I'm tired and kind of cranky today. We had a busy weekend. Saturday, Mitch worked on the treehouse and in the yard while I had to get five of us ready for a wedding in Snohomish, and keep all the kids clean and hair-do's intact. H got to go to Abby's Harry Potter birthday party in Shoreline while we were at the wedding, much to J's protests of unfairness. At one point during the wedding, all the kids were playing outside and G fell in the mud. Total destruction of ivory dress and tights. After a collective intake of breath by all adults present, she looked down at her ruined outfit, shrugged, and ran off to keep playing. I like to think it's my excellent parenting skills which led to such a healthy reaction from the same girl who freaked out over a misplaced hair barrett just months before, but most likely it's just some kind of burp in the alignment of the stars or something. We didn't get home until 11pm, but that didn't stop the children from waking at 6am. "IT'S PANCAKE DAY!" Right in my sound-asleep ear.

After pancakes, M and I finished painting our Pumpkin Butter room, then we finished the flea blitz. We poisoned an acre of lawn surrounding the house, the carpets, the animals (again), and what unholy thing we did to Seamus I can't bring myself to talk about. I will post a picture of him as soon as he comes out from under J's bed. We tried all the natural remedies first to rid ourselves of fleas, but now we're bringing out the big guns. No one would have known we had fleas if they didn't love ME so much. M thinks it's because I'm so sour. Because I had a raving fit over an email a preschool mom sent out!!!! In which she used 26 exclamation!!!! points!!!! In one!!!! paragraph!!!!!!!!! Which is one of my biggest!!!!! pet!!!!! peeves!!!!!!!!! No amount of "Island Kate" will ever erase my disdain for the overuse of exclamation points. On the other hand, maybe if I used more exclamation points the fleas wouldn't like me so much. Also, while I'm complaining, I'm going to take a minute to whine about the phrase, "Live. Love. Laugh." These signs are all over every shop on Whidbey, and I'm just really tired of seeing them. Not that there is anything wrong with living, or loving, or laughing, for that matter, they're important things you do every day. Like peeing and pooping. So I got a nice, flat piece of driftwood from the beach, and I am painting my own sign, to hang in my kitchen: "Burp. Fart. Laugh." Oh, wait, I mean: "Burp!!!!!!!! Fart!!!!!!!!! Laugh!!!!!!!"