Diary of a Mad Week- Thurs

5:30am- So, it's early but not the middle of the night. I woke up to Liv crying, or was it laughing? I also thought I heard Dora say "Come on, vamanos", but between Dora playing in my head regardless and having the idea of other worldly voices planted in my head last night by Ghost Hunters, I'm just not sure. Yup she was laughing, yup it was Dora, from a book under the covers (they ALL make noise nowadays!). I could get up, but I still I force Liv to stay in bed with me. She waits it out like a prisoner waiting for her jailer to nod off. She turned on the computer and turned on and off the lights so fast, I felt like doing the Hustle. I gave in around 6:30.

8:15 am- I had plenty of time today, since Aly was not going on the bus and since Grace is still running like a faucet, she's home... at least I didn't have to get her ready. So much for 2 hours free time, though. It's not like I'm trying to get anything done. But it would have been nice to do a couple of loads of laundry without having to worry whether Grace is going through the cat door.

2:15pm- Grace has been trying to escape all day. She's reasoning out how to get to her nemesis...the door chain. It reminds me of that scene in Jurassic Park where the game warden guy is explaining about how the raptors are testing the fences for weaknesses. She had tried smaller boxes, step stools; finally I hear her grunting and groaning. After the grunting stops I see that she has a huge heavy box in front of the door; and her goal was achieved. She was messing with the chain to see how it can be removed. She was still two steps from freedom (she still had to move the big heavy box out of the way), but I shut her down and distracted her as much as I could. Next thing will have to be an invisible Grace-fence.

5:30pm- victory as I get a BM out of Liv. I would have been satisfied if I never saw it again, but that ain't the way life works. It seems there had been no tremors since Mt St Helens erupted on Monday. I went with 'ol reliable...watermelon...

10:30pm- I've been fighting with doing my other job my (not so) real job today, and I'm still doing it. I've fixing 700 orders throughout the day; connection to the network crashing every 15 minutes, my daughters pulling on me for the other 14. That's the only difference between me and Lin: I have this other mistress that pays our bills that I have to pay attention to. Sometimes I feel like I give my parenting job second shrift; but I try not to.

Today was tougher, partly because of the job, partly because it was my first REAL day by myself. Friday's gonna be easier...I hope anyway