air fresheners and other frightening tales from inside the home
I think I may have a problem.
I was making a simple shopping list for our big outing later this afternoon (Costco plus baby equals Big Outing) and I thought ‘hey I think I have some coupons in that drawer in the kitchen.‘ Then I OPENED that drawer in the kitchen and my life flashed before my eyes and after I unburied myself from all the stuff that flew out at me, I decided that maybe- just maybe- it was time to clean out the two aptly-named ‘Junk Drawers’ in our kitchen. That’s when I found- along with many other random, odd things and lots of expired coupons- those seven un-used plug-in air fresheners. Varying brands and sizes, and one even has a fan. However, none with an actual fragrance thingie to put in them to make my house smell nice.
The scary thing? THAT’S NOT EVEN ALL OF THEM. I’m pretty sure there’s at least one downstairs in the laundry room, not plugged in and also without a smelly-thingie, that has a nightlight on it. And there may even be 1 or 2 others randomly scattered around the house. That makes like 10 of them! Not even being used!
A couple of weeks ago, I bought two of those Febreze ones that are supposed to be ‘Noticeable’, hence the name. They have 2 scents in each refill and they switch periodically so your brain doesn’t get used to one smell all the time. I actually bought refills for both of them! One is plugged in behind our couch, and the other is in our bedroom. Our house smells good, mostly. Who knows if I’ll be able to keep up with refilling those.
Part of the problem is that our house always seems to have a FUNK. With a baby who poops a lot (hey, she does. Like 3 times a day sometimes!) so the garbage is always filled with diapers and two cats who have been regularly peeing on the carpet downstairs (OMG I SO WANT TO GET RID OF THE CATS BUT MY HUSBAND IS PUNISHING ME BECAUSE I’M THE ONE WHO WANTED THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. STUPID RETRIBUTION.) there’s just a smell. And at times I become obsessed with covering it up. And since I can’t remember to spray a regular air freshener in the room eleventy thousand times a day (seriously, who does that?) I figure something I can plug in and forget about is perfect.
The problem? Is that I DO forget about them. I always forget to buy refills for the ones I have. They’ll sit there in the wall for months after they’ve emptied, all sticky and gross-looking, not emanating a pleasant scent like they’re supposed to. (SIDENOTE: Is that by any chance a fire hazard? I should probably Google that) Eventually I’ll unplug them and apparently throw them in a random drawer in the kitchen. Then I’m at the store and I’m all ‘hey look, plug-in thingie refills are on sale! but wait, which brand do I have? AirWick? Glade? Febreze? Smells-a-lot?‘ (okay so I made that last one up) ‘And where did I put them again? I don’t even know where they are in the house…‘ So I give up and just buy a whole new apparatus with a new refill.
And that’s how I ended up with 5 bazillion of them sitting in a junk drawer in my kitchen. And how I almost died this morning when I was buried under them. True story.
where there’s whining, there’s a reason.
If you haven’t experienced it for yourself yet, let me tell you: Parenting is an adventure. It’s full of drama, suspense, and mystery. Half the time, I feel like a detective trying to figure out why she’s crying, why she’s laughing (seriously, sometimes I wonder…?), what she wants to eat, why did her diaper look like THAT? why won’t she just GO TO SLEEP? It never ends.
Every time that Maggie leaves her normally good routine of sleeping through the night and we have a few rough ones, we always forget that the last time it happened, there was a major reason for it. Back in February, she had an ear infection. In April, she had hand-foot-and-mouth disease. Both times we initially thought ‘It must be teeth!’ and lamented the fact that she had like TWENTY-SOME MORE OF THEM, and oh my WORD how will we survive them all if this is how she acts when she’s getting a little tooth? (and maybe one of us has thrown a pacifier or two against the wall at 3am. Maybe. It wasn’t me. It was me.) But then, a few days later, there was a totally different explanation- a real, possibly serious one that involved a trip to the doctor- and boy did we feel stupid.
So two Thursdays ago when she was up most of the night and I only got 4 hours of sleep, I tried to remind myself that there is always a reason. Sure enough, two days later, she had a runny nose, and by Sunday night she was pretty sick. All week she fought a fever and a nasty sore throat, and we ended up at the doctors again (no strep, thankfully) It was a rough week for all of us, but over and over, we tried to remind ourselves that for Maggie, it was even worse! Even though she’s rapidly turning into a ‘kid’ much more than she is a ‘baby’ (but I will still call her The Baby for as long as I want, thankyouverymuch.) she’s still so little and doesn’t understand why she feels so crappy. She just knows that she does, and she lets us hear about it.
A lot.
At all hours of the day and night.
ANYWAY. Where was I?
SO! We had a sick baby all week. Explanation for all the crankiness, clingy-ness, non-sleeping-ness for days.
BUT OH WAIT. There’s another explanation.
Four other explanations- in the form of molars that just broke through the gums. FOUR OF THEM AT ONCE, PLUS THE SORE THROAT AND COLD, OH MY GOD MY POOR KID. Dan noticed what we thought was one molar on Saturday, and today at her 15-month checkup she was sitting on my lap facing me and doing that “I’m gonna flip myself backwards upside down and get a head-rush!” thing, and I could see all four molars, plain as can be, right there.
And we spent the whole week whining about how WE were tired, and WE felt like crap. While my child was sick with The Virus From Hell and also having 16 (count ‘em!!) sharp corners shoved through her gums.
Wow. She’s such a freaking trooper.
so glad that week is over.
I am happy to report that yes, in fact, we did make it through Thursday night vomit-free. The last 2 nights, actually! So yay! However, Thursday night did include lots of interrupted sleep, so much so that I only logged about 4 1/2 hours when it was all over.
Normally, not a huge issue, if it’s a day when we are staying home and I can be lazy and tired and possibly take a nap. But Fridays are work days for me, and I had a meeting downtown with a client so I needed to moderately coherent. Never did I wish I was a coffee drinker more than Friday morning. The meeting was fine though (a little less productive than I had hoped, and it wasn’t because I was comatose and drooling on the conference table. The project is stuck in a ‘getting-ready-to-get-ready’ pattern that is putting a damper on things.) After the meeting was over, I walked a few blocks to my favorite restaurant to get some lunch and also some take-out for dinner. I felt a little bit like a loser eating lunch by myself (am I the only one who feels weird about that?) but after my first bite of java fried rice, I got over it and was in tastebud heaven. I wish I could eat there every week like I did when I worked in town, but I’ll take what I can get.
Last night my darling, lovely, awesome husband took over baby monitor duty so I was able to get some sleep. 10 hours, in fact. Maggie only got up once around 4am (and Dan took care of it!) and we all slept until 9. NINE! Angels sang and butterflies fluttered and unicorns danced when I rolled over and saw 9:03 on the clock this morning.
And we may have discovered another big reason for Maggie’s ridiculously tough week. Not only did she have The Cold & Sore Throat From Hell, but we are 99% sure we can see and feel her first molar on the right side. FUN! I love when all this stuff coincides, it makes for a great week. AHEM.
Now we are about to leave for a party at Dan’s co-worker’s house. The last (and only) time we took Maggie to their house, she was about 5 months old, and all she did was scream. Hopefully that doesn’t happen tonight, or I may just end up in a padded room somewhere.
Happy weekend, everyone!
