Broke, but happy.

Apparently there's a learning curve for bill paying with a monthly instead of bi-monthly paycheck. Apparently it's six months long. Somehow I managed to forget completely about the mortgage and overpay three credit cards instead. Now I'm going to have to figure out how to buy groceries with my Home Depot card. This month's diet: rose petals and pansies. If you know of other edible plants available at your local home and garden center, please let me know.

BUT! AND! (Anyone used to read Words of the Tyrtle?) We had a good day yesterday! Monster Mama finally got enough sleep and stayed in her cage ALL DAY! I don't know if it was the stress of grief, the weather, the 7-month prenatal hormone surge, or the alignment of the planets, but the previous few days I'd been completely unbearable. And, of course, the boys followed suit. Despite the terrible, horrible, no good mood, I tried to do something fun with them every day. We baked cookies, took a walk when it stopped raining, made new playdough, read stories, and kept peaceful or fun music on all day. Whether those things helped, I'm not sure. But we did survive.

Wednesday evening our favorite stuff-picking-up charity called to say they'd be in our neighborhood the next day. So yesterday morning I dug through the closets for stuff that's been cluttering up our lives. By the time we left for the park, I'd dumped two bags of adult clothes, three bags of kids' shoes, one bag of stuffed animals, a HUGE bag of extraneous linens and things, and a small bag of books on the front steps. When we got home a couple hours later, there was nothing but a lovely blue receipt left on the porch. Now I just have to do a little arranging to make room for the boys' new dresser and all the baby stuff about to re-enter our lives.

Speaking of babies, I'm still waiting to hear if my friend's gone into labor again yet. I took her family a big pot of soup last night so she could continue to rest. Although how a mom is supposed to rest all day while keeping a one-year-old and four-year-old happy, I can't tell you. She brought them to the park instead.

As I've been writing, Puffer and Grouper have been taking turns bringing me a K'Nex head filled with various tiny toys and asking me to guess what's in the mouth. My latest guess was "a million dollars." Grouper gave me a funny look and said, "WE don't have a million dollars, Mommy!"

Apparently it's obvious even to my three-year-old!