Today was so boring, that if I told you every single thing I’d done since I got dressed, there would be nothing to tell.

Admittedly, that’s because I’m still in my jammies.

But I don’t know, there is (to me) something very comforting about a day spent on the couch with the kids, watching cartoons and hanging out and just generally being slugs. Sure, I could’ve been cleaning or getting out Christmas decorations or shoveling the driveway or buying groceries, but, um… uhhhh… well, I’m sure I had a good reason.

So I wore my jammies all day, and Chickadee wore her jammies for part of the day and an assortment of dress-up clothing throughout the rest of the day, and Monkey wore a floral-patterned unitard for most of the day. (Don’t ask.)

Casa Mir, home of the Fancypants Family.

So it was a pretty thrilling day on the whole. Occasionally we would forage in the kitchen for a bit. Several times we three were in a tangle on the couch and someone would declare “I don’t really like this show. Can we change it?” And then either we couldn’t find the remote or something funny happened or we all just fell back into our collective stupor and none of us moved.

For a while Monkey played some game on his Gameboy which required me to read the dialogue for him, and he demanded that I vary the voices for the different characters and such. And then he would run back to the same spots to hear the same lines again, just to see if I would read it any differently.

I don’t know about you, but there are only so many ways I can enthusiastically declare, “I see you have a ferry ticket! You can use that to take the ferry to Castle Island!” Go ahead… ASK me if he ever took the damn ferry. If you dare.

Anyway. Eventually the children wandered off for a while and I started thinking about doing something productive. I pondered many things that needed doing and of course settled on the thing that was of the least importance but SEEMED like the thing that needed my immediate attention.

I decided to open a new Paypal account. I guess I just felt that my nice calm, peaceful day needed some tempering with aggravation.

The thing is, it’s the Buying Frenzy Season. Er, the Christmas season. I mean, the holiday season. Yes, that’s it. And I haven’t sold anything on eBay in a long time, but if I want to sell, now is the time to do it. I started thinking about it a couple of weeks ago, and so I started poking around on eBay to see what stuff was going for and all of that.

Now, back in the old days (ha!) of my previous selling, I always stated that I accepted “non-credit Paypal” and used my personal account and everything was dandy. But since eBay and Paypal have merged and furthered their mission to take over the world, actually stating that you have restrictions on the type of Paypal fundage you will receive has become a crime punishable by severe whippings, tar and feathering, marriage to Tom Cruise, and having your auctions pulled. Hmph.

What Paypal wants me to do is convert my trusty personal account into a Premiere or “pay a fee each and every time you even think about sending or receiving money” account. Paypal can, however, kiss my lily white ass.

What I did–and what every other thinking person has done–is create an entirely new account, so as to preserve my personal account for as many fee-free transactions as possible. Because originally I thought, well screw them, I just won’t use Paypal anymore! HA! And then I remembered that when I take money orders I have to do a lot more actual interfacing with the high levels of stupidity that run rampant on our planet, and I decided that I would deal with paying some fees so as not to have to listen to an endless litany of “what is your address?” and “my dog ate the check” and “oh guess what I just found in my car” and “I sent it last week so YOU MUST BE LYING.”

Actually, when I think about it THAT way, 3% or whatever it is they charge starts sounding like a bargain.

Of course, I set up my original Paypal account years ago, so I don’t know if the process is different now or if I just don’t remember… or maybe it’s a little of each. But it seemed like there was a lot of stuff to fill out, and then this unholy marriage betwen it and eBay means that you can link your auction account which SHOULD be good but in my case actually caused it to yell at me that my auction account was already linked elsewhere. Oh. Right. So I tried to unlink the other account and I could not for the life of me FIND the setting for quite a while, but finally I did, and then I linked the new one and signed up to verify the account and blah blah blah blah.

To make a long story not even a bit shorter: End result, I have my new account, but I was too disgusted by the time I finished to actually bother with listing anything today. Heh.

Maybe I should just start running auctions here in my sidebar, or something. Each one of them will proudly declare “And I only take non-credit Paypal, SO THERE!”

So then it was time to oversee showers and other bedtime preparations. Chickadee was taking an inordinate length of time in the shower. I called out to her several times, and each time she assured me that she was moving right along. Finally I stuck my head around the curtain, and there she stood, all wet, but not a speck of soap or shampoo on her.

Me: You haven’t even WASHED YOUR HAIR YET??
Her: Um… I already washed it. And rinsed it. I’m going to wash my body now.
Me: Wrong. You did not wash your hair.
Her: Yes I did.
Me: No you didn’t.
Her: Yes I did!
Me: No you DID NOT. Stop it.
Her: Really, I did!
Me: Okay. You did.
Her: I… did?
Me: Come down here to me, please.
Her: Why…?
Me: I want to smell your NICE CLEAN HAIR! C’mere!
Her: Okay. I washed it.
Me: I know! Lemme smell! *deep whiff* Mmmmm… know what your hair smells like?
Her: Shampoo…?
Me: Almost! But a little bit more like YOUR PANTS ARE ON FIRE. WASH. YOUR. HAIR!
Her: But–
Me: WASHYOURHAIRRIGHTNOW! *I dropped the curtain and turned to leave the bathroom*
Her: *in a tiny, pitiful voice* Well I didn’t want to tell you I hadn’t, because I was afraid you’d get mad.
Me: Yes, blatantly lying about it and then arguing with me really worked out to be the better choice, didn’t it?
Her: I–
Me: “–am washing my hair?” GOOD!
Her: Mama.
Me: Yes?
Her: Nothing. Sorry.
Me: Right.

So that actually made the Paypal thing seem pretty easy and logical, in comparison.

Once the kids were asleep, I discovered the tiny sliver of pumpkin pie left in my pecan pie plate (sent home with us by our hostess). Hmmmm. I deserved pie, what with the difficult day I’d had, and all. Right? Right! I ate the sliver, then set about methodically chiselling all of the little gooey pieces of cemented crust off the bottom and edges of the plate. Mmmmm… petrified pecan pie remnants. It occurred to me that my scraping and gnawing was a little bit undignified, but then I remembered that my pie is both FAMOUS and YUMMY and that totally justified what I was doing.

I hope tomorrow is a bit calmer. All of this excitement can be a lot to handle.