dids and didn’ts

maura @ 6:14 pm

Hey, it’s the weekend! But I’ve clearly got Sundaynightis, because despite spending the day hanging ’round the house there are still Things That Remain Undone, and that vague feeling of not having enough time to do them in. Perhaps I’m being infected by Gus’s gloominess at returning to school tomorrow after last week’s Midwinter Break (not that we can even have a Midwinter Break when we haven’t even had Winter yet, but I digress).

Lists will make me feel better!

Things I’ve Done Today (not necessarily in the order of doing):

– Sent two (2) longish personal emails
– Ordered a birthday present for my sister and one for a pal
– Called my nephew (who turned 4 today!) and sang “Happy Birthday” to the answering machine
– Dusted + swept the shelves + floors
– Washed + hung one load of laundry, folded + put away another
– Changed the cat litter
– Took out the trash
– Drank too much coffee
– Ate breakfast, lunch, and a snack
– Read 2 articles and wrote 2 emails about a conference proposal I’m mulling over submitting
– First-level triage of work email (= read + deleted what could be read + deleted)
– Watched an informative video about botfly reproduction with Gus
– Looked online for a new scooter for Gus, who’s getting too big for his current scooter (sniff)
– Tightened the drawer handles on the china cabinet
– Loaded the dishwasher
– Blagged

(And, in the inbetween times: read today’s paper on my phone, kept current w/twitter, tripled my town(s), got my feedreader down to 2!!)

Things That Remain Undone (but the day’s not over yet!):

– Make a birthday card for a pal and pack her gift in a box for mailing tomorrow
– Finish part of a book chapter I’m writing (due Thursday!)
– Work on a presentation with my research partner (not actually scheduled for 16 whole days! plenty of time still!)
– Start blagging some thoughts I have on developing a game for library orientation (probably over at my other blog)
– Eat dinner
– Empty the dishwasher + wash the dinner dishes
– Pack my backpack + lunch for work tomorrow

Later gators, time to get back to it.

kelly watch the stars by air

maura @ 11:29 pm

A long time ago in a borough far away (well, maybe just across the bridge), before we were parents, we used to have gaming nights with friends. There was a period of time when we played Magic the Gathering with a couple of pals who would come to our house one night a week. We’d all order food + have a few beers + play a little Magic. We’d listen to music, too, and it was right after the Air album “Moon Safari” came out, the first record I bought of theirs. Good times.

This morning we drove to sleepaway camp to pick up Gus. He spent the first few hours at home obsessively dividing up Jonathan’s old Magic cards into their respective colors, reading each one individually and telling us about all that he learned playing Magic at camp. We didn’t know we were sending him to geek camp! It took 2 hrs to get lunch into him, one bite at a time between the organizing.

He was away at camp for a week, first time ever. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster for us all, I think. We were away the week before last with only 2 days at home before camp. And one of the cats, who’s been sick off and on for a while, kicked it up a notch last weekend. It seemed touch and go for a while–can’t really think of a worse pet scenario than the cat dying the first time the kid goes to camp–but luckily the kitty has perked up since he’s been on the meds we got at the vet.

Since Gus has been home it’s been an alternating love + loss fest. He loves us so much! and missed us so much! he’s told us over and over again, but he loved camp so much! too, and misses it terribly! So difficult, this growing up business.

Today I spent most of my time doing ALL the laundry, because kids bring lots of real dirt (TM) back with them to the city from sleepaway camp. When we got there this morning they made a big announcement that they’d found lice on some campers + counselors (which I’d totally planned to check him for anyway), which was just another reason for me to enact LaundryFest2011. Actually it was really sweet: the camp seemed so apologetic about the lice, as if we don’t get a note from school about lice in Gus’s class pretty much every year. And we have that crazy German lice comb so we’re ready to pick the nits.

So far so good: no one seems to have lice, everything’s clean, and the cats and child are sleeping happily. I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep, too.

clean and sparkly

maura @ 10:37 pm

The bathroom is finished! Well, that’s a tiny exaggeration: it’s about 99% done. The contractor has to come back on Monday and install the shower rod and do a couple of other minor things. But we’re almost there. It’s very, very pretty — I know this is awful, but I almost hate to turn it over to Gus and the cats now. Maybe they should use the other bathroom and Jonathan and I can use the new one.

Today we spent most of the afternoon cleaning and other final renovationy stuff — Jonathan painted the back of the door and put grout sealer on the floor and shower walls. I’m completely pooped, but it’s really nice to have all of the renovation dust gone and the house (mostly) back to normal. Gah, why is renovating such a dusty business? The tops of the ceiling fan blades were a horror.

I was going to be all super crazy cleantastic and vacuum the books, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I must be deficient — we have a real vacuum and a little handheld thing.* Each has multiple attachments and I tried a couple but just couldn’t make it work any better than a dust rag.

* I find it equal measures fun and sort of offensive that our handheld vacuum is bright yellow. Fun because yay! fun colors are fun! But offensive because I suspect that the manufacturers made it yellow to try to attract the male market: “if it’s yellow, it’s like a tool, and guys like tools!”

Gah, books collect so much dust. So. Much. Dust. I am still sneezing, even hours later! Which is making me think about doing another book purge. I feel kind of guilty about bringing some of my weird, semi-out-of-date archaeology books to the public library to drop them off, but I’m not sure what to do with them otherwise. But really, I work in a library, why do I need so many books in my house, too?