Ending on a Positive Note: FAIL

The good: We got a lot of yard work done today, all of us outside working on various projects and playing in the dirt. I am sort of a task oriented person (more so now that I have kids; I think I just really need the feedback of seeing things getting accomplished) so watching projects being tended to always puts me in a good mood. And lest you think the kids were neglected, I also had a princess tea party on the newly swept and tidied deck with Addy, and had her help me plant and pot a bunch of flowers. Eli "helped" Jim a lot too. When we were going inside around dinnertime, Addy told me it was the best day ever. Coming from a kid who had been crying over a canceled playdate just hours earlier, that's pretty good.

The bad: We have a leak in our roof, coming down in our linen closet. It's also causing mold on an interior wall of our bedroom.

The good: At least we finally discovered what was going on with the mold situation.

The bad: The roof has to be torn up and fixed along an edge, and it can't happen until it's going to be dry for a few days. Which is literally not due to happen around here for about another two weeks. We have storms in our forecast EVERY. BLOODY. DAY. for the next ten days. This is without question the most sucktastic spring I can ever remember. It also means we can hardly ever mow, and our yard looks terrible in the back and is unusable for playing, and I feel sulky every time I look at it from my kitchen window. I realize these things are small scale, but they do contribute to an overall sense of grump which I have to fight off, or I end up snapping at the kids, who are also going out of their minds from boredom thanks to the two months solid of rain.

The good: At least the forecast of rain gives me a good excuse to skip the nightmare end-of-preschool picnic on Wednesday. And lest you think I'm a spoilsport for calling it a nightmare, let me explain that I spent last Sunday afternoon jammed into an auditorium with literally about ten relatives for every kid in Addy's school, which is also a daycare, and boasts quite a few students. Like, at least a hundred. And there were not enough seats, not even close (it's so comforting when your child's TEACHERS clearly cannot count and sell tickets without considering whether there's even room for each ticket holder to have a seat) and it was a hundred degrees and filled with restless angry people who despite paying money be there to support their kid, would now have to stand to watch other people's kids sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" for forty five minutes until their own child's class had a turn. All this crowding and standing-room-only sitch created a serious fire hazard, as well, and the parking situation was a nightmare. People were grumbling and shifting nervously and sweating, and basically everything about it except the lack of water felt like being aboard the doomed Titanic as the passengers realize there's not nearly enough lifeboats and it's every man for himself.