I could just cry. Seriously. Since Thursday I've had a cold that just won't quit. So the kitchen was pretty backed up by today. I finally went to attend to it while Amaris watched The Backyardigans in the living room. She was peaceful, and I was happy to have no distractions while I loaded the dishwasher to capacity.

When I turned from the sink and headed back into the living room, I made an extremely disheartening discovery. My heart literally dropped down a good 3" as I saw my daughter covered from head to toe in black stripes.

No, she wasn't suffering from Mad Zebra disease. I wish she had been. That might have actually been funny. This was much worse. She'd discovered a black, double-tipped Sharpie in the office and had proceeded to "decorate" anything and everything that she could find. She drew on herself. She drew on the walls. She drew on the furniture. She art-ified the carpet. You know those commercials where the kids have taken their crayons and scribbled all over the walls? Imagine that. Now multiply it by 3. And now change the crayons to a black, double-tipped Sharpie.

Infuriated, I sent Amaris to "time out".

Do you want to cry yet? I do. I had one half of a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, so I took it to her room and frantically tried to "erase" the permanent mark from her cute little pink footboard. The black faded. It's now a gray Sharpie line. I ran into the hallway and tried to scrub the marks from the walls. They barely faded at all. I tried it on the door. About one inch of the line there ALMOST disappeared before the eraser started to crumble in my hand. I pumped Purell onto her little plastic table, and scrubbed with a dish rag. Slightly faded, but still apparent.

In the shed, there are 3 half-used cans of paint. I am going to likely have to re-paint or at least touch-up the places she "spruced up". And I'm going to have to pray really, REALLY hard that the Rug Doctor will lift the carpet's "stripes".

My couches, I don't know how they'll manage. They've been through so much that I am starting to feel like it is maybe just "their time". Alas, I don't have the money to replace them. So where does that leave me?

And on top of all this, I am dreading when Mark gets home, because I know that he will be twice as upset about it as I am and I feel like I'm already well over my daily limit for heartache.

Oh, and Amaris fell asleep on time out. So I researched permanent ink removal. No surefire methods yet. Did I mention that I could just cry?