Michelle’s Art Blog

One of these days I’m going to look back at my life and just howl with laughter. That day is not today. I have three kids, and one large kid-like husband. I also have six dogs, one cat, two guinea pigs and an assortment of fish. My house probably smells like various animals, but that can’t be helped. We can’t get rid of any of them, although some days we would like to. I’m not the perfect housekeeper, although I like things to at least be picked up and tidy. Heh, try that with 3 kids, one large child-like husband, and a handful of foul smelling critters, all of which tend to not clean up after themselves. So I am left doing it all.

My schedule tends to be chaotic. To get a glimpse of my week: I work as a paramedic in a children’s hospital for three consecutive 12 hour nights. So basically I come home to shower and sleep. I don’t even eat at home on these days. After the three days, I come home to a messy house. Heck, I’ve basically been gone for 3 days. So while my hubby leaves for work, he leaves me to homeschool the kids and clean up the mess they’ve made while I was gone. I waste a whole day cleaning in between trying to make sure the kids do their homework. Once the house is finally tidy, I can write or illustrate something the next day in between loads of laundry, prepare something for my critique group, the day after that and then it starts all over again.

To see my frustration, I had just gotten the house clean, the floors mopped, everything tidy and then it was time to go to work. Since it gets pretty chilly at night, we let the big dogs in. They appreciate it although I don’t. Imagine my surprise when I came home from work in the morning, the dogs greet me with the wag of their tail and a wet slobbery kiss and then happily show me the mess they’ve made. They had dumped the trash cans into the living room and sorted it as only a dog could all over the floor. To make matters worse, the little dogs thought they would join in by peeing all over the growing pile of garbage.

My husband was dumbfounded that I was upset. I think he would have just left it there. And that disturbs me more than anything.

OMG! My kids just don’t get it! We’ve been doing this for how long? Three years? You’d think after spending most of the summer doing extra homework because you couldn’t get it done during the day that you would finally understand that if you just did it, you would have a lot more free time than you have now! I know, run-on, but I get so frustrated with my kids. They spend most of their morning playing and hoping I won’t notice that they aren’t doing anything. Then I find out and have them doing homework into the wee hours of the morning. They know how to log into their computer. They know exactly what they are supposed to be doing, they just don’t do it. I keep telling them that if this keeps up the only phrase they are going to need to remember is ‘D’you want fries with that?’

There has got to be a better way. And I haven’t found it yet.

Okay, I gotta tell you, there is a new kid’s show out there called the Fresh Beat Band. My little girl just LOVES it. Whenever the show comes on, she spends the time bouncing up and down on the couch to the beat of the music. It is pretty fun to watch. Confession, I like watching it, too. Kinda reminds me of the Wiggles but a Hip-hop version of them. Her favorite character is Kiki because she always wears pink. I think it’s also because we have a black cat named Kiki.

Okay, this is a bit misleading. I wasn’t stuck in a place I didn’t want to be, desperate to get out. I am very grateful for my critique group. They are extremely helpful, most of the time. But then sometimes I get completely opposite views as to how my story should go and I end up more confused than I originally was. It’s those moments when you have to go with your gut instinct.

Now back to the ’stuck’ part. I was literally stuck in the parking lot after the critique group. When I go to the meetings, I have to drag my kids along and wait for my hubby to come pick them up after he drives back from work. At this point, we usually trade cars, him getting the larger of the vehicles to take the kids home. Instead of just handing me the whole keychain from his car like he normally does, he separated the keys, handing me what he thought were the keys to the other car. I stuck them in my pocket and didn’t take notice of them again. Until I tried to slide the key into my car door. What I discovered was that I was now stuck outside in the parking lot because the grocery store was closed, the bookstore was closed and everyone else was going home. I had to call my dear, intelligent husband and tell him he handed me the &**^%* wrong set of keys.

I was cold, I was tired, but fortunately I managed to get into the book store before it closed to use the restroom. (After a large ice coffee, that was a must.) I had 30 chilled minutes to go over the groups notes for my story, wondering what in the heck I was going to do with it. I still don’t know. I was too worried about being mugged while waiting to really concern myself with the story. Maybe I’ll dream a solution.

We go through band-aids in my house. I have three kids, and although they don’t get hurt often, they just love band-aids. They’re like stickers. They go and stick them on everything, and for one little cut, they might need…oh…five band-aids. So then they get an actual cut, and don’t have any more band-aids. This happened to my little girl. She broke a ceramic cup and then cut herself on a shard. It was a pretty good cut, flapped a piece of skin on the tip of her finger. Bled like crazy with her screaming that she needed a band-aid. I scramble for anything handy, which happens to be a tissue, wrap her finger and send her off to the bathroom while I look for a band-aid. I grab the fist-aid kit which happens to be a mexican food restaurant lunch box. All that’s in it are a bunch of alcohol swabs and a band-aid sleeve. I grab for the next best thing, a paper towel and a roll of scotch tape and head off for the bathroom.
I try to use the whole experience as why we shouldn’t play with the band-aids and medical tape.

Happy New Year at any rate! May your year be filled with many, many band-aids for your boo-boo’s.