Confessions

1. After exchanging the defective one for a new one at the store, I spent almost an hour playing with the black light in the Urine Gone! kit. I am all CSI'd out, having seen in horrid detail exactly how many spots the cats have barfed on, how far stuff sprays out of the toilet when you flush, and how much lint we have on every surface in our house. The floor on Jason's side of the bed lights up like the Milky Way under a black light. Kinda cool, until you realize that I just vacuumed on Friday. Eeeew. Dyson, anyone?
2. After scrubbing my bathtub for two hours early last week (no, not kidding, and eeeeew) I finally realized that the mildew problem we have stems partly from the previous homeowners, who covered up their mildew problem by putting white caulk over the yucky areas, then smoothing it to look like grout. Only now the caulk is peeling off, exposing the mildewed and/or chipped grout underneath, and it's pretty much impossible to get that stuff clean. Ultimately the damage to the grout means we're going to need to regrout the tub someday, but I'm not up for doing that right now ... so when I was exchanging the Urine Gone! kit at the store, I grabbed a Grout-Aide grout and tile marker as a temporary fix. I was fairly sure that it would suck, but for $7, it was worth a try. Yes, I know, I'm just covering up the problem again, but daaaaaaaamn, you should see how sparkly white my grout is. This stuff works (as long as you don't look toooo closely, especially at the area where I used it to cover up the unremovable stain/chipping from the bottom of the tub). It's so much fun, I'm wishing I had more mildew so I had more stuff to cover up ... but then again, that might be the fumes talking.

Apparently tonight is "Shill for As Seen On TV" night on the blog. So, do you think the AquaGlobes actually work? Might have to try some in the hanging baskets by the front door, since I'm getting tired of watering them every other day and it's only June.

Oh, and while I'm in the confessional ... I've reached the point where I'm totally bribing my kid to stop peeing on the floor (and in the car, and in the yard, and in the bathtub ...).

• Pee on the potty = coupon for 5 minutes of computer time before bed.
• Pee anywhere else = lose a coupon, unless they're all gone already, at which point I start chopping off body parts ... er, taking away dessert, followed by bedtime books, followed by body parts.
• Make it through the whole day (until 6:30 or 7) without peeing anywhere other than the potty = get a present from the basket of $1 junk I bought at Target and gift-wrapped and put in a place that's really obvious yet inaccessible to small children.

The last three or four days she made it until about 4:30 or 5 with no accidents, then went and hid somewhere and purposely peed on the floor. I'm sorry, but it's not an "accident" if you're playing in the yard, have been asked 400 times if you need to go potty, and you suddenly drop what you're doing so you can climb up the ladder and pee all over the floor of your swingset. Also not an "accident" if get up off the potty and run into the garage to pee on the same spot on the floor two days in a row. Can you say, "power play?" Because I can, and I ALWAYS win. I've got 30+ more years of experience in being stubborn ... I can't make her pee on the potty, but I can make her life a lot less fun when she doesn't. Bwahahahahahaha!

And today she got her first potty present (water balloons), so there's a possibility this might actually work. Of course, now that I've written that we're having success, she's going to sneak off and take a crap in the front seat of my car, but hey - at least I can be happy for tonight, right?