Important Useless Information...

This information will most likely mean nothing to all of you, but I feel compelled to share it with you for some reason.  I am sure you will thank me for it in the end. 

*Happy Hut (Hoot) to you all!  The month of Hut started here two days ago (I just really get a kick out of saying that…which is mainly why I am telling you this). Everyone has reassured us that when Hut comes, winter leaves.  So far, we have had a foot of snow and temps that have not left the 20’s. We have nervously turned on the water each morning (we leave it dripping at night) to make sure our pipes have not frozen. I am feeling positive about the direction we are moving…

* Our plan is to move out of our house in a week and then have almost a week where we stay in the guest rooms and can just trash this place as we pack.  We are hoping it will be easier to pack if we are not trying to live here as well…maybe a little less stressful?  One can hope, right? It should be a good time.  If given the chance, I would ditch it all and get on a plane tomorrow…but there aren’t any scheduled flights, unfortunately.

* Because we are winding down our time here, that means I only have a week left of using cloth diapers for a while. At this point in time, that makes me happy.  I LOVE cloth diapering for so many reasons, but am ready for a break.  The no water or electric situation is fine, but it puts my finely tuned laundry schedule on the fritz.  Some days when I need to rinse diapers there is no water…or when I need to wash there is no power…or both!  At this point, I will just be ready to not have that to deal with as we deal with moving, packing, traveling, etc. 

* Little t is quite attached to his diapers, apparently.  He shows no signs of interest in the toilet except to read the Potty Time book a bazillion times a week…but hey, who wouldn’t be attached to a book that has a toilet that you flush at the end! It gets me every time! Anyway,  every time we ask him if he wants to use the potty, he smiles sweetly and says, “no thanks!”  The other day he started to pee as I had his diaper off and I said, “quick, let’s go to the toilet!” He said, “no I wait.” I put his clean diaper on and he said, “okay, pee now.”  5 minutes later I was changing another diaper.

* Can I just say, I am so much happier without fleas being a constant part of my life?  I just realized the other day how much of an improvement it is that I am not constantly itching, searching, paranoid about the little things crawling all over me, etc.  I have taken it for granted for a while now, but I am really really loving being flea free. If you haven’t tried it, you should!

* And lastly, if anyone should decide that they want to torture me for some reason, I will give you my current top two methods.  I hope that none of you will decide to do this, but you never know…

1. Packing a house with a toddler.  People, I love him, he is adorable and sweet and funny and has come from my womb…but I can’t stand him when I am trying to pack! I swear one of the kid’s spiritual gifts is dumping things out and making messes.  It is constant. I fold laundry, he unfolds it. I put books in a box and turn around to find him taking them out.  I organize a shelf and in one fell swoop he knocks it all on the floor.  I am amazed (and thoroughly annoyed) at his ability to undo all of my work in a fraction of the time it takes me to do it.  It is hard, because he always wants to ‘help’ and can be disgustingly charming about it, but at times I just want to sit and cry! 

Case in point: yesterday we were getting ready to go to our team meeting and I was prepping a bag for Tariq.  I am sure people wonder if we are moving each time we leave the house, given the amount of junk we haul around. In my defense, the meetings can get long and I would rather be over-prepared with stuff to keep him busy.  Anyway, I was looking through the plastic bin that holds all of his trucks/tractors/cars for his ‘fancy’ tractor. He was doing what he does best…telling me what to do as he sat and ate his snack.  After inquiring as to what I was doing, he watched me carefully move pieces from one side of the box to the other while sifting through it.  With much exasperation in his voice, he finally said, “Just dump Momma, Easy!”   I couldn’t help but laugh…

2. Evil Contact Solution. I wear contacts…and my glasses occasionally when I have to.  I procure my lens solution from a supplier in a town a few hours away.  That is the fancy way of saying I get my contact lens solution from the used food bazaar in the next city.  I have had great luck with this method. Usually bottles are sealed and dirt cheap as opposed to getting it in the capital or hauling it in from Dubai. 

I was down to two bottles of solution this last week…plenty to last me until we leave right?  I decided to first use the bottle that wasn’t clearly sealed. I rinsed my lenses and popped one into my eye. I promptly began screaming in agony.  It must have been bad because A.P. came running fast.  By this time I was crying and begging him to “get that thing out of my eye!”  He had to hold me down while he pried the lens out of my eye.  He then helped me wash out my eye with clean water in a spoon (he is really smart like that).  10 minutes of washing later, my eye was totally red and bloodshot. I could barely keep it open because it seemed really sensitive to the sunlight.  The whole time Little t stood on his breakfast perch at the kitchen island and watched us. 

I put on my glasses and tried to get cleaned up before the rest of our team got there for our pr-ayer meeting.  A.P. promptly went to get the bottle and dumped it out. We figured someone thought it would be funny to fill it with something else…

I put a new pair of contacts in later that day and my eye was still painful, but was feeling a little better. 

The next day, I decided to try the other bottle...it was sealed so I figured it was good.  Stupidly, I still had not read the bottle. Contact solution is contact solution, right?  Wrong.

I rinsed my lenses and was quickly screaming again when it hit my eye.  A.P. was gone at work, so I had to pry it out myself this time.  Little t was once again in the kitchen. As I was screaming, I heard a crash…not thinking about more than my eyeball that was being eaten by evil acid…I focused on that instead of the crash. 

Finally I got the lens out and washed out my eye.  About that time, Little t came into the bathroom with handfuls of broken glass…his little fingers dripping with blood.  He had been playing with oranges in a bowl and dropped the bowl off of the table.  He had graciously picked it up and came to show me (and figure out why I was screaming). In the process, he had gotten a few cuts on his fingers. 

I took the glass away and cleaned his hands…still not able to see out of my one eye.  I found band-aids. I had packed them the day before and told myself that I hadn’t needed them up to this point…what where the chances of needing them now in the next two weeks? 

He flipped out when I tried to put the band-aid on…I think just cause he didn’t know what it was.  But he was flinging blood everywhere and screaming. I was squinting through one eye, yelling at him and trying to wipe away the mass amounts of water that streamed out of my tainted eye.  Eventually I got him calmed down and got the band-aid on.  I then spent the next hour on the kitchen floor picking up shards of glass…as a million needles continued to poke into my eye-ball and I kissed his hands that were “so owie” every other second. 

By the time lunch rolled around, we were both an exhausted mess.  

I finally read the solution bottle about how you can only use that solution with a special lens container that neutralizes the solution and doesn’t make it like burning acid being poured into your eye.  So glad I was smart enough to read about that before…

Two days later, my eye is finally almost back to normal and Little t’s hands have sported Elmo, Big Bird and Curious George band-aids. They are better too. 

So, evil contact solution in the eyes would do me in pretty quickly. I look at the bottle now and my eyes start to water.  Makes me shudder just thinking about it...

There, don’t you feel more informed now? 

You're welcome.