Just do this.

Today Walter the Electrician put the light switches in my basement. I HAVE LIGHT!

I missed church for the fifth week in a row. There have been electrical problems, septic problems, flooding problems and now a death in T's family, all of these occuring just so that I can't make it to worship.

It hurts.

So I didn't do anything today. I had the kids while E and T went to temple and a funeral, but I stayed late in my room this morning and then we did arts and crafts all day.

I even sang some hymns while I ignored the piles of dishes in the sink.

We made some Halloween crafts and while R was at a playdate, I was asleep and J was sucked into the Buzz Lightyear movie, I had some serious downtime.

R came home in the afternoon and caught me in the kitchen, squishing my stomach into the flatter shape I'd like it in. I sometimes spend a good five minutes in front of the refrigerator cursing my stomach for being hungry and round at the same time. Evil stomach.

She asked me what I was doing and I told her I wanted a snack but my belly wasn't letting me have one. She thought for a minute and then asked me why I didn't just make it flat.

"I'm trying to!" I told her. "Have any ideas?"

She thought again and then dropped onto the floor, belly down.

"Just do this!" And then she wiggled in a little army crawl. "And you could do this for walking!"

Ah, yes. The simple solution. Diet abandoned.

Just kidding.

But you might recall my mentioning no one here had gone shopping in a while?

All week the list kept growing and growing and T has been crazy busy and the house has been crazy busy with runny noses and workmen and whatnot. It's the whatnot that really messes up the day.

Anyway, last night before E and T headed out for some function or another, E took the initiative of going to the store. He took the list I had put together and got a few pointers from T and headed out.

He returned with everything on the list and then some. There is more junk food in this house than has ever been in it since I've been here. T was apalled at the selection of chips and cookies he brought home.

On the plus side, there were two kinds of hummus, which is low-cal but the Swiss chocolate will surely balance that out and I promise you the eight different kinds of cheese did not go unnoticed. STUPID REFRIGERATOR.

And so my only defense is to walk around glaring at my stomach. Or to army crawl for the rest of my life, but winter is coming so...

Last night I stayed up to watch the most important show on Earth (The Soup) which didn't air until midnight. Afterward, I was just heading to bed when the doorbell rang, close to 1 am. Willie immediately started barking like an idiot and I ran upstairs to let E and T in, who had locked themselves out on departure earlier in the evening.

A few weeks back they did this for the first time on my watch.

That night I had the kids all in bed early, I got some erious paperwork done, skipped TV and went to bed early myself. On the nights that I have the kids, I take the monitor down to my room and put it on the nightstand with the volume relatively low.

I have this amazing gift for hearing babies cry in my sleep. And nothing else.

I was dead-to-the-world-unless-you're-a-baby asleep when E and T got home and realized they were locked out. They called my phone, which was on vibrate and I don't hear unless I want to. And I didn't.

They rang the bell, which was broken at the time, knocked and called some more. There were texts, voicemails and more pounding on the door.

All I heard was Willie bark, and after comparing notes with T, it was about ten minutes into the knocking. Before that they had been sporadically calling me between their own conversation for an hour. It was 3 am.

I went back to bed laughing.

And last night I opened the door and told them I was going to stop letting them in.

But to my joy as a result of the chaos and plumbing trouble and lack of electricty of the last few weeks, the upstairs renovation has been postponed and the basement renovation has begun.

The lighting was the beginning. The crack in the foundation is next. The septic is going to be taken care of during all that and then the cleaning crew that was due two weeks ago will be called back to deep clean the basement; when we're sure all the grossness is through.

I will find and murder that noisy cricket before the drywall goes up and by winter there will be carpet and a second, larger playroom for the kids to be couped up in during all the blizzards I am praying for.

I'm already teaching the kids the words to "Let it Snow."