This evening, I made my very first batch of [link slug=”liquid-laundry-detergent”]! It should set up overnight so that I can use it tomorrow, because I am almost out of Tide and I refuse to buy any more commercial detergents.

When he did reading work this morning, Marcus said he wanted cough drops. I thought he was faking.

When I drove Rebecca to gymnastics, he slept in the car. I thought the weekend might have tired him out.

When I drove to the bank to make a deposit, he sat quietly in the lobby and didn’t make a peep. I thought he was running a temperature and might have a bug.

When we stopped to get him cough syrup, he rode in the shopping cart. I thought he might have a bigger bug and bought flu-specific Triaminic.

When we walked in the door, he made a beeline for the bathroom and almost but not quite made it to the toilet before vomiting profusely. I hate being right 25% of the time.

### Discarded

# Two black shirts that were more hole than not.
# One teddy bear, well loved, which had a bath and never really recovered.
# Four mismatched socks.
# One broken (and yet still obnoxious) tamborine.
# Seven catalogs.
# A stack of paint cards from a disastrous web design incident.

Final score: 15+.

The kids’ gymnasium has a Kids’ Night Out event tonight with pizza and inflatable rides and a zip line and games and so the second I heard about this I signed both of ours up, not registering that it was in fact also Rebecca’s birthday. See what a horrible mother I am! Instead of staying home with us boring adults, she gets to go to the gym and have a party!

Matthew and I took the opportunity to go to the NRA range and practice some more. I did a lot of target practice using both the standard and sub-compact Springfield XDs, skewing towards the sub-compact because even with the shorter barrel length hampering accuracy at greater distances it fits into my hands better.

A very nice NRA employee helped me out a great deal with my stance. I’d been doing Weaver but was constantly, consistently low. After a few adjustments, I was a great deal more on target at 18′ with isosceles than I had ever been with Weaver at 12′.

And then, because I am a glutton for punishment, I picked up the shotgun. Round one, Brenneke K.O. 1 oz slug. Grip tightly and lean into it to avoid recoil as much as possible. BOOM! Shoulder hurts like the dickens. Round two, Remington 1 oz slug. Grip even tighter. BOOM! Shoulder in pain. NRA guy walks up and taps me and asks, “What are you shooting?”

“This stuff,” I point at the boxes on my table.

“You might want to try the Reduced Recoil slugs.” He points at the girl next to me who does not have a bruise the size on Montana growing on her shoulder who was convinced to pick up the shotgun because _I_ was shooting a shotgun.

And so I look at Matthew and ask him very nicely to stop reloading magazines for me and buy a box of the reduced recoil rounds, because at this point I’d really like to be able to take more than two shots (one of which, by the way, I _totally nailed_ at 18′) in any given session before my shoulder gives out and I have to go sit in the viewing area and look pretty. So he stood in line at the front desk and I stayed at the firing line and practiced with the Springfields at 18′ and then he came back with two boxes of rounds and I tried out one. BOOM! Shoulder… well, it wasn’t any worse, but at that point the previous two rounds were happily reminding me of just how much force they’d exerted into my collarbone and I left the firing line mightily peeved that I wasn’t going to get to try the rifle.

We drove back home and picked up the kids, who apparently had such a wonderful time that they’d rather not have left, thank you very much. Matthew reports that Rebecca was busy practicing her flying skills in the game of Red Rover, Red Rover, much to the other team’s chagrin (and ultimate demise).

I spent the rest of the evening icing my shoulder. Lovely.

Matthew turns on a dance mix of _Dragostea Din Tei_ on his laptop. I start singing along because Jesus, it is the Numa Numa song! Of course I am singing along!

“Are you singing that in Hungarian?”

“It’s [Romanian](http://www.catteacorner.com/dragosteadintei.htm.)”

“You’re fired.”

Rebecca sings:
_Ring around the rosy_
_A pocket full of *toesies*_
_Ashes, ashes,_
_We all fly down._

She has been singing this all afternoon… wrong.

### Discarded

# The hamster wheel, because we no longer have hamsters.
# Three dead-and-therefore-unused-and-unusable toothbrushes.
# An empty deodorant stick.
# An empty handsoap refill bottle.
# Plastic aquarium tubing.
# The wrapper and instructions from a hamper.
# A mostly-empty box of Olay facial things that make me break out.

### Put away

# Five scifi novels that Matthew left on the shelf.
# Two hairbrushes, two combs, four toothbrushes, two flossing sticks, and two tubes of toothpaste.

Final score: 26.