The Weekend Score

It was an interesting weekend at my house. Here’s the score:

Household mishaps caused by child: 3

Unholy odors: 1

Mysterious unexplained noises: 1

Injuries to me as a result of mysterious unexplained noises: 2

Strange beady coincidences: 1

Beads bought as a result: 5

Craft experiments: 2

Packages shipped: 1

Packages received: 1

Jewelry projects completed: 1.95 (just missing a clasp on a bracelet)

Fevers: 1

Headaches: 1

Like I said. It was interesting. Keep reading for details, but I warn you, some will be graphic (there is a 6 year old boy involved, remember?) and it was a LOOOONGG weekend so this is a LOOOONNNGG story.

It all started Friday night when I got home. My mom had picked the kidlet up from YMCA camp and we had planned to all go to dinner together. Part way through dinner it became apparent that all was not well with the child (although he perked up enough to scarf down ice cream for dessert). I took his temp when we got home and it was 102.

He’d finally caught my cold, darnit! I was so sure we were out of the woods on that, but no. It was inevitable, I suppose.

I get him ready for bed and give him some Children’s Tylenol to combat the fever and as a last step, we head to his bathroom to brush his teeth.

Now, thanks to the great flood of 2009 (also caused by the kid), his bathroom is kinda torn up. The flooring is ripped out and the toilet, shower rod and curtain and a buncha other miscellaneous stuff from the workers are all piled in the bathtub waiting to be put back as soon as I get the new flooring picked out.

The sink still works, though.

However, as we enter the bathroom, I suddenly notice an odor. And when I say odor, I mean UNHOLY STENCH FROM HELL, of course. I know right away that it’s urine (hey, I warned you this was gonna get graphic) but I can’t figure out where it’s coming from since he’s been using my bathroom or the one downstairs.

OR SO I THOUGHT.

My first thought is maybe he’s come in during the night and forgotten that there’s no toilet and peed on the floor, but no, that wasn’t it.

After some searching and, unfortunately, following my all-too-sensitive nose, I realized that the kid has been…

Wait for it…

PEEING IN THE BATHTUB!

Yeah, that bathtub. The one that’s so chock full of stuff that I can’t lift or move or effectively wash off. The stuff that is now all covered with PEE!

His explanation?

“I just wondered what it would be like to pee in a bathtub.”



What IS it with the male species? Is it the testosterone? Is it some leftover early mammalian DNA that says “please pee on stuff so we know who it belongs to”? WHAT?

ARRRGGHHHHHH!!!!

So, there it is. 9 PM on a Friday night. I am exhausted from a very long week and have a killer headache. The kid has a 102 fever and I am about to throw up from the pee smell in the bathroom and am wondering what on earth to do about all of this.

And you know what? I’ll be really honest. I shut the dang bathroom door. Put the kid to bed. Took a shower (and cried while I was in there) and then watched something mind-numbing on TV until I fell asleep.

After all, what was going to happen? The pee police would come and issue me a ticket for not cleaning it up? It was gonna get grosser? Maybe a little bit, but it had already reached epic proportions anyway so really not much room there.

I tackled the mess the next morning and made the kidlet help me to the extent he was able (which, frankly, was not much). There’s nothing I can do about what is still trapped under the toilet. It will have to wait until the guys come back to finish the job. What a nice surprise for them!

On the up side, the kidlet was feeling better so I figured we could slip in a couple of quick errands and at least get him out of the house for a bit. I headed off to mail the 9 POUND PACKAGE OF BEADS to the contest winner.

Then we headed to Tall Mouse (a local craft store which I find to be far superior to Michael’s) because I had promised the kidlet that he could try my new Fiskar’s craft drill (because I am a girly-girl and too chickensh...er...afraid to handle a real drill with like electrical power and the serious possibility of drilling holes in my own fingers and whatnot):



He’s crazy about tools and because of this drill, he was actually showing some interest in doing a craft project (okay, really he just wanted to drill holes in things, but I figured I better provide approved drilling surfaces if I didn’t want my walls to look like Swiss cheese).

And to my surprise, when we got to Tall Mouse, they actually had a craft show going on in their parking lot! Of course, I had to go over and see if there was any jewelry being sold and how the vendors were doing – I’m always looking for small, local venues that I could sell at.

Not much jewelry, but shockingly, a lampworker! In fact, a very well-known lamwporker: Cathi Milligan from Beadbrains!

She had the most DARLING little cupcake and dessert beads so of course, I had to buy some:






I highly recommend checking out her store on Etsy because she has cute little hearts, other desserts (cake and pie), funny little monsters and other beads. She’s also written a macramé book called “Mod Knots.”

I wanted to stay longer, talk more and maybe pick out more beads, but it was quite hot out and the kidlet had used up his store of energy and was starting to wilt so off we went home with a brief stop at Burger King to grab lunch to take home.

Because I am such a good Mom – no chicken soup for colds at my house. Nope – chicken nuggets and french fries. But hey, free Transformer toy.

After lunch, we started our craft project.



As expected, kidlet pooped out once the drilling part was over and went to take a nap.

I kept playing.

After painting my disks with an ivory base, I mixed and dripped some alcohol inks all over them.



Then broke out some of my old rubber stamps and stamped some words on each bead.




Did some judicious sanding and added some bronze and gold metallic rub-on’s around the edges.




Finally, I coated everything with a glossy spray varnish.





Oh, the heart was my “test” piece. On that one, I added some glitter glue, tiny beads, punched some leaf shapes out of decorative paper and coated the whole thing with Diamond Glaze. I didn’t end up liking any of that part so didn’t do it on the disk beads.

I think the next step may be to glue on a couple of flat-back crystals and/or charms and then I’m going to string the disks on either a braid of waxed linen or on some leather with a couple of large metal beads.

Which brings us to Sunday.

A day on which I was suddenly and violently awakened by the sound of my back door slamming shut so hard that it shook the entire house. Whereupon I leaped out of bed and went running to investigate…and promptly got my feet tangled up in my pajama bottoms and fell hard on both my knees. They are now bruised, swollen and the skin is scraped from the carpet. I jumped up and ran a few more steps, this time got my toe tangled in the carpet and sprained it (see? this is why I am afraid of things like electric drills!). And all this time a small voice in my brain is yelling “Why are you running TOWARDS the noise? If someone is in the house, that’s the LAST thing you ought to do.” But, I am in a panic so I am not listening to the rational part of my brain.

I get downstairs and the door is shut. No sign of anyone. Nothing missing.

I run back upstairs to check on the kidlet thinking maybe he did it, but he’s fast asleep in his bed (where *I* should be because it’s 5 AM on a freakin’ Sunday, darnit!)

Now I’m really freaked out. See, normally, no one could access the back door because the only place it leads to is the garage and the garage door can only be lifted from inside with the control.

Normally.

But the garage door has been broken for the past few months (see, I’ve been a bit busy dealing with floods and fires and funerals lately). So, normally, I lock the back door, but of course, I forgot to do that. But still, the garage door makes a HORRIBLE amount of noise going up and I just know I would have heard it if someone had come in that way. Plus, when I checked it was down and I certainly would have heard it going back down if someone went out that way.

So, no one came through the garage. The kid didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t propped open and closed by itself (it’s on a spring so it slams shut unless you stick something heavy like a big chair to prop it).

Freaky.

But, since everyone and everything is safe, I’ve decided not to worry about it.

Kidlet felt a lot better on Sunday and finished his project:


His first piece of jewelry! I’m so proud! I did the jump rings for him, but he did all the painting, told me what order to put the pieces in and he picked out what color cord he wanted them on.

Then he went off to watch TV, but in the process managed to break the one remaining door on the TV cabinet (he’d destroyed the other one earlier this year) and then spilled apple juice all over the kitchen floor.

Man, I miss the days when he used to take naps. Naps are good. Bring back naps.

Before I have a nervous breakdown.

But, at least he was feeling better. I can always tell he’s recovering when he starts to get destructive around the house LOL!

I did manage to get some work done on a couple of my own projects. The super-dangly cotton candy bracelet is finished with the exception of a clasp. I couldn’t find anything in my stash that I liked with it (how is it possible to have a huge stash of beads and STILL not have the “right” thing to finish a design?) so I had to order a couple of things.

Then there’s the black and red necklace I started during my “gloomy” period a couple of weeks ago, but just now got finished.

It’s very goth/vampire queen/flamenco dancer, but I haven’t decided on an official name yet.

Whew! It was a long weekend. I was ALMOST glad to go back to work today.

Happy Monday, everyone!

KJ