The one in which we go really broke and insane trying to raise these kids, and Brett fans the flames

When we bought this house we knew we'd need to do a lot of work to it. A lot. The finished basement wasn't fit to rent out to drunken college students, and since two of the bedrooms are down there, it's been high on the priority list since we moved in.

The original owner had put dark wood paneling throughout, and aside from looking like it was the set to many a crappy 70's homemade porn movie, part of it had to be removed to fix the drainage problem. (DON'T ASK) And, we knew we'd have to drywall it.

We got a few contractors to come in and explained what we wanted to do. And then we got the estimates. And then we laughed long and hard. Finally Curt came out of denial and man-up'ed to the fact that he'd have to do the bulk of it himself. His cousin is thankfully knowledgeable in construction and had the free time. But more importantly, was free.

In addition to working almost 60 hours this week, Curt started ripping the old paneling off, moving around the wiring, and replacing several studs. Whatever the hell that means.

Of course, all of this culminated today when I had a thousand errands to run and about a thousand dollars to spend on food. Okay, not quite that much this time. But our total for the month? Pretty close to $1300.

Curt got off work and we literally passed in the driveway like ships in the night. I took Michael-the-muscle and at a dead sprint, managed to grab most of what we needed in a little over two hours.

We got home just in time for me to moo for Ellie, put everything away, wolf down some dinner, bathe some kids, and have Curt leave for his 83rd trip to Lowe's this week. It finally started to calm down a bit and I made my way to the computer to enter all of the receipts into the budget.

There aren't enough words in the English language to adequately describe just how fried I was by this point. I probably couldn't have named all of the kids on a bet. Naturally, this is when all of them wandered up in turn asking for something. Lucas was the last one and I snapped and started yelling.

"Don't talk to me. Don't ask me anything unless you are on fire!"

Brett was sitting a few feet away, quiet for once, taking in the chaos. "Lucas, if it's really important I know where she keeps the matches."