1.36 Gallons of Pine Sol

.........an entire bottle of red nail polish, intruders, naked kids running around in the front yard and a gob of green, runny poop that was prone to leaving a trail behind it's depositer. That's what my day consisted of yesterday. Nothing like bringing it home and getting right back down to reality.





The whole commercial size, industrial strength Pine Sol thing actually took place 5 nights ago but the piney clean smell still lingers so much so that the headache that accompanies it still lingers. And I am still mopping up soapy floors. How exactly does one go about cleaning up soap anyway???? I have learned through this endeavor that it is a life long task. Aubrey, in all of her Aubrey ways, was scaling the utility room room cabinets to get purified water as she knocked over the monstrous bottle of Pine Sol. It hit the hard floor with a thud and succeeded in breaking open the plastic lid that contained its aromatic, piney fresh contents. We have all but ridden ourselves of chemicals and switched completely over to natural cleaning products...except for the Pine Sol which neither Brad nor I could bring ourselves to part with. Suffice it to say that it will probably be a long while before any of us are ever wanting to smell its lovely scent again. It poured forth saturating the entire floor and then snaking its way along right up under the washer and dryer and water softener. Given the limited amount of space in there moving any of them was out of the question. Brad cleaned up what we could but the smell still lingers strongly throughout the house and sits in its aromatic state under the washer and dryer. On a good note, the house smells fresh and clean everytime you walk through the door despite the shape it happens to be in and the devastation that may have been hurled upon it in a rush to get out the door on time. But the headache from smelling Pine Sol 24/7 can be unbearable on some days. And today happened to be one of those days.





As our morning went through its routine I quickly realized we are down to nearly nothing worthwhile in the house to eat. Certainly nothing healthy and no fruits and veggies around and no eggs to concoct something. We have gotten a little lax in really focusing on the health end of the spectrum. Many trips to Sonic and Cici's and a bunch of boxed stuff around here to hurry things up and relieve me while the exhaustion of being pregnant kind of sets in. I was left with pancake ingredients as my only option left to feed 6 hungry children ready for breakfast. After mixing them up, the pancake stuff that is, and getting everybody fed....with a shortage of syrup, I might add.....we moved on to tackle the day's projects. Grayson was off to mow and Evye now had dishes and clothes since Grayson would be tied up outside for a large part of the day. After an unusual, seemingly infinite, amount of whining on both of their parts to say that my patience was being tried and tested was putting it mildly. After an absurd 3 hrs of labor on their parts their jobs were kind of nearing completion. Grayson had finally succeeded in making his way to the front to mow as the doorbell rang. I figured it was him finding yet another reason to avoid the task at hand. But, in he came reporting that there were 2 people here to ask about the house. I must say that in small town west TX people do not know what it is to call a phone number. They stop by and ask...never once noticing the phone number on the sign. Hurriedly pulling Garrett and Gavin out of the tub they were playing in I set off for the front door despite my lack of a bra and makeup and dawned in oversized pajama pants with a massive red t-shirt. I was met by a couple that indeed wanted info on the house. He wanted to see the back of the house so I told him he was welcome to walk around but to come back if they were truly interested and they were welcome to see the inside at around 5 this evening. That would give me time to pull the house together and have everyone make their beds and GET DRESSED. We have done amazingly better maintaining a constant state of neatliness but it was still far from showable in my perfectionist mentality. They began walking around back as I headed back inside. The wife looked at her husband pleadingly and asked if she could just see the inside. I jumped in and said "Oh, you are welcome to. Come back at 5 tonight. It really is not ready to show and that will give the children and I time to get everything in order and have naps over with. She insisted the neatness did not matter. I assured her it DOES matter a ton and that we have many small children. As she walked back toward the front door I grew a little more firm as I insisted they visit us again tonight to take a tour, we were not ready at the present moment and they could come back this evening. She WALKED THROUGH THE DOOR!!!! AND HE JUST FOLLOWED!!!! One of the older ones brought it to my attention that Garrett was running around in the front yard completely naked and had been the entire time I was trying to deal with these people. And indeed he was as naked as a jay bird. I instructed Evye to diaper him and get him dressed. As I turned to man the naked baby, tune in to the diapered one I held in my arms.....and had been holding since this whole escapade started......and the many children milling about my legs I took my arm off the wall that barred off the house. With that the couple marched right in and continued to make their way through our home. I was appalled. What people in their right mind ignore what someone has said and then continue to walk right in and take a tour themselves???!!!! And she was barefooted!!!! Ugh! Now.....our floors would never in a lifetime meet OSHA standards but some foreign person's barefeet walking all over the floors my baby crawls on was just disgusting. Where had she been that morning and had those barefeet now walking through my house been in her goat pasture before arriving at my front door? What was on the bottom of her barefeet that were walking all over the floor that my baby was about to crawl on?????? And who knew if she had any fungal thing going on down there. Even a podiatrist tells you to keep your shoes on in his office....at least til you are up on the table and have your feet dangling high above the floor. Being embarrassed was soon overcome by complete and total disbelief and then anger. I now had strange people walking through our home and Brad was 30 miles away on shift. And then she proceeded to go around and beat on the walls! Not sure just where that was going and why she even bothered. Was she making sure it wasn't a mobile home or something??? It was a little disturbing to have a strange, uninvited, barefooted intruder of a woman now beating on our walls. At that point I was really glad we have nothing on our walls since surely it would've been hammered off by the time she got done wit her blunt force blows. By that time I was mad enough that I showed them every nook and cranny we have. If they wanted to see it that desperately than they were for sure going to see every square inch it had to offer. So, still in my pajamas with unclothed children following me around, no bra and no makeup on my part, I led them through our home, feeling far from generous.....and a little violated. After the grand tour was over he offered us a laugh-worthy 55,000 less than the asking price. After seeing the outside and falling in love with the workshop we upped it to a mere 30,000 below our asking price. Trying to be as kind as I could given the situation I said there was no way we would even consider it and we were firm on our price, as it is more than fair and actually much less than what we have already put into it. And they walked away. I stood in the green wet grass, gazing in disbelief as they walked away, that someone had actually just walked through our home completely and totally uninvited and my children stood unclothed in their underwear alone in the yard. My headache didn't seem to help matters any.





Not long after, an entire bottle of red nail polish was broken on the kitchen cabinets. Anyone ever attempting to clean up nail polish....red, no less......is in for a long hard scrubbing session. More detours in our day. I had Grayson and Evye scrubbing with me. Thankfully it easily scrubs off of ceramic kitchen sinks....though tile counters are much different. The house now smells as though we have just Pine Sol-ed the Wal Mart nail salon. So much for Tylenol even coming close to making a dent in a headache.





The rest of of the day was followed up by the finishing up of clothes folding, cleaning bathrooms and tending to a very sunburned Grant....who developed blisters by mid afternoon from yesterday's long day in the pool....despite the generous amount of sunscreen applied. And, of course, miraculously coming up with a dinner plan despite the lack of groceries still remained. So much for the needed trip into town. I was glad to dismiss that idea...though I came close to packing everybody up and going at 8 this evening. It sounded blissful. The Saturday crowds would have died down and we would have, almost, the entire store to ourselves. The children love getting out at night and tend to be night owls such as I have always been. It didn't seem to matter that their bedtime is a consistent 8 pm every night. A town trip wasn't seeming too formidable at the moment. They all are flexible enough and love to go enough that I knew they would love it....except for maybe Gavin who is deeply in love with his bed come bedtime. Given Grant's pain and the fact that the trip would have gone way into the wee hours of the night where the children were concerned I wisely opted against it and put them to bed. Just as I gave instructions for Grayson to help with the teeth brushing, Aubrey to pick up and Evye to dress everyone in pj's I discovered a dried muddy texture on Garrett's hands....and smeared across his chubby little tummy. Dismissing it with the fact he had been outside with Grayson as he had watered the plants I sent him off for pj's. Remembering that someone had said he had a dirty diaper I called him back to me...since I cannot smell these days....and laid him down. As I went to lift his leg I firmly planted my hand right in the green that was now running in plops down his leg. I neared puking and removed myself long enough to get a grip. I went back to changing him and, once cleaned up as best as possible, sent him off to the tub for Evye to bathe...since bathing the younger ones is her absolute favorite thing in the world to do. I proceeded to backtrack and brainstorm about the things he had been on and the stuff he had touched. I sprayed and disinfected....NOT with Pine Sol.....all of the areas I spied poop or knew he had touched. He came out smelling much better and alot like baby wash and shampoo from the small scents my nose could pick up.

The never ending day was summed up when all of the children were eventually bedded down and I was greeted by the stink of a lifetime upon entering the utility room. Wisely assuming it was the towels I emptied the washer to go ahead and start the towels before I headed to bed. I picked up the towels only to expertly dump the entire contents of a bowl of cereal out everywhere as the milky curdled stink puffed out aromatically to mix with the Pine Sol heady scent already present in the room. It didn't take much to sum up that some unknown person in the house never found it within themselves to remember that they had spilled an entire bowl of cereal by not sitting at the table with it and resorted to cleaning it up with a kitchen towel instead of the paper towels that tend not to stink as royally.

So, on that lovely note....I think I'm going to bed.