In Like a Lion!

Happy Anniversary, Mum and Dad!

Photo courtesy of my Uncle Dave.

It's March 3rd and I'm already behind!

First, a quick resolution check-in. For the first half of February, my New Year's Resolution to keep it simple went right off the rails. Unless you think sitting around whining about how much I need a tropical vacation counts as keeping it simple. Because that's all I did. That, and eat junk.

Mid-month I gave myself a mental slap in the face and decided to get my you-know-what together. That doesn't mean I've stopped telling anyone who will listen that I need a week in the southern U.S. to get me through the rest of this rotten winter. Frankly, I think the dogs are sick of hearing it. But I did save more money this month by not shopping at any mega-super-colossal-centres, and I got back to my plan to do just a little work every night on the dining room. As of last night, the ceiling is finished (though I'm thinking of adding a coat of textured paint to hide my terrible plastering job) and the walls are primed. Pretty soon, I may have before-and-after pictures to share. Stay tuned!

Rosemary's Baby's therapy wasn't going so well today. He was just having an off day, stimming more than usual and really unfocused. When this happens, I have a method. First, I worry incessantly about what could've happened to cause it. Is the paint smell in the dining room stronger for him than it is for the rest of us? Can he feel some sort of air pressure change that we don't know about yet? Did he eat a pretzel when I wasn't looking?

Then, when I've spent a respectable amount of time fretting over something I clearly can't control, I decide it's time to make the best of the situation and help the kid out. So at this point, his tutor and I let him have a little sensory integration fun. Since this dining room job started, there's been a big bucket of drywall compound sitting in the middle of the room and I've been chasing him away from it constantly. Today we let him have a little tub of it to play with on a piece of cardboard at the table. Here are the completely predictable results:

Playing with drywall mud is serious business.

It was at about this time that the hand-flapping started...

...resulting in this. But all over the house.

I'll spend this evening scraping up dry chunks of plaster off of every surface in the house. I think we can all agree, I have no one but myself to blame.