Squeaky clean

A nice long bath does everyone good, yes?

I, myself, used to enjoy baths until I lived with 3 children whose filth creates the need for weekly scrubbings of a tub that still never looks completely clean.

What I'm talking about is the nice long baths my children take. There's almost nothing they love more. In fact, bathtime is such a gigantic treat, that if one child is in the tub, the others appear from all corners of the house, begging to join him. That is why bathtime now means a tiny tub crammed with 3 children, one of whom is growing quite gangly and one of whom is nearly drowned by the rising of the water level when the aforementioned gangly child enters the tub. Still, they manage to make enough room to play, a task which could delight them for hours if their teeth didn't start chattering at the 30 minute mark. (There's a drought in these parts people--a person can't just add hot water to the tub willy nilly.)

But. As much as they love it, bathtime is, for me, a logistical nightmare. A grand pain in the ass. In fact, just the other day, my son and I had the following conversation in Target:

Son: Mommy, can I take a bath tonight?
Me: No. You took one yesterday.
Son: Pleeeeease?!?!?
Me: No!
Son: But, mommy, I'm so dirty! Look! Look, I stink!
Me: Not! tonight!

Afterward I realized that the shoppers around us must have been full-on judging me for refusing my child's pleas for good hygiene. Well, people of Target, I know that, in our house, bathtime has very little to do with bathing and everything to do with breaking out the Spongebob foaming shaving cream/body soap and the squirty Spiderman toys that came in the Cap'n Crunch box.

Still, though child-washing breaks my back and inspires grumbling at the gallons of water sloshed on the floor, their baths do me good, too. I'll admit it: I love my children more when they're clean. Some people get that feeling from watching their children sleep. But for me, there's nothing more adorable, more satisfying and huggable than a squeaky clean kid in fresh pajamas. It's even better when they're babies, when they climb up in your lap post-bath and you get to bury your nose in their soft, lavender-scented hair (which was, only an hour prior, crusted over with syrup and yogurt).

My freshly scrubbed children are sleeping next to me right now. And yes, their slack-jawed slumbering faces look angelic. But it's the scent of tear-free shampoo and Spongebob body soap that makes me misty.

Sigh. I can't wait until next week, when I finally let them bathe again.

Why I grew 20 more gray hairs today

Well, we're all sick. Again. Now it's some nameless virus that isn't the flu but feels only one degree less horrible than the flu. It's Owen and me this time. Sore, sore throat, stuffiness, fever of the body and fever of the...cabin.

We have not done one fun thing all winter, I swear. Not one. The closest we've come to fun was driving by the mall one day. We waved at the play area in the mall, waved at the train table in the bookstore, waved at storytime. "Hello, fun things!" we called. "See you in April." (Maybe I'm exaggerating a wee bit but it surely does not FEEL like it.)

The illness gave me 10 gray hairs. The other 10 came from the IT department at the venerable institution where I work. Remember when I mentioned the inventory program that they wanted to run on my laptop? Well that must have been some powerful program, cause it crashed my hard drive. And oh, by the way, we lost all your data oops.

Let's do a run down of the data I lost:

2 semesters worth of handouts, lectures, essay assignments, and exams? Check.
All family pictures taken since last summer? Check.
Every single one of my bookmarks? Check.
Current emails and e-address book? Check.
All the patterns, tutorials, and craft ideas I've collected for 6 months? Check.
The nearly finished, put hours of time into it digital scrapbook I'd been working on for Paige? Check.

I'm usually pretty good about backing up data, and I do have a backup for my less recent teaching materials, but I haven't backed up in awhile (obviously), and I've been really lazy about backing up my personal stuff.

At least I still have my health.

Oh....wait. No I don't.
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Because I don't have anything to say...

{Dave Walker cartoon via How About Orange}