Goings On

Here I am, a week later, and I find that the continuity of my thoughts got derailed somewhere along the line. I looked back to see if I could catch a clue where to pick up, so… just on the off chance that you might be interested in whether I was productive or not during my week long hiatus.

After I logged out last week, I got right down to the enormously satisfying job of shampooing the rugs in our main living area. Cleaning carpets is a bit like having a colon cleanse, I think. One is so excited and relieved to have the gunk cleared out, but dear, oh dear, that it was there at all is rather appalling!  At the end of the day I had squeaky clean floors and a wrist that felt like it had a serious sprain, or strain or something, due to all the machine pushing.

Our church school had a program that evening, so I stowed the carpet cleaner at 6, got me and a few children dressed up, and waited for Gabe to come home from work so he could watch the littles while we went to the program. The next night it was our homeschool Kinder Choir’s program, so this time we all needed to be dressed up and take our snack along. I can’t remember what I took. Seriously, it was less than a week ago, and I can’t think what I took except sweet and salty kettle corn. Oh yes, I took a few gallons of iced peppermint tea and a rhubarb cake, which tasted a lot better than it looked, so we got to bring most of it home and eat it ourselves. 🙂

On Friday we cleaned the house and made a bunch of picnicky food. Gabe’s shift started at 4PM, and I thought to myself, “This is a long evening.” So I went and had a look at my fabric stash, naturally. The children were having a ball in the backyard, which made it convenient for me to whip up a sundress for Olivia. After hers was done, Rita was so jealous  desirous to have one as well, so I thought, “Why not?” There actually would have been a few reasons why not, but I persevered, (if you knew how many ways I typed that word and got auto corrected to “preserve red” until I finally got it right…) and eventually tacked on the last little white bows a little past bedtime. It might have been unnecessary, but I am working against a bent to shield myself from too much effort. What a nice way to describe being lazy, huh?

When I was a little girl, my mom made us new dresses every year for the school picnic. There was only one other girl in my grade, so our moms would get their heads together and sew us matching dresses. I can still feel the pride the year my best friend, Esther, and I had brand new brown dresses, knit, longwaisted with large hems so we wouldn’t grow out of them right away. I think my little girls felt kind of special, too, the next day at our annual school picnic, and I was glad I made an effort. 😉

Friends just make life so much fun, don’t they? Somehow I missed getting any photos of Alex and the baby at the picnic, but we were all there. Gabe was shot from his night of work, so he slept more than played ball, but it was a great day of being with our church family.

The next day, Sunday, we had yet another picnic, this time for all EMS personnel. We went straight from church, spent a few hours of a misty, chilly afternoon under a pavilion. The little ones had an inflated bouncy castle to jump in, so they were more than happy. They drank ‘way too many of those awful Hugs “fruit flavored” drinks, ate a bunch of cookies and candy, and pretty much collapsed at the end of the day.

Anybody want to venture a guess on what we did on Monday? Yep, laundry-on-a-loop. That is my new favorite way to describe it; please forgive the repetition. The girls and I also went to a nearby greenhouse for some annual plants, a few flowers for containers on our deck and in window boxes, and a few veggies. I was still filling in dirt around the tomato plants when it began to pour.

Yesterday I wanted to deep, like really deep, clean the bathroom. That shower curtain was bugging me. Gregory got a generous streak and locked me out of the bathroom so he could clean it for me. How sweet was that? Never mind that he used a substantial amount of flushable wipes to wash the floor. I didn’t ask him what he needed the furniture polish/orange oil for…  I just quietly cleaned a lot deeper after he was done.

Sometime in the course of the day, my blonde cherub found the hair clipping scissors and lopped off her ponytail, right at the elastic band. She was stricken with remorse and snipped the fallen pony tail into little bits, disposing of the bits of curls in the flower beds. Then she walked around, always turning her back away from me until I caught on and investigated. The barber job looks a bit like an old fashioned bob cut, but the spot where she sheared a buzz cut into the top front… there’s not a whole lot that can be done until it grows out. Maybe around Christmas it will be back to normal. I didn’t know whether to laugh or feel sick after the initial shock was over. It is one thing to fix an awful cut on a little boy, but this takes it to a whole new level. What would I do without my Rita to teach me things, like how not to scream when the milk is already spilled?

So that brings us to today. We babysat some delightful little girls for a while, and then I tackled my cupboards. I found some odd bits, like a tube of brilliant green icing that was weeping in puddles on the shelf,  a milk chocolate bunny from Easter, corn meal that was outdated in 2010, and a whole bag of pretzel MnM’s. If I had known they were up there, above the fridge, I might have had a handful while I was mourning the golden ringlets. But it is good to know they are up there, for future reference. I didn’t get very far, but I am on a slow and steady roll. If I keep it up, I might just get done spring cleaning by next year!