For a long time I tried to keep this blog very on-topic business wise about the struggles I face balancing work, kids, and the OnRamps forum. But there’s only so much you can say about it, and I lapsed into tales of general “life balancing”; if anything, I am successfully keeping up with my friends at least one sided-ly through this blog! In fact, my Christmas note this year told everyone that if they wanted to know what I was up to, to read my blog. Thus I must give the update of the past 3 weeks, entitled “How I took on too much and am totally crazy”.

This is a condensed version and does not contain any swears, timeouts, or crying—which is not the truth for the extended real life version.

Trouble began when I purchased a dollhouse kit that promised “Easy Construction”. I knew of course that this was a lie; I wisely decided not to install electric, but still figured that with the help of my mom I could bang out most of it prior to Christmas so the girls could have it. Here’s my first tip: dollhouse building is a long, laborious process involving many little parts and much glue and many STEPS as said little parts are stuck together with said glue and you wait for them to dry. And just when you’re finished you get to wallpaper and paint and stain. And when you’re finished with that you have to re-paint where the stain got and re-stain where the paint got. And then you have to re-wallpaper where the glue dribbled. My older daughter (now four, not “almost four”) was “helping” me the other day and pretending to already play with it, using small sticks instead of a family since we haven’t purchased a family yet, and she had two completely accurate observations: One, “We need a grandma for our dollhouse family”. Yep. And two, “My dollhouse mommy is going out for a drink”. Amen, sister.

But a dollhouse wasn’t enough. I also entered into a bunk bed building extravaganza. This was brought on by one twin throwing herself out of her crib and refusing to stay put—so sooner rather than later we needed to turn mattresses on the floor into bunk beds since BOTH twins were operating an all-night dance party in their room and no one was getting sleep. A few nice days over Christmas was a blessing—at least I think—it gave us the chance to do the work outside, and by “us do the work” I mean I sanded with 5 different grains of sandpaper under the master woodworker’s instructions (my husband now fancies himself “master woodworker” which really means master mess-with-sawdust-maker). If it was cold, maybe we could have bagged it. But sand we did, then we stained, then we shellaced—MW (MasterWoodworker) did help, but balked when I told him to go shellac after he got home from work one night and it was maybe 15 degrees. And we didn’t have a light in our garage. I think the crazy had set in big time, by then.

So I shellaced in our dining room and then we commenced the building. I was sure we’d finish in two hours. Here’s my next tip: building bunk beds (even when you have all the pieces cut and stained and prepared over days of labor) takes a full day and is EXHAUSTING.

What I did learn: I cannot work on additional projects with MW—he and I have different styles (mine: get it DONE, his…let’s just say it’s a bit more methodical). Two: I must not, must not, must not continue to take on any projects that last longer than one day. I lose all interest in them. Three, I better get moving on these conferences because my side-career as a handyman has ended before it began…

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