How Do You Eat an Elephant?

Answer:  One bite at a time.

Terence tells me this every time I moan about how I'll never get everything done that I need to or when life is just overwhelming me.  I've been repeating it to myself a lot lately because my to do list just keep piling higher and higher.  Some of it is my own fault as I keep voluntarily adding things to my plate.

A smattering of the selection from my elephant buffet:

• The transitions for the new flooring installed.
• The doors and frames painted to match the newly painted baseboards.
• The baseboards re-caulked.
• The kids' bathroom floor finished & re-caulked.
• Physical therapy appointments for my "degenerated" shoulder.
• Dentist appointments for the kids.
• Cub scout patches to be sewn before Thursday's pack meeting.  (I'm way behind on this.)
• A trip to the scout store (almost an hour away) for J's new Bear materials.
• A trip to the bank (an hour away also) to change the pin numbers on our bank cards.
• Plan out my teach-the-kids-to cook program.
• Take the kids to the weekly summer craft at the library.
• Take the kids to swim every week with the kids from our ward.
• Change bike tire tubes in two bikes.
• Figure out where the heck to dispose of old electronics and get rid of the large collection gathering dust in the garage.

This is in addition to the normal, recurring stuff like laundry, cooking, surveys, grocery shopping, arbitrating records for FamilySearch, exercising, teaching piano, cleaning up the regular disasters, keeping my kids from killing each other, pleading with my kids to get their chores done, trying hard to squelch any desires to throttle my kids. . . you get the idea.

I'm overwhelmed just listing it all.

Well, I mostly finished chewing a couple of bites and got to swallow last night.  I got the floors done for the bathroom.  The kids flood the bathroom regularly and the vinyl flooring was starting to peel away from the walls.  I just knew we were going to end up with an awful mildew problem.  After researching the problem for months, I finally decided to pull the vinyl out and just paint the concrete foundation with porch and patio paint.  (And boy, was there ever a mildew problem!  You couldn't breathe through the mildew smell!)  Yesterday I had just finished the top coat and had gone to change out of my paint clothes.  I came out to find that K had ignored my just-given instructions to stay out of the bathroom.  He had to go poop, you see.  While I was grateful that he wanted to use the potty, I was not grateful for the footprints all over the floor and the paint all over his shoes!  Last night after the kids went to bed I redid the top coat and so far I've been able to keep the kids off it.  Three more hours to go. . . .

The "in-progress" picture
(I never seem to get a "before" picture since I seem to just dive into projects headlong.)

The "after" picture.
(Hopefully this is the end of mildew's takeover of the bathroom.)

Now on to another bite of elephant!