this is real life, folks

So many blogs (professional ones) are just about the good stuff.  The pictures are beautiful, the food is always delish, the house is always perfect.  I love those blogs.  It's eye candy for me.  

But this is not one of those blogs.  

Here's a glimpse of "a day in the life."  It doesn't show everything, but it does show a series of unfortunate events:

The garage is really getting to me, so looks like it's time to
clean it out!

All this stuff in the middle of the 2nd bay?  It needs to be relocated.
And the play area needs some TLC.
And while I have an awesome school-storage system (thanks dad!)
I still have some books to sort.  Just a few.  :oP

This was a day when Marcus was traveling.  Whenever I try to tackle a project when he is traveling, it never ends well.  Really, taking care of these kids is a full-time job!  They can't be left unattended for a minute!!

Someone thought she had dry skin.

 That night was a rough one for about 20 minutes there.  I was about to put Sedric to bed when I realized his freshly-cleaned sheets were not yet ON the bed (he had had a little accident at nap time, bless his heart).  While I was struggling with the sheets, Bunny came running in saying, "The giant mice are eating Speckle!  The giant mice are eating Speckle!"  This can't be good.  

I told her, "Send up James to take care of Celeste, and I'll go down to the barn with you!"  So James bounded up and found Cellie in the bathroom.  Still working on the sheets, I heard James exclaim, "Noooo, no, no no, this is bad, no, this is really bad...."  The above picture shows how we found her.  So I had to scrub Cellie with soap to get the greasy cream off, the dash downstairs to put my boots on to go to the barn and take care of a poultry crime scene.

Turns out the giant mice did not KILL Speckle...but they were willing participants in her burial process. I decided at that moment that barn or not, country or not, mice were NOT welcome!  Anyway, Bunny and I set to work to bury poor Speckle (who likely died of natural, not rodent, causes).

I think it was about 9pm at this time.
I wondered what the neighbors thought.

And I still had work to do inside:

When I am alone, I usually leave dinner dishes
until AFTER I put the kids to bed.  Blah.

 The kids, however, were not traumatized by the evening's events, and decided to do some star-gazing.  (They did show me Saturn's rings.  That was pretty cool.)

Marcus came home right about this time, much to all of our delight.  I'm sure he was bummed he missed all the action of the previous 30 minutes.  But he was glad to have a project the next day (buying and setting mouse traps).  There's nothing like being needed and staying active! :o)