Things that annoy me in no particular order

1) When Matt buys a box of 50 doughnut holes and he eats two doughnut holes and I eat FORTY EIGHT doughnut holes.  For the love of all that is holy (HA!) man, buy a bag of doughnut holes without a number on it. I don't want to know.

2) Nate's new obsession with brushing his teeth like a big kid and subsequent screaming when he can't stand at the sink, his eyes barely clearing the rim even on our tallest stool, intoning AHHHHHHH.  AHHHHHH. AHHHHHH. Gleefully.  Until someone sticks a toothbrush in his mouth, which makes him tail-wagging happy.

3)  Hampton Noodle.

4)  What, you want specifics?  a) He's currently chewing on my sock.  It is on my foot; b) he stops periodically to hork up sock fuzz in the vicinity of my foot; c) he eats toys; d) he can shove his head under my typing hand so hard that my hand flies off of the keyboard; e) he then rests his face on my laptop on the dining room table.

5)  Waking Nate up from a nap to pick one of my children up at school because - OH. MY. GOD. I'm not even going to say.  I don't want any of my children to be humiliated by my writing some day, but please, please, someone make it stop, I can't take it.

6)  Collapsed one-hundred-year old sewage pipes.  Related annoyance: Cheerios floating in sewage on my laundry room floor.

7) Casserole clubs.  They really do.  I'm sorry, casserole club lovers, I still think you're wonderful. I don't blame you for your casserole insanity.

8) Rotorooter men who inform my husband that there are tampons wrapped around tree roots in our collapsed 100-year-old sewage line.

9)  This conversation:  Matt:  We've discussed flushing tampons.  NO! FLUSHING! TAMPONS! Me: I haven't, not in years, I swear, I've barely had a period in six years.  Matt:  And yet, you just started having them and mysteriously our collapsed 100-year-old sewer pipe backed up.  Me: Not. It. Matt: ?  Me:  I might have forgotten one or two.  OMIGOD. THEY SAY THEY ARE FLUSHABLE. I am not fishing one out after I've already dropped it.  Matt:  They say they are flushable because they were invented WELL AFTER OUR SEWER PIPE WAS INSTALLED.  They mean, flushable in a toilet connected to sewer pipes installed after 1910.  Me:  Well, it should say that on the packaging then, shouldn't it?  Rotorooter man, staring into his stupid little pipe camera:  It might be a wet wipe.  Matt:  FUME&#^&#%^@*FUMEFUMEFUME.  Me: You are not helping me, rotorooter man.  Matt:  FUME@%#&*#@*FUMEFUMEFUME.  Me:  Oh yeah, well you are not here; one of our children is going to have a colostomy bag installed if he/she/it doesn't knock it off.  Matt: You use wet wipes?  Me:  You have a better method for extracting crusty shit from someone's butt cheeks?  Matt:  ----  Me:  I thought not.  Matt.  NO! FLUSHING! WET! WIPES!

10)   Finally ordering new sheets for our bed in a lovely "cafe" color that ends up being satiny 1970s disco gold/green.   Not shipping them back because I am too cheap to pay return shipping and my punishment shall be: the ugliest new sheets in the history of new sheets.  Let this be a lesson to you all.  White.  You want white sheets.

Things that delight me:  You. Thank you for the lovely comments on the last post. I cried and cried. They grow up, don't they and we can't stop them.  Our surprise extra week of summer. Heaven.  The gorgeous new color Matt painted our kitchen. Hampton's ears. They cross in the middle.  It's ridiculous.  Matt is home early from work!  Good night, sweethearts.

And, I just fished soggy paper shoe stuffing out of Hampton's mouth.  Good feeling gone.