The Minutiae Of Life In February

I apologize for the lack of regular posting around here lately, but I haven't had much to say that isn't boring. My life, in the middle of the most miserable month of the year, is pretty much that. Boring.

Almost every day, I wake up and think, "Ugh. What sort of boring stuff do we have to do today?" And then at the end of the day, I think, "What a boring day. What the heck did I get accomplished?" The answer is a whole lot of boring stuff.

The highlight of the past couple of weeks was a giant rat managing to pry the lid off our trashcan, and then jumping out of it onto my husband's arm before scurrying off to join the rest of his disgusting rodent brethren. I would have screamed bloody murder and then dropped dead from a heart attack, but he just came into the house, holding his arm stiffly away from him and wondering if he needed to throw his rat contaminated jacket away. I decided it was okay to wash it, but he neglected to fully empty his pockets first. So I washed his cell phone. He got a new phone, then proceeded to play with it for three hours straight, trying out all the ring tones while I was attempting to watch ER.

Speaking of TV, we finally installed our converter box because some of the stations were going ahead with the digital conversion ahead of the new deadline. The picture is great and we're picking up channels we never got before. We even have a weather channel. Except that before we got the box, watching TV went like this--Use remote to turn on television. Choose station. Sit on couch and watch program. And now it goes like this--Use remote to turn on TV and set to Input. Use second remote to turn on Stereo Receiver and set to Aux1. Use third remote to turn on VCR. Use fourth remote to turn on converter box. Choose channel. Sit on couch. Unless you want to watch a DVD. In which case you need to use the third remote to go into Setup in the VCR menu and choose Source, then change the source to Aux2. And use a fifth remote to turn on the DVD player. It's all very complicated. And honestly, what's the point of doing all this for a great picture when a certain someone keeps playing ring tones through ER anyway? I might need to take up a collection to pay for the batteries in all those effing remotes.

Speaking of converter boxes, the only station that isn't coming in well is PBS. Come on, people! I have been letting Johnny watch TV in the mornings so I can shower in peace. Not that I'm shy or anything, but I finally decided it would be nice to shower without someone barging into the bathroom and announcing, "Mom! I need to poop!" So instead, I turn on Dragon Tales or something, he sits on the couch and I only have to deal with Maureen wandering in and out of the bathroom with her baby doll in tow. But NOW, with the stupid converter box, we have a whole lot more channels, but just not the important one. PBS keeps freezing up, like when a DVD gets stuck. I LIKE my peaceful showers. I NEED Dragon Tales and Word World! Its enough to incite wrath or something.

Speaking of wrath, I have decided that my cat is a giant asshole. Sometimes he is very sweet and he likes to sleep on my feet and keep me warm, and he has been very cute playing with his pom poms lately. But he has also bitten me for no good reason four times in the past two days. The last time was hard enough to make me shove him off the couch and shout at him that if he didn't knock it off, I'd stuff him in the trashcan with the rat and let them fight it out. Seriously, I'm the one who feeds his ungrateful self. You'd think he'd find someone else to bite. Or maybe he's bored too. After all, February is such a boring month.

We had Ham and Chickpea Soup for dinner last night, and neither kid would eat it until I picked apart all the ingredients and served them with separate piles of ham, pasta, chickpeas and cheese. I guess it somehow tastes different that way? And we went to the grocery store again because Johnny has been eating constantly, and I discovered that Safeway has their Easter candy out. So I bought three boxes of Cadbury Cream Eggs, which I will probably devour in the next 24 hours, but I forgot the cereal bars that we went for in the first place.

Gah. February is boring.

I'm also tired of wearing black sweaters and jeans all the time, but my wardrobe consists of mainly black sweaters and jeans, so on Thursday I wore a new t-shirt that I bought at Target that is very cute and flattering and non-black, hoping that the sight of bare arms might make the wind die down. It didn't work, and since the t-shirt is called a "tissue weight boatneck," it also meant I was freezing all day.

On Wednesday night, our power went out for about an hour. I didn't realize until then exactly how dark our house is at night. We always have a couple of night lights on to keep Johnny from falling down the steps should he get up in the middle of the night, or to keep me from stepping on the cat as he walks under my feet in the middle of the night. But when the power cut out, and Maureen immediately woke up and started to cry, I had no night lights to guide me as I felt my way down the pitch black hall into their room and then felt around to change her diaper in the dark. And then I stepped on the cat, trying to find my way back to bed. Which is perhaps the reason he has been biting me, now that I think about it. And the house got really cold really fast, but the hour without heat was probably a good thing because I just heard that BGE plans to raise our rates next year.

So that's it. The extremely boring details of an extremely boring month. Is there anyone else out there that has something fun going on?