Bed Shopping

My grand plans to scrub the house from top to bottom were sidetracked yesterday by a relapse with Spencer. Pool little guy is just sick of being sick.

Today is going to be a better day, though. You know how I know? Because I had chocolate cake for breakfast. (I waited until the kids were done eating and had gone upstairs to play, because I didn't want to model poor food choices.) You can't have a bad day when it starts with chocolate cake.

I truly believe Spencer is done now.

But I get to re-bleach one bathroom, re-change out his toothbrush (I'm waiting one more day for that!), and wash another load of laundry. But on the bright side... he got sick that final time before I ever mopped the kitchen floor, so I won't be repeating that little chore when I get to it in a minute.

I'm still keeping him home today though, so we haven't registered for our summer reading program at the library yet. After supper tonight when Bruce is on daddy duty I'll run out and get that done.

It just so happens that on the way to the library is a furniture store that is going out of business. I'm so hoping I can help them clear out some of their stock. Actually, just one bit of stock. I'm looking for a solid oak bed for Clay. Something like this, but in a twin size:

A couple years ago we tried to have our boys share Clay's bedroom and turn Spencer's room into a play room, so we got bunk beds. That just had "silly parent mistake" written all over it.

I have a great many additional gray hairs thanks to all the near mishaps of our kids falling off the top bunk, which they weren't even supposed to be on. Clay was the only one technically allowed up there and that was supposed to be only at bedtime. Hey, you may think I'm crazy (Bruce did), but when the manufacturers suggest that kids 6 and under could be at risk, I take them seriously.

My kids took them less seriously. Spencer in particular enjoyed the top bunk a little too much.

I had bought him one of those wooden popper guns at a craft fair... the kind where a cork pops out of the end when you fire it. Very nice little piece of someone's handiwork. The craftsman even had painted the butt and the tip of the gun a shiny fire-engine red.

One morning, Spencer spent a few moments standing on the top bunk while shooting the ceiling, trying his best to kill it and put it out of its misery. With each shot, a little bit more of our popcorn ceiling came off and landed on the bed (this would later be called "evidence"). When it became obvious that his foe was hardier than he expected, he took to beating it with the butt of the gun. And with each hit, a bit of the red paint from the gun rubbed off onto the ceiling.

Clay's ceiling over his bed now looks naked in spots. And it has a bad case of the measles.

We are slow parents though. It's probably just one more side effect from being sleep deprived. That's my hope.

Because within two weeks, those kids had pulled a blade off of Clay's ceiling fan. I never heard the real story. The steam coming from the top of my head and the fire shooting out of my eyeballs effectively shut my children's mouths to all truth. I'm guessing they tried to hang from the fan.

Evidently, you cannot match a blade from a 15-year-old ceiling fan at Lowe's or Home Depot, or even online for that matter.

The shared-room experiment ended. The bunks became simply two twin beds, divorced and sitting a room apart. Spencer went back to his own bedroom again. There was a doggone good reason that God blessed us with a four-bedroom home long before our twins were born, back when we planned to have only two kids.

But before I could replace Clay's ceiling fan, those little stinkers broke the ceiling fan over the bed in our bedroom. They habitually pulled the little metal link chain to start and stop and speed up our fan, and I think it just died. I feel like dying, too, when they constantly yank my chain.

We replaced our fan within a few weeks. Clay's waited for about a year.

All that was a couple years ago. Since then, we bought a large desk for Clay from my neighbor when she began the process of moving. Clay's room is crowded. And he needs a large bookshelf, which I'm hoping Santa Peepaw will make him for Christmas this year. So the bunks need to be bounced out of there and replaced with a single twin bed.

Don't you find it amazing that I can go from talking about my sick little guy to discussing shopping for a new bed? I'm talented that way. Maybe I'm a tad bipolar? I'll try to make it work for me.

You think if I hit the housecleaning while a manic stage kicks in, I'll get way more done? I'll let you know.