Checking In

So, life. Life continues apace.

The kids continue much as reported in the previous update. Penny's birthday is two weeks from today and she's been doing a countdown for over a week. I don't have any really big exciting presents for her, so I hope she's not too disappointed. Both of them have been taking advantage of summer to stay up late -- I don't make Alex go to bed until after 8:30, and Penny's been staying up until 10. I expect there to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth when I make them dial it back for school, even if it's only going to be by half an hour.

Most of my energy has been going to the house lately, quite honestly. The front porch has been repaired, and the fix on the dining room floor was supposed to start today, so I scrambled to get the painting done over the weekend... and two hours after we finished, my contractor emailed to tell me another job had been postponed due to weather and so he wouldn't be able to start my floor until next week. The forecast for this week is fairly reasonable, though, so hopefully that won't push out too much further.

I'm pretty happy with my paint, though! John and Sam came over to help me, for which I am eternally grateful. (It was supposed to be John and Dad, but earlier in the week Dad was helping John repair a broken gutter and his cheap-ass ladder crumpled under him and he fell. He got away with only a broken finger, but it sounded pretty harrowing -- Dad's brains got scrambled enough by the fall that he still doesn't remember anything between standing on the ladder and being in the emergency room a couple of hours later.) Anyway, here's some crappy cell phone pictures of the new paint:

Just those two walls are blue in the dining room; everything else is creamy white, about half a shade lighter than what was in there before. And a lot of the blue will be covered up when I can put the hutch back in the room and hang my pictures back up, so it won't look quite so overwhelming then. I'm VERY pleased with the yellow accent wall in the kitchen, though. I've got a picture to hang on it that's going to make it just sing.

I'm pondering alternate placement of my furniture and other less-intense home improvement projects (e.g., new fixtures, wall stickers) for when this is all done.

It's been just over a year since Matt moved out, so I called my lawyer last week and he's prepping the documents so we can get the ball rolling on the divorce. Not much to say there, really; it feels like a non-event, a bureaucratic ribbon on a package already purchased.

I'm editing a lot and writing a little; check the sidebar for my latest story release. Human Aspect is a little more wide-audience than most of my other stuff, being a coming-of-age fantasy story. And KT/Lynn and I are buffing up the shorts we've been writing all year so we can get them assembled into a collection and submit it. I'm really excited about that one -- it's all over the map, and was oodles of fun to do.

And I'm still crocheting, though I haven't accomplished much in the last month, partly because I've lost time to rearranging stuff and furniture to clear the dining room and kitchen for the repair/renovation, and partly because my initial idea for Yog-Sothoth turned out to be way harder to do than I anticipated, so I had to scrap it and start over:

And that's about it at the moment. I keep telling myself that I should go back to writing here every day, just so I don't lose track of the minutiae, the passing thoughts and the anecdotes. But it may be a while before I feel settled enough to make myself get back into that habit.

EDIT (March 2020): Seven years later, I am STILL getting fairly frequent requests for the patterns for these guys. So I've uploaded my patterns to Google Docs (the Cthulhu pattern was something I found online and since seems to have been taken down, alas) and you can get it RIGHT HERE.

Status Update

Still alive!

It's been a while, and lots of stuff has happened, and some more stuff is imminent, so I figured this was as good a time as any to post a status update of sorts.

Alex: Prepping for kindergarten in the fall, of course. Very excited about it. I've got an appointment to turn in most of his paperwork next week (why I need an appointment for that, I have no idea) but it won't be finished until August, because that's the earliest the doctor's office could give him the physical and immunization booster he needs to start school. He's still planning to marry his friend Claudia from daycare. Though they "graduated" preschool a couple of weeks ago, and will be going to different elementary schools. Long distance relationships are pretty hard to maintain.

Penny: She just finished the 4th grade. She's edging into puberty (not to delve into TMI, but I expect she'll need at least a training bra before she turns 11). She alternates between being an infuriating know-it-all and breathlessly generous and loving -- which, as I am given to understand, still puts me ahead of many parents of preteens. After priming me carefully so I would not freak out when she got her first "C" (in social studies, her -- and my -- least favorite subject) she squeaked through with a B anyway and was on the honor roll again for the year. She's two months away from turning 10. Holy hell.

Work: The Day Job is a bit worrisome -- we have contracts that will keep me employed (though not anything like busy) through September (the end of the Government fiscal year) and then... not really anything. I'm fretting about it a bit and considering options, but not terrified. The worst of it will be if I do end up having to look for another job, I'm fairly likely to end up having to move to either the Norfolk or Richmond areas, which will play merry havoc with our carefully-cultivated custody schedule. My mom asked what we'd do if that was the case, and I had to admit that I had no idea whatsoever. The Dream Job is going much better, though it doesn't pay remotely well enough for me to even think about taking it full-time. (I got a 1st-quarter royalty check the other day for -- hold onto your hats -- $7!) But I've got a new story being released tomorrow (June 19th), and this one has a wider readability than most of my others -- a high fantasy story. It's got some romantic elements, and some kind of dark moments, but it's being released by Torquere's YA imprint, Prizm, so you can take that into account. :-) (I'll do a separate post to pimp it when it comes out. I'm really proud of it; it's some of my best writing ever.) And I've sold my first full-length novel (a fantasy m/m romance) to Torquere!

Personal Life:  B. and I are still dating. I suspect it's a relationship with an expiration date; we like each other pretty well, but have pretty wildly different goals and approaches to life, which occasionally leads to some friction. Sometimes that bothers me and makes me wonder why I'm wasting time on something that's most likely doomed, but most of the time I'm just ignoring it and trying to have fun. I've got enough on my plate right now anyway, right? Anyway, I'm technically still married -- though that's getting closer to changing.

I spent almost three hours sitting in my lawyer's office today. The first half-hour of that was with Matt present -- we signed our formal Separation/Property Settlement, so now I guess we're officially and legally separated. In about six weeks, when we've been living apart for a full year, I'll call the lawyer back and we'll get the divorce proceedings rolling. With a no-fault, no-contest divorce, the lawyer says it'll take about six more weeks to finalize. So I should be officially and legally divorced by the end of August or early September. I'm beginning to ponder ways to commemorate the occasion.

House: The other two hours I spent at the lawyer's office were spent signing the paperwork to refinance the house in my own name only. And then I went to the bank and had them cut me a mouth-dryingly large cashier's check to buy out Matt's share of the equity. Which is to say the house is, as of today (well, technically in three days, when the chicken-out period is done and the paperwork all gets filed) solely mine.

I've also written a couple of other mildly huge checks (oh, my aching bank account) to a contractor who is supposed to come in July and August and fix my rotten porch support posts and the rotten board in my dining room, and replace the yellowing vinyl flooring in my kitchen and dining room with tile. And as long as I'll have to empty the rooms anyway, I'm pondering paint as well.

Hobbies: I'm still crocheting a lot, though my efforts have taken a kind of weird turn... It started with this chibi Cthulhu (Cutethulhu?) pattern, because everyone needs a chibi Cthulhu, right? And then KT posted a link to this picture of a whole collection of disturbingly adorable Lovecraftian horrors:

And I was looking at it and thought... Some of those wouldn't be that hard to make, really... So far I've made -- entirely on my own, without recourse to any specific patterns -- a Hastur and a Nyarlathotep. (Nyarlathotep is a little closer to the scarier versions of him I've seen online than the one in this picture, but I'm considering it an inspiration, not a pattern, so that's okay. I'm less okay with the way his "hips" bulge out and make him look like he's an Elder God with a fondness for beer and cupcakes; if I ever do him over, I'll probably try to find a way to slim him down a little. I'm pretty pleased with how the mouth and tongue turned out, though.)

I've been calling them my Little Horrors, and yes, I'm planning to do the whole set. I'll probably do Yog-Sothoth next, now that I have a notion of how I think I want to do it.

(A few days ago, B. texted me and asked what I was up to, and I said, "trying to figure out how to crochet Nyarlathotep." He texted back and said, "Yet another reason why you're my girlfriend," and I responded, "The fact that you find this good rather than disturbing would be on the list of reasons you're my boyfriend.")

(CrA)^z

I'm currently editing three projects for Torquere: two novels and a novelette. One of the novels isn't due out until June and is already in the proofreader's hands and is therefore well underway. The novelette has had its first round of edits and is back in the author's hands. The other novel just hit me over the weekend... and thanks to a communications backfire, its schedule is extra-tight, so I have, essentially, one week to finish my first round of edits.

I also just got sent another novel to proofread (that's easier than editing, but still pretty time-consuming) that's on another tight-ish deadline; I've got about two weeks to get that one done.

My latest release, "Assumption of Desire", will be coming out from Torquere tomorrow. Obviously, that's complete now, but I've got some online publicity/marketing gigs to line up and execute, because that's part of my obligation as the author. (Speaking of which, if you're interested in winning a copy of the story, today is your last day to enter the contest!)

April's calendar is already nearly filled to the brim: Spring Break (including an Art Day for Penny and a day at Busch Gardens for everyone), Easter, a D&D game, Matt's and my anniversary, a kids' birthday party, two doctor's appointments, and a weekend at Diabetes Camp. And at some point after the show finishes I need to drive down to Hampton to pick up the art I bought. Plus several adult friends having birthdays. And KT and Kevin may be moving somewhere in there.

The Day Job's insanity includes a stack of paperwork that's currently twice as tall as the inbox, and an electronic "stack" nearly twice as tall as that, plus several new responsibilities that I need to remember to fold into my routines.

Plus all the usual stuff like making meals and taking the kids to school and trying to keep the house from completely falling into a slimepit. And occasionally trying to get to the gym.

Things are crazy, and are going to stay crazy for the next month, is what I'm saying.CRAY-ZEE.

On the plus side, I'm really going to appreciate the assorted vacations that are lining up for late summer and early fall.

Llama Drama

One of Alex's favorite books lately is Llama Llama Mad At Mama. Reading it is a ritual -- he has to read the "MAD AT MAMA" line himself, and he must linger over the little llama's tantrum and enjoy the vicarious visceral thrill of throwing things and making an enormous mess. And when it's done, he explains to me earnestly that even when he's mad at me, he still loves me. I love reading it with him almost as much as I enjoyed Llama Llama Red Pajama.

I particularly love the phrase "llama drama", which gets used in both books.

Which, I suppose, is good, because there is llama drama shaping up at work. I can't talk much about it, because it may well involve Official Actions of one severity or another, but it's giving me a hell of a headache. No worries; I'm not in any trouble, but I'm tangentially involved as a manager. I very much fear that it's going to result in the departure (one way or another) of one of the dramatis personae. Which would be bad, because we need them.

Which is all I'm going to say about the llama drama for now.

***

So I took Penny with me to Bed, Bath, and Beyond this weekend and I tried her patience right down to the very last thread while I picked out a new shower curtain, liner, floor mats, towels, and counter accessories. I wanted a new curtain rod as well, but I want the kind that mounts directly on the wall, and the only ones of those they had were the curved ones, and our bathroom is not well-situated for one of those. So I contented myself with new rings, and eventually I'll make a run down to Lowes or Home Depot for a mounted curtain rod.

If I must say so myself, it looks fantastic.

The color is a little weird because of my phone, but the new colors are a rich chocolate brown and a gorgeous deep red, with cream and silver accents. I think it manages to be attractive and simple without being either austere or so girly that Matt will feel out of place. And as a bonus, the new floor mat I got to go by the sink is actually long enough to cover the whole length of the double sinks, so we can both stand completely on it now, instead of having to either crowd the center or stand one foot on and one foot off!

To console Penny for having to wait while I dithered over all the options for this, I let her pick out the trash can we needed for the kids' bathroom. She, naturally, went straight for the most bling-a-riffic, rhinestone-studded wastebasket I have ever seen in all my life.

Every single one of those little dots is, in fact, a rhinestone stud. She's ridiculously happy with it, and if I had been looking to re-do the kids' bathroom this weekend as well, I'm certain she would have cheerfully picked the sequin-covered shower curtain to go with it.

Press Pause

After some discussion, Matt and I are pretty much putting Alex's night time potty training on hold. Too many nights in a row of multiple accidents and everyone being cranky the next day because of interrupted sleep. Too much frustration. And, looking online, it really looks like there's no such thing as providing incentives -- positive or negative -- for night time training. They either wake up in time, or they don't.

Alex is super about daytimes now; he's only had one accident in the last couple of months that I know of. So it's not a reluctance to use the potty. He's just not quite there for the night yet. And it's not that terrible a hardship to plan for having a couple of spare pullups around for nights. So we're back to pullups for now, and we're possibly all a lot happier for it.

(Once our Diaper Genie runs out its current stock of plastic wrap, though, I might toss it and switch to putting wet pullups in the leftover Diaper Duck bags, by way of clutter reduction.)

***

It's going to be a busy weekend, even though we don't have much in the way of special events planned.

Alex has a birthday party to attend on Saturday, and Matt's monthly D&D game is that night. And of course, there's the usual Friday night hangout with the Hedge.

Working around that, I need to go to the bank, Penny wants to hit the drugstore/post office near my office for a toy she saw a few weeks ago, and I want to hit up Bed Bath and Beyond for a new bathroom set (shower curtain, liner, rod/rings, rugs,  the whole deal. Maybe even towels. Everything we've got has been in there since we moved in, if not before that, and it's all showing its age rather sadly). Also, Alex could use a new pair of shoes, and I noticed a hole the other day in my favorite pair of work pants, so there's a trip to Target in the offing.

Matt and I also, at some point (though not necessarily this weekend) want to replace our mattress and our refrigerator, both of which will take a little extra time in comparison shopping.

Let the games begin!

Washed Out

Have I mentioned that we're trying to get Alex out of pull-ups at night? We decided to take the same tack we'd taken for his daytime training, which was to just get rid of them and let him have however many accidents it takes for his brain to key in.

Which, for the last two mornings, has meant that he goes to bed and is fine right up until about 5:45 in the morning, when he comes into our room and says, "Mommy...? I had an accident."

We're double-sheeting his bed, so it only takes a couple of minutes to get him into clean pajamas and strip the wet sheets off the bed and put him back down... but by then it's almost 6 and the boy is Awake.

And Matt and I, manifestly, are Not.

He willingly lies down and is mostly quiet for the ten minutes it takes for our alarms to start going off, at which point he appears back in our room. "Mommy? I heard the music. I wanna snuggle."

Which is code for, "I want to play with Daddy and possibly lean my elbow on your boob," so you can imagine that it means we're pretty much done sleeping.

So far, he's gone to bed in underpants three times. So far, we've had to wash four sets of sheets. I may need to start going to bed at 9:30 again and just getting up when he has his accident at 5:45, if it goes on like this. Or possibly, set an alarm to wake him up and take him to the potty at 3, when it's still late enough that we can all go back to sleep afterward.

***

I had my day off from the Day Job yesterday. I try to use my days off as writing days (by preference) or to run errands and do chores. I'd wanted to get together with Lynn to talk about a book we want to work on together, but her daughter turned up sick with what turned out to be strep throat, so that was out. So I figured I'd just take my iPad over to Panera and have a regular writing day.

Except that as I took the kids to school, I was yawning obsessively. And my eyelids were heavy. After I'd dropped Alex off and was on the way to Penny's school, I twice had lights change fortuitously quickly, so I didn't even have to stop -- and was frustrated by that (usual) good luck, because I desperately wanted to be able to bring the car to a complete stop so I could close my eyes and doze for a minute.

(It's probably a good thing that Lynn couldn't meet me, because the hour-ish drive down to her place would've been unreasonably dangerous, and I doubt I'd have been in any shape to focus on the topic at hand once I got there.)

When I'd dropped Penny off and gotten back home, I thought about making myself a cup of coffee so I could buck up and get on with my writing, and then I decided that I had the day off, and rather than settle for the quick patch that would get me through, I should take the actual fix and get some extra sleep. So I changed back into my jammies and crawled into bed, thinking I'd nap for an hour or so and then get up and just write through lunchtime instead of breakfast. No sweat.

Except that I didn't wake up until 12:30. Well, I do fuzzily recall opening my eyes at 11, thinking I should probably get up, and then going back to sleep. I'm pretty sure that doesn't count.

That's easily a three and a half hour nap. Maybe more. Apparently, my tank was running emptier than I'd thought. It's entirely possible that I could've slept another hour or so if I'd really tried, but by then I was starving. So I got up and ate lunch, and then decided the day was a wash for writing. Instead, I purged the clothes and toys in Alex's room, filling two trash bags with clothes to donate, one with stuffies he hasn't so much as looked at in a year, and another with a Little People set he hasn't played with since about two weeks after I took it out of the box, all of which I took to the CHKD thrift store near us while Matt was picking Penny up from school.

My next day off, I may tackle Penny's room. She actually plays up there, though, so it'll be harder to figure out what to keep and what to junk.

Day Off

I took my "part-time" day off yesterday.

Took Penny down to Newport News to get some blood drawn for some tests -- she was a little scared, but did great -- and then after I signed her into school, I went to the Panera, bought a coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and started writing.

Usually on my day off, I get to Panera around 8:30 and leave around lunchtime. Yesterday, I got there at 9:30 and didn't leave until after 2:30. In that time, I drank six (or maybe seven?) cups of coffee, ate a breakfast sandwich, a bowl of soup (though they ran out of black bean before I was ready for lunch, boo), and a strawberry scone, and wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000 words. It felt great.

Then, since my sense of smell has finally recovered from my cold, I walked over to Bath and Body Works to check out their winter scents, and lo! the small holiday night lights were on sale! So I bought... a few. Shut up, I can quit any time I want.

Then I went to the bank to deposit birthday and royalty checks, and headed home. The evening was fairly normal and relaxed, which was perfect. I didn't do any more writing, but I did make some progress on another project, and read another chapter and a half in my bedside book.

All in all, just about the most perfect day off I could've asked for.

Yep, It's Monday

I got Penny and Alex all the way to daycare this morning before I thought to look in Penny's kit and make sure she had enough supplies for the day. Sure enough, there's only one test strip left. Sigh. At least this is a gym day -- I'll just leave a few minutes early and drop a new can of strips off before I go to the gym, just in time for lunch, and it'll only add maybe ten minutes to my lunch break. Plus it gives me an excuse to walk out of my 10:00 meeting if it runs past 11, since they really will need those test strips before lunchtime.

But still, not the smoothest possible start to the day.

It was a pretty good weekend, though. I met a couple of old high school friends for lunch on Saturday, and then that afternoon we took the kids to the park. I took the camera (of course) and despite continuing focus problems (I will figure this out eventually) managed to get a few really good shots.


(My pictures look so much darker on my computer at work than the one at home, despite them both being LCD screens... I'm trying to figure out which one is closer to "normal" so I know whether I need to adjust my edits. Is it a Mac/PC difference, maybe? Guess I won't know for sure which way to go until I get some prints done. Hmph.)

Sunday was a mostly quiet day -- I took the kids to the grocery store, Matt mowed the lawn, I went to Target to do the back-to-school shopping (twelve freaking glue sticks...), Matt did the laundry, I took a nap, Matt took Penny to the comic shop and bookstore... like that. Penny had a scary low at lunchtime (in the 30s -- but she didn't even notice!) and then made up for it by running high all afternoon and evening. Alex took advantage of any adult sitting down for more than three seconds to insist on having a book read to him.

I got tired of the unholy mess that is the kids' craft drawer in the dining room, so I sat down and threw out a year's worth of forgotten drawings and mostly used-up coloring books and never-read magazines and dried-out play-doh lumps and capless markers and and and... I segregated all the pencils and markers and crayons and stamps and stickers into plastic bags and warned Penny that the next time I clean out the drawers, anything that isn't in its bag is going to be thrown out, whether it's still usable or not. The room looked so much better just from that little bit of effort, I may start attacking the horror that is the playroom, even if I have to do it one shelf at a time.

After the kids went to bed, Matt and I watched the unaired Dollhouse episode (the season one DVD just accidentally fell into my cart while I was at Target!) and some of the making-of/behind-the-scenes specials. A good way to end the weekend, though it has me champing at the bit for the next season. (September 25!)

I didn't get much writing done, like I'd planned to do (a little Friday night, but not after that), but I did do some organizing of the Google Sites spot I created for the purpose. (No, the link does not take you to my writing spot. It's not currently public. If you want to see it, you can ask, but everything in there is still in flux. I'm hoping it works out, though, because unlike Google Documents, Google Sites is available to me from both home and work.)

But at least I have a spot, now, and eventually I will have a plan.

Happy New Year!

I hope you had a happy new year -- wild parties with champagne, or a quiet warm evening at home, or anything in between, as long as it makes you happy. And I hope you didn't have a hangover yesterday. Or at least, not too much of one.

We went yesterday to my parents' house to have our family Christmas celebration with them and my brother and his wife.

It was nice. Very low-key. We enjoyed watching Penny open her presents (Alex opened one or two of his, but the rest are waiting for our next visit) and we talked, and we ate good food, and we played with the kids. Nothing crazy.



I do need to slightly revise one of my new year's resolutions: one of my Christmas presents from Matt is six months' rent on a storage unit, starting at the beginning of February. So I'll need to have at least a few boxes ready to go into storage by the end of this month.

Not that I'm complaining, mind. It gives me some incentive to get my behind in gear on that project.

My other gift, which hasn't arrived yet, is a set of shelves for the kitchen. I'm eagerly planning for those, too: The top shelf will be for my cookbooks and the few wineglasses that survived the crash. The bottom shelf will be for storing the soda and juice that currently line the wall. The middle shelves are still sort of up in the air -- I have lots of ideas (tupperware, ziploc/trash bags, medium-use appliances, the flour/sugar cannisters, pantry items, ...) -- I'm just not sure yet what will turn out to be the best arrangement. Any way it works out, I'll be happy to clear off some working space on the counters!

---

Now I'm at work for what is probably one of the slowest working days of the year. (Second only to the day after Christmas, when there were only four people here. But one of them wasn't me.)

I'm not complaining about that, either. I've got a ton of paperwork to catch up on, and my office is ready for its annual tidying, too -- I need to pack up old files and toss out stuff I don't need anymore and make space for the coming year's files. Having a slow day will help me make a dent in those chores.

Though I won't be getting too much done until about 9. Penny's with me until my dad can make it up to pick her up and take her back home, and as much as I love her, she's not very good at staying quiet and letting me work. (She just finished making herself some reindeer antlers, and now she's playing with my Dress-Me David magnets.)

And I'll be leaving a bit early, so I can pick up Alex from daycare. Normally, that's Matt's job, but we took the rocket seats out of our cars this weekend and replaced them with Penny's old forward-facing carseats, and then we discovered that the seat we put into Matt's car is missing a critical piece of the buckle.

So we need to buy a new carseat for Matt's car, and in the meantime (until this weekend, probably), I'm on Alex-transport duty.

---

I'll leave you with a Penny anecdote.

"Mom, I want someone to fall in love."

"...Fall in love with who?"

"With me!"

"Well, I love you, a lot!"

"No, Mom! I want a boy to fall in love with me. A prince!"

"Oh. Well, someday, I'm sure someone will fall in love with you, sweetie."

"I want someone to fall in love today."

Clean Machine

I took Friday off from work. I stayed home, and I cleaned the house.

I take that back. "Cleaned" implies things like dusting and vacuuming and washing, and I did none of that. (Well, very little.) What I did was sort through all the kids' toys and other assorted crap, and purge it.

I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but this is plain fact: I got rid of twelve trash bags full of crap. Five bags full (and I mean full) of stuff got taken to the CHKD Thrift Store. Another seven bags went into the trash. (The trash bin's lid does not close all the way. I had to rearrange the bin a couple of times to make sure nothing showed from outside that Penny might recognize and flip out over.)

I removed almost all the toys from our bedroom. (I think I left a couple of stuffies for Alex to play with while we're getting dressed in the morning and for Penny to use as "squeezies" when she's getting her bedtime shot.) I cleared a bunch of crap out of Alex's closet that's been in there since before Penny could walk. (There is still more crap that should be cleaned out of both kids' closets, but our house has a dearth of closet space, and I only had so much time on Friday.)

I purged the toys in Penny's bedroom, and straightened up the ones that escaped the purge. I purged the toys in the ex-garage/playroom, and straightened up and organized the ones that escaped the purge. I moved almost all the toys from the living room into the playroom (except one basket of toys for Alex), straightened the kids' book shelves (turned spines toward the room and right-side-up, moved all the cloth and board books down to the very bottom shelf for Alex, etc.), and disconnected the kiddie karaoke see-yourself-on-TV machine that Penny never uses.

(While I was at it, I did a purge on my end-table -- that was probably most of a trash bag, right there.)

I cleared off the dining table of all the assorted crap that doesn't belong on it, and moved all the toys in the dining room back into the playroom. Then I completely emptied Penny's craft cabinet, threw a whole bunch of stuff away, got out the DustBuster to clean up the detritus (the sole extent of vacuuming I did), and organized the stuff that had escaped the purge.

Then I tackled the downstairs bathroom. I reclaimed a dozen or so Tupperware bowls that Penny had usurped as toys, threw away a few toys that had never meant to be played with in the sink and were subsequently ruined, moved a few more back to the playroom, and left a reasonable few in a bucket on the counter.

I picked up the few toys that were on the kitchen floor and moved them to the side (Alex's toys -- like his sister at that age, he seems to need a change of scenery every so often. Unlike his sister, he is usually willing to play by himself while Matt or I get chores done.)

In between doing all of that, I left the house to:
- take a fresh vial of test strips up to daycare for Penny (oops, forgot to check the kit before school).
- take bags of stuff to the thrift store.
- pick up invitations for Penny's birthday party, which is in two weeks.
- pick up some prescription refills from the drugstore.
- swing by my office to submit my timecard and approve my underling's.

It was a lot of work, but by the time I was done, even though I hadn't really cleaned much of anything (except the inside of the craft cabinet drawers, and one toy which was so disgustingly coated with dust that I gave it a spray-down in the kitchen sink) the house looked so much better that I wanted to weep.

And because the house looked so much better, and because Saturday we started a brand new chore chart for Penny, I decided we'd go ahead and put into place her new chore that I'd been planning to start when she turned 5: At about 7:15 every night, it becomes clean-up time. Penny has to pick up all her toys that she got out during the day, while Matt and I pick up our stuff (and Alex's, of course -- we can't really start training him to pick up his things just yet). As a rule, this should only take about 10 minutes or so. (Saturday, we were done in less than 10; last night took almost 20 minutes because Penny had dumped ALL her letter magnets on the dining table, and insisted on carrying them back to the fridge one at a time.)

Penny does not organize her things when she puts them away -- but honestly, I don't care, as long as they're in the various shelves and bins and not on tables and floors. And as a result, there were only three toys on the floor this morning when we got ready to leave (all Alex's) so it was really simple to pick them up, chuck them back into the basket I'd set out for the purpose, and to start the Roomba as we were heading out the door.

You know, the Roomba I got a year ago on the theory that I could run it every couple of days to control the random crumbs, cat litter, and dirt, and actually run only about four times? Yeah, that Roomba.

And since I have to wash dishes on a daily basis for Alex's bottles anyway, I've been making it a point to try to actually load the dishwasher every night and wipe the splatters and crumbs off the counters and stove so the kitchen looks moderately clean.

...I could get used to this whole "neat house" thing.

100 Things

I am fascinated by the 100 Thing Challenge.

I don't know if I could do it, but I love the idea. I'd have to think about it in stages: Could I get down to 100 items of clothing? Probably; I had less than 50 in my maternity wardrobe, though by the end I was pretty damn sick of re-wearing the same clothes all the time.

Some stuff wouldn't be hard. I could probably get down to maybe 25 books pretty easily; I've already started trimming down my collection to make room for Matt's, and I don't re-read books nearly as often as I used to. I'd have no problem at all dumping every CD I own -- if something happened and I lost my entire music library, there's no way I'd spend all that time ripping all those CDs again anyway. Our 300-DVD cabinet is slam full, but most of the movies are Matt's, a healthy chunk are Penny's, and I'm fairly sure I could cut "my" movies down to 10 or so pretty easily.

Some stuff would be more difficult. How do I count scrapbooking gear? How do pictures waiting for an album count? How many sheets of paper count as a "thing"? What about scraps? Stickers, pages, cutting tools...

What about all the random kitchen and dining stuff that is technically "family stuff" but that Matt would pretty firmly label as "Liz's" -- like the zester and the chopper, or even all the china and silver that I inherited from my grandmothers?

And most difficult of all -- how would I get the rest of the family to play along?