Well, this weekend I had all kinds of hopes of getting all kinds of things done, but it didn't happen due to the infamous "lost afternoon" syndrome.

On Saturday, we had a garage sale. It was supposed to go from 8-12, but we'd promised the Russell and the neighbor boy we'd let them sell lemonade to make a few dollars. The neighbor boy was already there selling his toys, so it wasn't a big deal, we thought. We sent our neighbor out to get said lemonade at about 930. At about 230 or so she returned. *sigh* At which point, the boys went out of their skins with joy at the prospect of selling prolific glasses of lemonade. (They made $2.50 a piece -- pay dirt for boys!)

Unfortunately, we only have the one picture window and that meant we had to keep an eye on the kids and the garage sale stuff all day. It was upwards of 100 degrees, so it was hotter than Hades (not that I personally know this, mind you...) and I wasn't about to slave over the hot stove nor deal with the dryer going. And there was that thing of being up at 630AM to get everything ready.

In order to watch the kids and sale, we watched the Ninth Gate on TV from netflix, but it was hard to stay interested. For one thing, the movie dragged like an improperly fit artificial limb. And honestly, it seemed like any minute we'd get to figure out what was so damned important about the freaking engravings and how the apparent mimicry was important but that never was revealed. At 5PM, I took the kids off the lemonade stand and made my husband take me out to dinner on our $95 in sales. We may still yet sell that stupid electronic piano, but we didn't actually expect to sell it at the garage sale. I think we're looking at putting an ad in the paper everyone refers to as "The Nickel." You know you've sunk to white trash-hood when you're putting ads in something called,"The Nickel." I tell ya.

Sunday I cleaned the kitchen, did the dishes that had piled up and did about 6 loads of laundry. I am unsure of what my husband did, but I know it wasn't much. He did the floor in the kitchen once. Doing anything to clean our kitchen floor is pretty much a losing proposition because if the kids play in the back yard, they track mud like hell. I am at the point, to where I'd consider putting in a deck in the back to keep the mud to a dull scream. Doing that however, would be kind of like sending an engraved invitation to a variety of crawly critters like scorpions, black widows, and small mammals. I am getting desperate though. So much sand and dirt, so little time.

Russell starts school on August 26. I can't wait. He's bitching about being bored. I'm about ready to throttle him. I've spent so much money and time working to get him fun stuff to do. I play games with him, we work together, play together. It *must* be time for school to start. I remember if I started whining about being bored, I got more yardwork to do than I could stand. I've been refraining from doing that, but have said, I wouldn't mind if he spent the time pulling some weeds up for me and have thanked him blind for yanking one or two.

He needs his friends, his schoolwork, and other things to do. He was ecstatic about getting clam and snail shells from the lake the other day, but now he's bored. *sigh* We went out yesterday for lunch to have a change of scene. I'm looking forward to next weekend when we'll have a birthday party, a visit to Grammy's and the swimming at the "Pond" and picnics. Lots and lots of picnics -- company picnic on Friday and a town picnic to fund the firefighters on Saturday. It'll be non-stop kid action. At which point, the parents will slide the kids into bed and fall asleep in a chair. Between the long hours at work and the long "boring" weekends, I'm sooo very tired.