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Tuesday, September 2, 2008

The Great Weekend Recap

If it ever came up on the ballot, I'd vote for a four day work week. That extra day is a God send.

It meant that I actually got all of my laundry done! Well, until we discovered mouse poop in the corner of the living room where Gabi's downstairs toys, blankets and stuffed animals are kept.

We first saw the mouse run from under the stove to under the sink on Sunday morning. We thought it was isolated to the kitchen and pantry (which got a scrub down like you've never seen before), but apparently it likes to cruise through the living room, too, to see if Gabi has left any crumbs. NO MORE FOOD IN THE LIVING ROOM.

Oh, and I'm not dumb. I know there are more. But for the sake of my sanity, since I only saw one, there is just one.

Gilberto put out a bunch of bait and traps. Die, you sucker, die!

In the meantime I'll be washing stuffed animals and blankets for days to come.

Having a three day weekend also meant that Gabi got her way a little bit more than usual, because there's only so much whining I can take. The key is to make it seem like she is NOT winning, even though she is.

Like, when Gabi woke up Sunday morning crying for her watermelon, I gave in and handed over the cantaloupe. It was a compromise. I got to cut up the watermelon and prevent a smashed gut crisis, and she got to love on a piece of fruit. Complete with another face drawn by my ever accommodating husband.

And you know, I have no idea where that cantaloupe is. I haven't seen it since Sunday morning, and I picked up every last thing last night and put it all away. Where did the cantaloupe go? Well, that's what I get for letting my daughter play mommy to a rotting piece of fruit. Depending on the mess it makes, we'll see if the peace it brought was worth it.

Besides fruitgate and the mouse, we also went to a birthday party for one of Gabi's little friends over the weekend. She had a blast, of course (they had a bouncy house). But me? I was the outcast as usual.

Does anyone else have this problem? I think I'm pretty social, but when I try to talk and get to know other parents, it just never works out. They only respond to questions I ask and never really reciprocate to create a real conversation. I almost always end up off to the side watching Gabi play, and watching all the other parents laugh it up together.

At least this time I had Gilberto to keep me company. The mother of the little girl is Brasilian, as were most of the guests, so I drug him with me, thinking he would enjoy the camaraderie.

He didn't. So we had each other. He even commented afterwards on how I had tried to talk to people, and they were only interested in talking amongst themselves.

How do you break in to an already existing group of friends? Maybe you just don't. Oh well. As long as Gabi has a good time I can be a big girl.

The rest of our weekend was spent relaxing. Actually, that's not entirely true. Gilberto and Gabi were the ones relaxing, while I buzzed around the house all weekend long trying to get everything cleaned and organized. You know, because I was given an extra day off and I didn't want to waste it. I just couldn't help myself.

What I should've been doing was following Gilberto's lead, because today my house is in only slightly better condition than it was last Friday. Except for the pantry. My pantry is now a work of art!

Oh, and Gabi's room! That was the first room I cleaned over the weekend, and since she decided to spend her time playing with my jewelry and Gilberto's PVC pipes instead of her toys, her room remained untouched and is still spotless.

By the way, PVC pipes make great toys. Gilberto has boxes full of end pieces and joints, and Gabi sat outside on the patio for hours putting them all together. She fancied herself a little inventor. I fancied some free time without a little whirlwind following and causing destruction in my path. We will definitely be playing with the PVC again.

So here I am, at work once again. Looking back, we had a pretty darn good weekend. It might not seem like I accomplished much, but I got more done than if I'd only had two days to work with. Like the laundry! Minus all the stuff the mouse pooped on. And as with all time off, it went by way too fast.

This week should also go pretty quickly, since I keep thinking today is Monday. On Friday I'll think it's Thursday, and then I'll wake up on Saturday morning as if Friday had just disappeared. Now if only all Fridays did that.

21 comments:

  1. High school cliques are alive and well in middle age. I promise it's not just you. I'd stand with you at a party over any of those snobby girls.

    Glad you guys had a good weekend. Maybe the mouse is having a cantaloupe party?

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  2. I HATE to go to parties and be left aside by everybody else. And I hate even more when people are not nice enough to be nice to me and try to make me feel confortable.

    Sorry, I'm experience a little bit of range today... that always happeen when I get to chat with my morther-in-law to be! :P

    hugs!

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  3. Ugh honey! So sorry to hear of the clique-ish ways at the birthday party. I personally would chat with you in a heartbeat. Don't they know how funny you are? And nice?

    I hope you catch that mouse! You have to keep us posted on it...

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  4. hmm.

    I'm feeling a little anti-social these days.

    good luck with the mouse;-)

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  5. That exact thing happened to me this weekend except my husband is like THE social butterfly. Ahhh, I love other people's family farties.

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  6. I always make it a point to talk to everyone at a gathering and to introduce those that don't know one another.
    Too many people just say hi and speak for a moment but forget introductions to everyone at the gathering. Manners just arn't as important these days I guess.
    It's their loss for sure. You are such an interesting person!

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  7. EWW to the mouse, Double EWW to the poo and Triple EWW to rotting fruit. Good luck with all that.

    Ship me some OVC toys m'kay? We are having a toy purge this weekend while the Juveniles are at gramma and papa's and I need new easy to clean up toys.

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  8. It is not just you. That kind of situation really bothers me.
    Good luck finding the cantaloupe!
    Glad you had a great weekend.

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  9. I'm thinking that maybe the mouse had it's way with the canteloupe. Oh, and about the mommies, it's not you, it's them. Unfortunately, most people just want to talk about themselves. Believe it or not, that is one of the criteria I use to weed out 'friends.'

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  10. I totally get you, girl! I am having way more trouble with friends now than I ever did in highschool...harder to make friends and harder to find women who are truly authentic. Most times when I open my mouth now I feel like people are looking at me as if I'm an alien speaking some kind of unrecognizable language. Now you've got me started...I'll stop now :)

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  11. Hi,

    I feel you about the chatting thing but right now I'm more focused on your mouse, having just dealt with one in our kitchen/living room. It was Rodent Week at our house, and the screaming and carnage was impressive.

    Drop me a line if you'd like to hear my scrolls of advice about mice. I did my research. ;) We are rodent-free for the moment, and we didn't have to pay.

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  12. There just doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to the party thing. Sometimes the kid parties are fine, but other times I have the same experience. Who knows what the secret formula is...

    Glad you had a good weekend. Aren't three day weekends the best!

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  13. I'm the same way at a lot of the parties my girls attend. I find that even though I want my girls to have friends... these ladies wouldn't be people I'd pick as my own friends.

    Sounds like you had a nice weekend.

    BTW - you're not the only wife who doesn't get to relax on the weekends? My husband though? Every weekend! Arghh

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  14. first please tell me you have found the "baby" and it's in one piece and not the new home for the mouse??

    second - i sooo get that ask people questions and they never return in the asking??? what is it with that?? i have kinda decided i don't like people. well i like blog people. they are sooo much easier to get along with then real life people :)

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  15. Wow! Now breathe! :)

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  16. Years ago after Hurricane Hugo we had a mouse in our house and I don't think I slept for a week until it was dead and everything had been scrubbed. ICK...it was awful!

    On the subject of parties and small talk...I found myself in a similar situation when Lorelai was starting third grade in a new school. I just didn't have anything to say to most of the other mothers. My remedy was to have a mother-daughter holiday tea on a Saturday morning close to Christmas. We invited all of the girls/moms in her class and a few people from church. It was fun and kind of broke the ice a little bit.

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  17. ok, you need to find that cantaloupe STAT. it's going to rot away and attract all the little mousy friends!

    I am obviously not a real mom, but i do indeed have this problem with not being able to fit in with another group of parents. the only people with kids i am friends with are the ones i was friends with before they had kids. somehow whenever it comes to a school activity or whatever, no matter what i say or do, the moms never carry a conversation past answering the questions i put out there... it's kind of annoying. i'm not going to be like that when i have kids!

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  18. You are a better woman than I am!! I mouse in the house!! I would have to burn the whole thing to the ground and start over. That's a little know fact about me...I HATE rodents!! AHHHH!!!

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  19. Okay... small talk is not a gifting of mine. Though, with all the moving and new people I have to meet I am getting better at it. But, I hate it... All that to say, I get the party thing. It's hard to break into a circle of already existing friends. It was rather rude of the host to let you guys to end up having only each other to hang out with.

    Ewwww! Mice are icky. We had lots growing up because we lived in the country. Oh, and rats too. How did I survive??? :) I hope you catch that bad boy!! And fast!

    -Andrea

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  20. I'm sorry about the birthday party! At least Gilberto was there to see that it was THEM, not YOU, who was being anti-social. There's only so much you can do!

    As far as making every day a 4-day workweek, we all know that's not going to happen, so I've come up with a solution: 5-day workweeks with 3-day weekends. That way, everybody's happy. I am aware this creates 8-day weeks and would involve reworking our entire calendar, but why must we be bound to 52-week years?

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  21. I always try to drag Hot Rod along to these parties. We just make it a family event. I usually call the parents and ask if we can bring the siblings...

    Anyways, as far as the mouse is concerned...go to Home Depot (or a home improvement store) and pick up a Victor Electric Mousetrap. All you have to do is put a little Peanut Butter in the back of it and once the mouse steps on the metal pads - ZAP! Electrocution and no snap trap mess. You just dump the little rascal into a grocery bag, tie it up, and dispose in the outside garbage. Gross, I know, but we caught 5 mice in our garage that came from the overgrown field behind our house. Eek! I so hope they're gone now...

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