Today has been … well, surreal. The kitchen looks like there was some sort of war between the ingredients going on. Epic. Disaster. We started by making waffles, which is messy, but I got the kitchen sparkling clean after that. Then came the adventure into making paper. Which quickly descended into experimental territory. 

We’ve always made paper by unloading the paper shredder into a blender full of hot water, then adding all sorts of other things to it, blah blah blah … That was before The Tot … Jesus Cristo con frijoles!! That child! So that was the start of the mess. Then we decided to take some of the exotic wood sawdust/shavings from wood-lathe land (caution: when your woodshop and your kitchen collide, get out of the way FAST!) and add that to the paper-making. 

So we started a huge pot of water and Osage Orange (or maybe it was yellow heart) boiling on the stove. No idea why. Then we decided it would be a good idea (probably because the costco sized bag was sitting RIGHT. THERE. since I had been using it to deodorize the rug since my STBX had just decided to let the dogs pee all over it for the past 6 months … let’s not go down that road, shall we?) Anyway … so we started dumping handfuls of baking soda into the pot. Interesting … it was like adding it to a pot of boiling vinegar! Foaming all over the place! and all over the stove. Nice. Boiling baking soda and wood pulp. That should be easy to clean up!

That was now officially my son’s experiment — he took over after it became obvious that it was really weird and cool and messy.  The Tot decided she needed to do her OWN experiment. So I got her a small mixing bowl. She got out her “ingrediments” which consisted of double-acting baking powder and vanilla extract. That’s how it started anyway. Wait, did I ever even finish making paper? Yeah, I was finishing that up while the experimenting was going on. 

The son got bored with the boiling pot of foaming wood pulp and wandered back to the woodshop to make more bowls — someone please go buy one before I go broke! http://www.etsy.com/people/randysimmons1 Ok, my OT is going OT, not a good sign.

While I finished with the paper, The Tot continued her experiment. She was most of the way through the can of baking powder when I switched her to baking soda (since I have eleventy million pounds of the stuff). Then I turned my sights to replacing the under-cabinet lights. (Why did I decide that now would be a good time? Point out the part where I said I was sane. Go on. Just try. ) They are all Xenon and get too hot, plus there’s 360 watts worth. So I replaced 4 (240 watts) with 3 LED light bars (30 watts) and … well, maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention to the Tot’s experiment. She had self-graduated to the largest mixing bowl in the kitchen, added flour, raw barley, dried black beans, brown rice, shredded paper, yellow-heart sawdust and red heart sawdust to her list of ingredients and was threatening to use it like paper mache to “make a bolcano” with. Clearly this had gone on too long. Rather than carry the flour, sawdust and shredded paper containers to the site of the experiment, she had just been carrying handfuls back and forth, so there was now a trail of each across the floor. And the table was … wait, is there still a table under there? Dunno. I’ll look for it later.

Great, now it’s dinner time … So we did that (on what little of the table we could find). And now the Tot is INSISTING on making the paper mache volcano. So we get out the next-largest mixing bowl and start THAT project. On the floor. Wouldn’t you know it but Murray Dog decides to play hoover about now and look amongst the shredded paper, sawdust and who knows what else for tidbits to eat. Pickles, the large cat sleeping on the chair, takes offense to this plan, and swats Murray Dog, who jumps, and lands … wait for it … IN THE BOWL OF PAPER MACHE!!! Then runs off through the house. Somebody shoot me. Mess officially no longer confined to the kitchen.

Meanwhile Lilly has decided that the now-fresh smelling rug is *too* fresh smelling and decides to pee on it. The deck is just not high enough to jump off of at this point. Did I mention that we got 2 new cats this weekend who are sequestered in the master bath, making Pickles edgy and Murray all giddy at the prospect of fresh kitties to bounce? Yeah, so add that. Or multiply by that. I forget the exact math on these things.

It is now 10:30. I have wiped down the counters, and re-oiled them, since paper-making will take the shine off a soapstone countertop. I have cleaned up most of the paper mache mess, other than the stuff littering the floor. I still haven’t the first clue what to do with this 40-pound bowl full of 5-year-old’s experimental ‘cooking’ results. And now I have to (once again) figure out where everyone (of the critters) is sleeping tonight. Murray Dog gets very upset if he can’t sleep in the room with me. The new cats, needless to say, are not thrilled with this sleeping arrangement. Plus it’s raining, which makes Murray Dog all nutty since he’s convinced there will be thunder and lightening and the world will end in calamity. 

If anyone is in the neighborhood and would like to stop by and shoot me, that would be a big help. 

If you read this far, well, you obviously don’t have enough to do, so get over here and take this giant bowl of godknowswhat off my hands. And clean my floors.