Then chew it.

I wish I could go somewhere sunny and warm.

We can't afford cereal. With that statement, I'm not looking for sympathy or solutions or coupons. It's just a fact of life. We have 7 cereal eaters in our home and that means we can easily go through a box and a half a day. Even at Aldi prices, that is around $4 a day. It's just too much. So I am feeding them toast, cream of wheat or oatmeal. There is a lot of protesting. The protesting makes me want to pull my hair out. YOU KNOW WHAT...STARVING CHILDREN WOULD KILL FOR A BOWL OF CREAM OF WHEAT!! JUST EAT IT. OTHERWISE GO HUNGRY UNTIL LUNCH. I am becoming one of those moms. One of those really mean moms. "You kids, you just take your legs for granted, you know, like nothing could ever happen to them. Well, let me tell you something: that is just wishful thinking. There's meningitis, there are car accidents, I could be giving you a spanking and accidentally snap your spinal cord. Every day is a lottery, and first prize is that you don't have to scoot yourselves around town on a skateboard with your hands. You think about that." Ten points if you know what that quote is from.

I headed down to the basement to get away from the whining to throw a load of laundry in. I had to traverse my laundry mountain. Yes, it is back. You may remember that I conquered the laundry mountain back in December or January...one of those months. The mountain was gone and I was all caught up on laundry doing 2-3 loads per day. It was wonderful. Well, I got behind again. So I have a mountain to traverse to get to the washer. You might ask why I don't put it in manageable baskets. I don't have enough baskets to hold all the laundry in the mountain. And I am not making a mountain out of a molehill here. It's really a mountain.

Anyway, traversed the mountain to find water leaking from an unknown source on the basement floor. I sopped up the water that was standing, so that I could figure out where it was coming from...washer, crack in floor or wall. It seems that it is seeping in from where the wall meets the floor. It is seeping so slowly that I can't see it move really. It just seems to appear. That's a good thing, right? It's not gushing or running. Luckily(!) my laundry mountain was there to sop up most of it too.

So I have the kids come down and help me basket up as much of the laundry mountain as we can and put the baskets into my office. There are 11 baskets of dirty laundry piled behind me at this very moment and what looks like a laundry plateau left in the laundry room. But at least its away from the leaking water and the sump pump.

Now, I'm not really familiar with what a sump pump does or how it works. I think it is supposed to pump water before it reaches a level that would go into your basement out to somewhere else. Is this accurate? Our sump pump has been plugged into the wall since May 25, 2001 when we moved into this house. I have never once, since that date to today, heard the pump go on or do anything that resembles pumping. Does that mean it's broken? I don't know. I would assume since there is water in my basement that it is not doing it's job. So my MIL tells me to take off the lid and get a flashlight and look down in the hole. It takes about 5 minutes for someone to find me a flashlight, even though I bribe them by telling them that whoever finds me the flashlight will be my favorite, and when they return, they bring me one of those emergency wind-up flashlights. So I wind up the flashlight and look down the hole while holding a stick to poke the pump and also hold my cell phone. I poked the pump and all that happened was it dislodged a lot of rust that had built up. I think the pump is out of commission.

By this time, a little more water has pooled up along the wall again. All at once five children are in my face demanding lunch, diaper changes, a bike ride, me to find a lost DS and to go to their friends house. Then my phone rings and it is Chris wanting me to run to the accountant's office and pick up some form we need for our taxes. I hastily yell out some instructions regarding diaper changes and lunch and go to the accountant's office. As I pull up to the office building, I look in the mirror and notice that my hair (which I haven't washed yet today) is held back by a headband that I found in the laundry pile. An ugly headband. Then I look down at my shirt. There is some remnants of cream of wheat on my shoulder. Also some snot from Lizzie's nose. And a large spot of water from I don't know what. I am about to walk into the office looking like I just got off the boat. That was one of my dad's favorite sayings for when someone looked like crap.

I head up to the accountant and get whatever it was that was so urgent that I had to leave my house at that second and drop everything and go. As I am walking down the stairs in the office building, I feel like I have two gigantic weights on shoulders. I start walking really, really s l o w l y. I think about my options for the rest of the day. I could go home and tackle the mountain and find a solution to the water and clean up all the messes and kiss the boo boos and endure today. Or I could take the $50 in my checking account and get gas and head for somewhere warmer. But that $50 would only get me to probably around Columbus and is Columbus really that much warmer than Detroit? It's not. I checked. Today Detroit is 54 and Columbus is 49. That cheered me up a little. Detroit is 54. It's capri weather! And it is sunny out. I got my wish: it's sunny and warm right where I am.

So, I'm here with my mountain and my standing water and some whiny kids, but come what may, and love it!!