I should have stayed in bed

Except I was having nightmares this morning. Thing 1 is still in bed, despite having made an appearance at the top of the stairs to "prove" that she was up. Best go rouse her again.

Suffice it to say that this wasn't the kind of morning that made me glad to be alive, glad to be homeschooling. I managed to get a full frontal vent out in a letter to my dear friend, but the bare bones went something like: "empty dishwasher, start breakfast, hang load of laundry, interrupt laundry to mediate screaming fight between Things 3 & 4 (Thing 4 has only communicated by yelling for two days now -- she's clearly sick but I hate this manifestation), get called back inside because Thing 4 has knocked bowl of scrambled eggs onto the floor, breaking bowl and strewing egg, clean that up, finish hanging laundry, start another load because, well, there's egg everywhere on the clothes she was wearing plus the mopping cloth, feed kids, call Thing 1, get schoolwork out, try to get Thing 3 to do his schoolwork, deal with Thing 4 who wants to write on the dry erase board while we're spelling, wants to shout randomly, call Thing 1, give leftover eggs to the dog, guiltily send the younger two downstairs to watch a video and get out of my hair so I can do spelling and writing with Thing 2, call Thing 1, water the fowl, empty the dishwater onto the compost bin, retrieve the spoons from the compost bin, demand that Thing 1 show up, send her back upstairs to change the cat litter, say I'm not making a second breakfast for children who didn't eat their first one, tell Thing 1 to come inside if she's not going to go change the cat box, tell the rest that I only want to hear, 'How can I help?' coming out of their mouths, despair about it ever getting any better around here, and so on."

Oh well, at least I can knit some more on that second mitten I started to match the badly-done first one even though I didn't actually have the first page of the pattern with me. I'm done with the second welt and into the cuff portion. Knitting will make me feel as though I'm actually achieving something instead of shoveling during a snowstorm. Hooray!


Or, you know, not.

That will teach me to think I remember how many stitches to cast on. Sigh.