I blame the deck

Today was a one-step forward, two-steps back kind of day. The kind of day that's not actually bad but ends up seeming bad because what is the point of a day that is backwards if you really don't get it back tomorrow?
Just dumb things, like when moving stuff out of Zoe's bedroom so Erik can scrape the ceilings, I realized Zoe's canopy on her bed might be permanently broken, Max peed in the potty but Zoe and I waited for 1, 2, 3, hours for him to pee again (how many books? 4. How many Skittles? 12)  before we went out to get the car washed which took forever and why pay people to wash your car except they did a pretty amazing job even if they forgot to do the floor mats and we waited for another 30 minutes of a day that was already losing ground for those to be washed and we went to Safeway with the aisles full of stacks of Stove-Top and the people also full of Stove-Top, and the kids talked me into a doughnut although they just had a lollipop which Max proceeded to get blue (blue frosting?) all over his face and some on my shirt and the inside of my clean car and on the way home it rained on the clean car and I sliced my finger on the plastic salad box back when I was making lunch and then I when was making a marinade for the dinner I'm taking to Beya's house today because we have nowhere to sit with the deck and the Zoe project (I do think Erik works too much) and squeezed a lemon  for that marinade and now my plastic-made cut is opened in juice. I got almost zero work done today--a little grading of the class but no working on the tenure file and no real writing and I'm pretty sure I have five-million other things I should have done besides watch people wash the car and bribe Max to sit on the potty for 5 of the 8 hours of the day. He still hadn't peed when I put him down for nap. I think I irritated the pee into permanent bladder layer by asking, do you have to pee? Do you have to pee?

This day is the deck project's fault entirely. Three weekend ago, on a lovely Friday afternoon, Erik said, I'm going to do the deck this weekend. Zoe's sent out to work with a screwdriver and some safety goggles to dig the putty out of the screw holes. I'm supposed to unscrew the screws holding the railing to the deck. I unscrewed a total of three because the screws were rusted and stripped out. The fascia board into which the railing was screwed was rotting. Erik was going to fix it. And he is. Still. Right now. As in, he worked all day and then put on his attractive painting outfit and started drilling and sawing and possibly painting. The deck is my favorite place. I made dinner tonight to take somewhere because we have no outdoor seating. I didn't write because I write on the deck (I can write elsewhere. I'm working on writing while standing at the bar in the kitchen. It hurts my wrists unless I wear high heels). But lo that that were the worst, last weekend I spent upside down staining the bottom of the deck with the gray-tinted stain. Why? Why? If there is one thing that seemed backwards it was staining the bottom of a deck no one will ever see. Erik says it will protect it forever I said, we can now never move because no one will ever appreciate my bent-neck work but you and forever. I offered to have an under-the-deck party when I was done but then it rained on the deck and under the deck and through my clean rocks that now have dirt on them, as does my clean car (also it rained on the deck while Erik was sanding and while he was painting and while he was using the chop saw. It's our own kind of rain dance. The deck dance. But with less dance and more splinters.)

So the weekend project has now taken three weekends. Tomorrow we go to Phoenix to complete the backwardness because who goes to Phoenix in July for a Diamondbacks game? I did get dinner reservations at The Arrogant Butcher but if tomorrow is like today I will spend the evening in the bathroom with some Skittles and Where the Wild Things Are, trying to get gray-tinted stain out of my hair because before we leave I promised I would help Erik paint the end also maybe it will rain.