Monument to my failures

BOY do I hate interactive phone voice menus.  Whoever thought of those was definitely not a stay-at-home-parent.  Every single time I have to call, it goes something like this:

Robotic voice: Please enter or say your credit card number, followed by your bank account number, followed by your social security number, followed by your birth date, followed by your zip code, followed by your favorite 6-digit number, then press pound.
Sara: Beep beep boop beep boop (etc. until within 2 digits of finishing)
Charlotte: BOT PLEASE MAMA!!!!
Robotic voice: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that.  Please enter or say your credit card number, followed by your bank account number....
Sara: (closing self in bathroom) beep beep boop beep boop
Emily: (banging on door) I NEED TO GO PEE PEE!!!!!
Robotic voice: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that... 
Repeat times 1000 until I have retreated to the porch and the automated system finally gives up and transfers me to a real live person
Real Live Person: Hello Mrs. Randall.  May I please have your credit card number...
Charlotte: (busting outside) MORE BOT IN!!!!
Real Live Person: I'm sorry, I'm hearing a lot of background noise, what was that?

Thankfully though I have yet to misplace my phone, I have a checkbook, and I have a credit/ATM card in my posession.  And as if that weren't enough, I even found my license that I lost back in March, which I have of course had replaced already, but I guess it's just a getting things back under control kinda week.  Which is awesome.  I don't have too many of those.

Since today is a Tuesday, which means I am shot from getting girls to dance and fed and peed and changed and entertaining the petulant younger of the two for 45 minutes while the other one dances, I've decided to just show you what is sitting on my kitchen windowsill.  I have to stare at it for what feels like hours every day as I do dishes, so I'm sure y'all'll be enthralled by it as well.

First we have some shells:

I am not sure why I have shells on my kitchen windowsill.  Having shells on one's kitchen windowsill implies that a person either enjoys collecting or looking at shells, and I'm honestly not either.  But people have given my daughters and me large, impressive shells over the years and I don't want to throw them away.  If I let the girls play with them though they get broken, so I think what happened is that I needed to clean up quickly at some point so I grabbed a nearby jar and threw some vagrant shells into it.  And voila, now I have a place to store shells.  Except that I should probably find somewhere else to store them so I can use this space to display something that is more useful, or at least more "me".

Next up is a cactus:

More specifically, 10 fluid ounces of cactus, as you can see on the label.  Mmmm, cactus fluid.  This cactus was purchased months ago along with another succulent, and is supposed to go into a homemade terrarium that I decided the girls and I would make for Will for Father's Day.  I was high on creativity and Pinterest at the time. Except that we WERE going to celebrate a Father's Day Observed sometime in July, but then the day beforehand Will bumped it up to ACTUAL Father's Day and the terrarium wasn't made yet so I decided I'd make it later.  This guy is the last survivor.  I still do intend to make it someday, if only to get the supplies off my kitchen counter.

Speaking of killing plants, next comes these guys:

On the left is dead-ish rosemary.  On the right is super-dead lavender.  In the middle is not-yet-dead sage.  I periodically decide I am going to have a windowsill herb garden because it makes good financial sense!  Why buy a single cutting of rosemary every time I need it for $4 when I can just buy a whole plant for $2 that will allow me to cut rosemary whenever and in any amount I want?  Except that this always happens before I can even use the plant much.  I guess I'm leaving the lavender there because I refuse to believe that even I can kill a plant in a mere 3 days and it might just be sleeping?  And the dead rosemary is there because, well, there's dead lavender right over there, so why not some dead rosemary too?  I admire the sage's bravery, still growing strong even with the bodies of its brethren heaped around it on all sides.

But!  Lest you think I am hopeless at growing anything, behold my fungus!

Yes, my first box of mushrooms failed to grow, but the second box I ordered (at the same time to get free shipping) is thriving!  Just look at all of those delicious mushrooms just waiting to become a stir-fry!  I hope they mature soon, because they kind of freak me out.  Clusters of things other than flowers always kind give me the heebie-jeebies.

 And speaking of other things I am able to easily grow on my windowsill:

My version of an ant farm

These guys have slowed down a bit, but basically from spring through fall we have billions of ants in our kitchen.  Here you can see them happily dining on Terro ant poison, which they gobble by the dropfull, carry off to feed their queen, and then return fat and happy to slurp down some more.  They are thriving on Terro.  They LOVE the Terro.  The only reason I feed it to them is because it keeps them pretty localized so I find fewer ants floating in my tea. 

No wonder I hate doing the dishes.  Every time I step up to my sink I am confronted by a monument to my failures.  I think a bit of redecoration is in order.