One of those days

We didn't sleep well last night. The cats kept going out, and then meowing to come in again, and then running down the hall meowing... I had a headache when I got up and actually took a short nap later, which is not like me.

All this must be the reason I put the peelings from 8 potatoes down the disposal. I was making scalloped potatoes for dinner. I remember feeling this vague sense of unease about all those potato peelings going down the disposal, but did I act on it? No. Did I think: oh that's right, you're not supposed to put massive quantities of potato peelings down the disposal? No. I put them all down and turned it on. It groaned and spun, and a lot of brown water came up into the sink and whirled around and whirled around and didn't go down and didn't go down, and suddenly I realized I had a problem.

It was 4:40 pm and I needed to put the scalloped potatoes in the oven and go pick up the babies from daycare. I quickly called Rocket Boy at work and described the situation. He thought he might be able to fix the clog, so I didn't try to call a plumber. I picked up the babies and continued making dinner, without a kitchen sink. I had to wash the fish in the bathroom sink.

Even though the scalloped potatoes were in the oven for 75 minutes, they didn't really cook (maybe not cut thin enough?), so the babies wouldn't eat them and instead threw them on the ground. RB then put the boos in the family room behind the baby gate so that he could address the two problems: the clogged drain and the potato-covered floor. I opened the door from the family room to the patio so the boos could play outdoors while Daddy performed miracles.

The babies are getting extremely adventurous. Tonight they climbed on a pile of junk in the side yard and picked up some broken garden lights that RB had tossed there. They brought the broken lights onto the patio and promptly dropped them, shattering the glass. I went to investigate and found them picking up pieces of broken glass and examining them (pause for Mom to scream). I got rid of all the glass, swept up the shards. Then RB came out with the kitchen sink pipes and blew the potato peelings out with the garden hose. "Don't let the babies eat the potato peelings," he ordered me, so I picked up all the peelings I could find scattered on our "lawn" (dry dead grasses). Meanwhile the babies had found a large puddle under the leaking hose and were sitting in it and attempting to drink the water. I decided to ignore that.

I keep wondering whether my inertia where our yard is concerned is related to (1) depression (2) the heat (3) some horrible Ridgecrestian ennui or (4) chronic laziness. Or (5) all of the above. Or maybe it's just because it's a rental house. The yard would be totally wonderful if it were ours and we could put in a new sprinkler system, and some grass, and some xeriscaping, and a vegetable garden. But it isn't ours, so we just barely keep it alive, watering everything by hand with the hose. And it's full of all this weird junk that the babies unerringly find. No matter how much we sweep up, there's always more. Baby A likes to dig in the dirt, and he keeps unearthing butts and other treasures. If a baby ate a cigarette butt, would he get addicted to nicotine?