... The Mouse Will Play - Days 1 & 2: The Unfulfilling Feeling of Fulfillment

Guess what time it is!!!!!

It's nearing the end of Day 2 of Bee's absence, and I'm only about halfway through the two pints of ice cream I bought last night.

Must be losing my touch.

You know, I was really looking forward to Bee and S.B. leaving for their Manly Time trip so I could revert to my torrid affair with Ben and Jerry, but it hasn't yet been the emotionally satisfying experience for which I'd hoped.

I think part of my problem is that -- this time around -- I haven't had a plan.  There isn't a particular home-improvement project I was fired up to do.  Shockingly enough, I'm not craving Papa John's pizza.  I don't have any girlie movies I've been waiting to watch, mockery-free.  And, to top it all off, the torrid affair I have been looking forward to has been cruelly stifled by Walmart, which had a pitiful selection of ice cream last night.  No crème brûlée for this housewife.  Did you see what I had to settle for?!

I am trying to rally, though.  I've done a few odd projects already:

I cut that hole in S.B.'s bedroom door on purpose.  It's a cat door.  Really.

We've been getting tired of the cats 'accidentally' (with Mr. C's help) getting locked in S.B.'s room all day.  So, as a family, we'd discussed the idea of cutting an access hole in S.B.'s door.  Yesterday, this vague idea became a concrete crusade when, at the crack of dawn, the cats began meowing and scratching to be let into S.B.'s room.

You see what happens when I'm desperate and have access to power tools?

By the way, did you know the insides of interior doors are braced with cardboard?  Well, now you do.

Oh, come on; you didn't really think I'd leave the hole like that!

This is my attempt at framing the space.  As long as you don't look too closely (like, anything closer than about 8 feet), it's not too terrible a job.

However, doing this little project showed me that I am in no way ready to try cutting holes in our living room wall to make alcoves.  Luckily, none of you voted for that project, because I'm not about to do it.

Note the off-centered frames and the jaggedly-cut plywood of the door peeking through

I only hope Bee and S.B. don't complain too much.  In the least, I hope they can respect that this project, which would have taken a professional about 45 minutes, only took me about 5 hours.  Keep in mind, however, that -- besides committing atrocities with a sawzall and Gorilla Glue -- I had to first switch S.B.'s room door with ours (which already had a hole of unknown origin in it), and then switch the door knobs back to their rightful room doors.  None of these tasks went completely smoothly, though -- truly -- I can't complain.  Again, it only took me five hours, and this included the extra time it inevitably takes when Mr. C 'helps'.

I finished this project just before Mr C's nap time.  One would think I'd feel deserving of a break at that point.  But I was still feeling unfulfilled.  So I committed botanical homicide by ripping out the dying forsythia bush in the  front yard's dying clump of bushes and moved it to the back 'yard' to semi-conceal our newly-repositioned compost bin.  I know I wasn't gentle with the forsythia, and I know from my gardening class (I learned something!) that the poor plant is putting so much energy into flowering right now that it won't have much energy for putting down new roots, but . . . I don't really give a sh!t.  The forsythia wasn't doing any good where it was, anyway.

There it is in the back.  Compare to last post's picture of the area; what a difference!

Two projects of questionable success under my belt, I put Mr. C down for his nap and felt justified spending the next hour-and-a-half reading.  Too bad my book wasn't that good.

Nap time complete, we went to Family Swim Night at my gym, then grocery shopping for ice cream disappointments.  Not that that disappointment kept me from selfishly hiding my pints until Mr. C had retired for the night.  I'm really not into sharing my men with other men.  Then I stayed up until one a.m. watching a terrible movie (Season of the Witch; sorry if you liked it), reading my not-so-good book and eating my disappointing ice cream (although, really, the Chocolate Therapy is pretty darn good, even if I was looking forward to crème brûlée.

Today was spent counter top cooking:

A rice cooker, my toaster oven, and two crock pots

 I made my awesome Sacred Heart Soup and my even-awesomer bread.  I added some slow-cooked beef and some rice to the soup; hence the extra appliances.

I made a large batch of the healthy soup since a) I don't really know how to make anything else, and b) I must at least pretend to try counteracting all the Ben and Jerry's somehow.  We have enough to last us almost until Bee gets back to the kitchen, assuming I don't go crazy eating cabbage for a week first.

While all this was cooking, I wandered the house, trying to complete a project that would make me feel good.  Which means I started a lot of little things, but never got anything major done.  Here's one of the little things:  I made a new necklace hanger, replacing this

my jumbled necklace 'tree'

with this

which hangs behind the bathroom door, out of sight until I need to (and now actually CAN) find a necklace

Whew!  I deserved the two helpings of B&J I had during Mr. C's nap time today!

I figured I worked off a spoonful of that ice cream when Mr. C and I biked back to Walmart this afternoon for a can of spray paint.  More on THAT project later.

And now it's past 9 p.m., I still don't feel fulfilled, I have no great outings planned for Mr. C, I'm exhausted (a direct result of the long bike ride and the all-sugar diet), and I'm grumpy.  Mr. C's been getting on my nerves for two days straight, probably because I'm unfulfilled and on an all-sugar diet, as well as distracted with whatever tiny project I am maniacally obsessed with at the moment.  I'm being a bad mommy to him.

Hopefully I'll think of something brilliant to do, both for me and him, and tomorrow will be better.


PS: Is it a sign of major depression that I don't even want to finish my pints tonight?