For Keeps

So we got this couch.

It was a sleeper sofa.  It would fit in the playroom.  It was $100.

In accordance with the grand plan, I have been throwing away toys for the past year and moving those which I deem worthy from the playroom to the kids' rooms.  It all started with our Christmas party, 2010.  With fifty children on the guest list, I preemptively moved every last toy from the playroom into the garage.  You know, the place where some people keep their cars.


The toys stayed in the garage, long forgotten, until mid-January 2011.  And then, the only request was the dress-up box.  (In this house, dressing up is only second to prancing around in your skivvies.)  Six months later, the rest of the toys moved on to the big trash bag in the sky.

The playroom is our future den.  The place where we will keep a sofa bed for extra guests.  The place where we will put the Wii so we don't have to listen to Pac-Man Party nonstop.  The place where we can put the kids on the couch with a bucket of popcorn and a movie of their choice...

And shut the door.  And make nachos and watch Drunk History in another room.

So, anyway, that's the grand plan.

Yes, the sofa would fit in the playroom.  Yes, yes, yes.  And sofa beds are incredibly heavy.  Yes, yes. yes. And Matt got it in the house, down the hallway, and around the first corner.

And then the moment arrives when you realize it is physically impossible to move a sofa around the next corner into the playroom.  It was designed as an "assemble your own futon here" type of den without our knowledge.  We measured the room; we did not measure the hallway or the door frame.

So we left the damned thing in the middle of the hallway and went to bed.

The next morning, we decided that the couch needed to go back outside, lose its legs, and come in through the garage to the playroom.  So Matt had to clear out a path in our garage, which was an undertaking to say the least.  And I'll leave it at that, lest he remember that he did it single-handedly while I stayed inside with hot tea and Pinterest.

Then the couch had to go back outside.  Then it had to get on a dolly and move up through the newly cleared path in the garage.  Then Matt had to take the door to the garage off the hinges because it just. would. not. fit. through.

And the same goes for the door to the playroom.

And there went the door frame.  It now has some extra "character" thanks to the deal of the century we shoved through its threshold.

And it's in!  And the legs are back on!  And it's microfiber so when Eve sinks her face into it to cry, it leaves a stain.  But when we sell the house, a certain sofa bed is definitely included, mostly because it's will take a hack-saw to get it out.  It's there for keeps, and that's a long time.

Know what else is a long time?  Not the period between my visits to urgent care.  Ever since Eve stopped it with the whole cancer thing every week, I've increased my need for urgent medical attention.  I was just there a few weeks ago to get the good cough syrup, and before that, I was there to check out a sprained right ankle before the big hike.

Well, I am all into trying out this gardening thing, and decided I needed to carry a 2 cubic foot bag of potting soil down our deck stairs to our backyard.  And a 2 cubic foot bag of soil is so heavy that they don't even put a weight on it.  It's just 2 cubic feet of awkwardly packaged heffage that you have to heave-ho from your trunk to the yard.  And the bag was so large that I couldn't see in front of me.  So I relied on my ability to count the stairs on the deck to get me safely down to the grass.

But apparently I can't count to four and missed a step and rolled my left ankle but DIDN'T DROP THE BAG OF SOIL.

It felt fine for a few hours but then suddenly it felt like a tiny, very angry man was inside my ankle boring a hole with a rusty drill bit so we had to order pizza for dinner.  And I like to hear Daniel address the pizza man as "Hey, Pizza Man!" followed with a "I'm so glad you're here because my mom wasn't going to make us dinner."

We went to urgent care the next morning and it was nothing more than a sprain.  It wasn't cancer.  I would survive, although without an excuse to order more pizza for dinner.  An air cast and a prescription to take it easy later, we were outta there and on our way to watch Eve dance without a tutu in ballet class because I have a cute hiney and I want people to see it.

Moons over my hammy, baby!

You only get to keep a nice hiney if you eat the right kinds of foods, Eve.  Today at Chick-Fil-A, I overheard a mom whose two boys were enjoying chicken nuggets, french fries, milkshakes, and ice cream.  The older child asked why they always had to eat at Chick-Fil-A; why couldn't they go to McDonald's or Burger King?

"Because McDonald's and Burger King aren't healthy for you!"

Clearly, their Chick-Fil-A lunch was the epitome of the best of the food pyramid.  I love Chick-Fil-A, but why are people brainwashed into thinking it's a healthy eatery?  I get it; the nuggets are real meat.  They aren't pressed together into some chicken paste that is shaped into whatever shape you can shape meat slurry into.  But they aren't steamed and served with broccoli.  They are BATTERED AND FRIED TO GO ALONG WITH YOUR KIDS' FRENCH FRIES AND MAYONNAISE DIPPING SAUCE, WHICH ALL GETS WASHED DOWN WITH A 770 CALORIE MILKSHAKE BEFORE THEY GET TO EXCHANGE THEIR EDUCATIONAL TOY FOR MORE ICE CREAM.

I'm not blindly eating Taco Bell thinking that it's good for me because they put chopped tomatoes on my nachos supreme.  I understand it's crap food.  Crap, tasty food.  But I don't insinuate loudly that the fried chicken I'm feeding my kids isn't a contributing factor in their medical history the first time they have to go in for a bypass.  Moms of the year get this.  If you don't get this, rest assured you weren't in the running, anyway.

Moms of the year do things like get on their hands and knees to find something of importance that their son lost.  Not impressed?  Well how about doing it in this room:

Oh, and what are we looking for?  A tooth.  He lost a tooth.  He literally lost a tooth.  And Daniel loves to make crafts, so there are about two thousand white paper clippings approximately the same size of a baby tooth all over his floor.

The story I got was that the kids had the lights out and were swatting wildly around to get their bearings, much like the blind do when they are being attacked by killer bees, and Natalie landed a fist to Daniel's mouth.

We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned.  We found empty toilet paper rolls.  We found lids to markers long gone.  We found the place under the bed that Daniel likes to hide and eat candy.  No sign of the tooth.  Just a note that guilt-ridden Natalie wrote on behalf of Daniel to the Tooth Fairy:

Dear Tooth Fariy

I Lost my Tooth but I can't Find it

Love daniel

PS. What do you do with all Those Teeth?

The note is under his pillow and with any luck, the Tooth Fairy will take pity on him and leave him something good, or at least a good reason why she hoards teeth.

It's kind of weird if you stop and think about it.  Although it's a toss up between her and the giant bunny that comes and hides eggs in your yard.  Where does he get the eggs??  I thought rabbits gave birth to bunnies.