Much House Joy
Sep. 27th, 2004 12:00 pmLots of happiness accomplished at the homestead this weekend, which you may or may not care to read.
The weather was just too lovely to hold still, even though I did stay home. The windows were open and the fans were running. And I was in high gear.
We started off with a marvelous Date Night on Friday, with
agrnmn mowing the B's lawn in the dark while I tried to gather junk from under their back porch. I only accidentally grabbed something alive once. Then, we went to Organized Living and started talking through our Business Plan (tm). Home by 10 p.m., but lots of fun. Crossword puzzles and general chatting ensued and then an amiable bedtime. Nooky upportunities have been temporarily compromised by a menses of Jungian proportions...
I didn't really want to go out on Saturday, but I did a lot of marvelous puttering around the house. The blessed thing is that basic housecleaning is getting solid enough that I can spare time and attention for other layers of tasks. For example, getting that old curtain hardware off the windows in my bedroom. Two years that task has waited. Boy, was it ever nice to get rid of those. Princess Sticky managed to abscond with the screwdriver halfway through the task, however. I think she used Expeditious Retreat and Hide Object, because by the time I caught up to her, the screwdriver was nowhere to be found. I was able to finish the task with
zylch's Leatherman (suh-weet!), but you might want to watch where you sit until we find that screwdriver...
Got the upstairs bedroom cleaned up for the Princesses !Kaboom and Sticky. Sticky removed her own diaper at some point during Saturday's nap, and when it took me so long to find that diaper in the junk on their floor, I decided it was time for an Intervention. About an hour later -- or maybe less, it went fast -- and toys were picked up (!Kaboom was very helpful)and books were put away. Well, many books were put away. Some had to be discarded because they'd been torn to bits...and some will be donated away because I can't bear to read them (Barbie books mostly, though heaven only knows how we got them). Their clean clothes were all gathered and mostly folded and the beds were rearranged a bit to hopefully decrease the frequency with which they both throw themselves out of their beds. Their dresser is going to need some work. See, they've sort of dismantled the drawers and the frame is all higgledy-piggledy now. That's why their clean clothes aren't really put away. Oh. Yeah -- and they wear just about the same size now. ::sigh::
A particularly heroic fluff patrol was accomplished downstairs. Fractal has been in the household long enough that his fluff can now be distinguished from the other dogs' fluff in the pile. I even managed to corrall all the misplaced CDs and DVDs and get them all put away for once.
agrnmn got home early on Saturday night; the
zylch finished two crossword puzzles and Princess Boredom successfully struck a bargain to clean the upstairs bathroom in exchange for transportation to the video store. I think I managed to eat nothing but popcorn and ice cream all day long.
Sunday dawned bright and pleasant. I got to sleep in a bit and then let
agrnmn go back to bed. Princess !Sticky was so helpful in the kitchen that dishes were washed and the floor got...well, sort of cleaner. WJust before I put the little ones down for their ap-nay after unch-lay,
zylch got a Grand Tour of the yard and we talked about dreams and plans and she did some marvelous sketching. Marvelous son that he is,
agnmn went to mow his folks' lawn while they're in Europe, poor things. We cleared a lot of crap from the porch and breezeway, moved some gardening stuff out to the gardening shed (gasp!) and put chairs on the breezeway. Tools of destruction were acquired. Then, we put up our feet and had chocolate milk.
It was good.
The little ones were having a wonderful "nap" upstairs and therefore were declared unlikely to "wake up" in any mood to attend GC. It broke my heart, I tell you, staying home to wander around the property, pointing at things, explaining to trees why they were or were not staying and moving rocks around. I even managed to have dinner on the table when
agrnmn and Princess Boredom got home -- a sumptuous feast of baked beans, tater tots and kernel corn.
Later, under the guidance of the ever-competent
zylch, Princess Boredom built a bi-level birdhouse and started on a felt-lined box for her treasures;
zylch herself constructed a different sort of slidey-lid treasure box and a tool caddy with less than a dozen nails total. I sort of built a finch feeder. All this was accomplished in the kitchen, while
agrnmn watched Little Shop of Horrors on TV. There's a nuclear family for you -- the chicks building stuff in the kitchen while the dude watches a musical.
After
agrnmn went to work, I cleared out two file cabinet drawers downstairs and located a few boxes of assorted paperwork that needs sorting so I'll know where it is next time I feel industrious. Many thanks to
zylch for carrying the boxes of paper recycling up the stair for me and generally providing snark-tastic color commentary throughout.
Yay, us.
The weather was just too lovely to hold still, even though I did stay home. The windows were open and the fans were running. And I was in high gear.
We started off with a marvelous Date Night on Friday, with
I didn't really want to go out on Saturday, but I did a lot of marvelous puttering around the house. The blessed thing is that basic housecleaning is getting solid enough that I can spare time and attention for other layers of tasks. For example, getting that old curtain hardware off the windows in my bedroom. Two years that task has waited. Boy, was it ever nice to get rid of those. Princess Sticky managed to abscond with the screwdriver halfway through the task, however. I think she used Expeditious Retreat and Hide Object, because by the time I caught up to her, the screwdriver was nowhere to be found. I was able to finish the task with
Got the upstairs bedroom cleaned up for the Princesses !Kaboom and Sticky. Sticky removed her own diaper at some point during Saturday's nap, and when it took me so long to find that diaper in the junk on their floor, I decided it was time for an Intervention. About an hour later -- or maybe less, it went fast -- and toys were picked up (!Kaboom was very helpful)and books were put away. Well, many books were put away. Some had to be discarded because they'd been torn to bits...and some will be donated away because I can't bear to read them (Barbie books mostly, though heaven only knows how we got them). Their clean clothes were all gathered and mostly folded and the beds were rearranged a bit to hopefully decrease the frequency with which they both throw themselves out of their beds. Their dresser is going to need some work. See, they've sort of dismantled the drawers and the frame is all higgledy-piggledy now. That's why their clean clothes aren't really put away. Oh. Yeah -- and they wear just about the same size now. ::sigh::
A particularly heroic fluff patrol was accomplished downstairs. Fractal has been in the household long enough that his fluff can now be distinguished from the other dogs' fluff in the pile. I even managed to corrall all the misplaced CDs and DVDs and get them all put away for once.
Sunday dawned bright and pleasant. I got to sleep in a bit and then let
It was good.
The little ones were having a wonderful "nap" upstairs and therefore were declared unlikely to "wake up" in any mood to attend GC. It broke my heart, I tell you, staying home to wander around the property, pointing at things, explaining to trees why they were or were not staying and moving rocks around. I even managed to have dinner on the table when
Later, under the guidance of the ever-competent
After
Yay, us.