Whine like a baby, now with 500% more drama!

I just slept for the last four and half hours. Now I am going to take some Nyquil and maybe sleep for 10 more. [emoji14]
 
Today is my 35th birthday. Yay!

Had to cancel all plans tonight (babysitter, dinner reservation, theater tickets) for the stomach flu. Boo!
 
I feel asleep at 5 yesterday, got up long enough in the middle of the night to eat cold leftovers from dinner and drink some water, then went back to bed until 7am, got the kids out the door to school, and now I think I will go back to bed until I need to pick up my daughter from school and watch her at gymnastics for 2 hours. Ugh, I do not want to try to watch gymnastics for 2 hours.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I feel asleep at 5 yesterday, got up long enough in the middle of the night to eat cold leftovers from dinner and drink some water, then went back to bed until 7am, got the kids out the door to school, and now I think I will go back to bed until I need to pick up my daughter from school and watch her at gymnastics for 2 hours. Ugh, I do not want to try to watch gymnastics for 2 hours.
Night Terror was so bad it nearly killed you. It's taking days to recover.
 
Man, that reminds me of the awesome supervisor I had in my last department. As long as you got your work done, he didn't care if you put your head down in the middle of the afternoon and took a three hour siesta.
 
Man, that reminds me of the awesome supervisor I had in my last department. As long as you got your work done, he didn't care if you put your head down in the middle of the afternoon and took a three hour siesta.
That just sounds like they're not giving you enough to work on.
 
One of my professors has been out with pneumonia for the last 3 weeks. She keeps changing due dates and assignments. Tonight she told us not to follow the syllabus any more. FFS I have no idea what's going on!
 
Oh god my house is trashed because I am an unrepentant slob and I haven't needed to worry about people coming over for a month and a half. BUT THEY ARE COMING OVER TONIGHT AND OH GOD, THE MESS.
 
Oh god my house is trashed because I am an unrepentant slob and I haven't needed to worry about people coming over for a month and a half. BUT THEY ARE COMING OVER TONIGHT AND OH GOD, THE MESS.
Just repeat this mantra over and over in your head, "At least I don't have 8 kids to clean up after... At least I don't have 8 kids to clean up after... At least I don't have 8 kids to clean up after..."
 
Just repeat this mantra over and over in your head, "At least I don't have 8 kids to clean up after... At least I don't have 8 kids to clean up after... At least I don't have 8 kids to clean up after..."
I think I would curl up into a ball and cry.
Or move. Without them.

(Extra hugs for you and Mrs. Stienman.)
 
I can't even imagine....we have two and they are tornadoes.
I think I would curl up into a ball and cry.
Or move. Without them.

(Extra hugs for you and Mrs. Stienman.)
Don't take it too seriously! Our house is messy at times, but we don't let them let it go too far, and they all have chores so it may actually be easier than those with just two younger children that don't clean up after themselves.

The nice thing about going to an extreme is you have to actively build up patterns for dealing with things, which makes them easier. Everyone works to clean up after dinner. Everyone has had a pick-up job for one of the shared rooms (front room, back room, computer room, dining room, etc) and the vacuum job, so when we tell them to go clean one of the rooms it's not something we have to supervise closely. I toss a load of laundry in almost every morning, and the older kids and adults manage their own laundry, so even though we've got 10 people in the house the hamper never has more than a single load of laundry in it.

For some things it actually seems like more work when you have less work to do. Two kids - do laundry once a week, but it's 2-3 loads and takes up a huge part of your day. 6 kids, though, make a load every day. I spend less than 5 minutes a morning putting it in, and if it's not already dried when I get home it's a minute putting it in. If the dryer still has clothes in it, I put them in the basket in the front room and the kids know to take their clothes out and put them away. Since it's a continuous process if I miss a day we aren't running out of clothes for someone, and the clothes they wear most often might not even make it into their closet before they need to be washed again.

Similar with cleaning. We have to pick up the shared rooms every single day, we can't let them go a day or two. With fewer kids by the time it looks messy, it's too late - you've got a lot of work cleaning up. In our case, though, after a day only 2-3 types of toys were used, and even better they didn't move very far from where they were taken out. Putting away the megablocks, the trains, and the baby toys is easy - drag out the three bins, toss them in the correct bin and after another few minutes getting clothing, trash, and other miscellaneous toys, etc, up you're done. After 2-3 days of just one or two kids, though, you're dealing with all the types of toys, clothing, and trash, and the amount of sorting and walking makes it take a long time partly because the toys have spread further than they do after only a day.

And if the place is a wreck and we've got company coming in an hour, all of us working together can get it done.

So while I joke, I don't think I'm doing much more work.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
The A/C at the office broke some time last night.

Today has been an interesting exercise in the management of cold air.

"There's cold air in the engineering room!"
"Set up fans to push it down the hallway and into the offices!"

The temperature creeps slowly higher. I fear what I'll find when next I open our closet-sized server room (which has little to no ventilation).
 
The A/C at the office broke some time last night.

Today has been an interesting exercise in the management of cold air.

"There's cold air in the engineering room!"
"Set up fans to push it down the hallway and into the offices!"

The temperature creeps slowly higher. I fear what I'll find when next I open our closet-sized server room (which has little to no ventilation).
 
Just repeat this mantra over and over in your head, "At least I don't have 8 kids to clean up after... At least I don't have 8 kids to clean up after... At least I don't have 9 kids to clean up after..."

. . . the weeks pass . . .




. . . At least I don't have 10 kids took take care of.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I am the worst house cleaner of all time. At least I'm not like those people on Hoarders, right guys?!
I'm half tempted to send you photos of the dilapidated pile of debris that used to be my home.

Except I won't because, like Lenny, I'm still sane enough to be embarrased by it.

 

fade

Staff member
My mom and my mother in law are both hoarders to some degree. I mean not to the level of the TV show, but enough that both my wife and I are pretty spartan. We purge often, and we like it clean. I kind of got embarrassed once when someone asked me if I really had kids because I will clean their stuff up obsessively.
 
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