyway. They stayed outside all day, so at least it was good for something but I was very bugged. Randy actually went and bought a slightly bigger pool at Big Lots tonight and it inflated in about 5 minutes.


After spending 8 hours outside today (with only 1000 visits inside the house, leaving the door open every single time!) the girls then wanted to cram themselves into the bathtub. (Whatever floats your boat eh?) They stayed in there for over an hour until it was time to get jammies on and have a pizza picnic in the family room.


I was so irritated with the fact that I felt irritable (is there a term for that condition?) that I ended up talking to myself saying "I want to feel better, I want to feel better" and took 2 Excedrin. I then put a "Friday Night Lights" dvd in the computer and started cleaning up my scrap room (it's so long overdue it's ridiculous). Look a clear surface!!! Probably only people who have actually been in this room will be able to appreciate the magnitude of this accomplishment.


I framed the Women's Conference photo grid I made a couple weeks ago. I had it printed at Costco and it turned out great. It's only $2.99 for a 12x12 print.


I finally made room for the cool, red storage container thing Kristi sent me for my birthday almost 1 year ago! I moved all my scrapbooking idea books (which I no longer use and want to sell) to make room for it. I love the burst of color and am happy to have a home for it at last! I also did some serious cleaning up on this table, though the untrained eye may not be able to detect my progress.


So my day was salvaged, my irritability left around 3:30 this afternoon, I love Friday Night Lights, I can actually walk in my scrap room, and tonight was So You Think You Can Dance, woohoo! Wish me luck tomorrow.

**What do you do when you wake up grumpy?
Why wouldn't that pool inflate?
Do your kids ever remember
to shut the door in the summer?
Who do you like on SYTYCD?
Is anyone reading blogs and
actually commenting this week?**