4pm on a hot and somewhat sunny afternoon, and my recently bathed and scrubbed-clean son is out cold on the couch in his Charizard Pokemon underpants, after a few hours of out of control fun in the sun with the hose, and some (understatement) mud. I sat on the deck in my bathing suit and a pair of shorts, sure to wear sunscreen after what happened to me a week ago today (worst... sunburn... ever... never... felt such... pain, as James T. Kirk might overact and say).
Without the boy climbing on me or nefariously into anything, I hardly know what to do with myself, so I figure, hey! Journal Entry Time!
Doug and Jessica left this morning for their massive road trip. I did about a gazillion loads of laundry last night, washing everything, not just what was needed for them to pack. I organized all of Jessica's things and let Doug pack his own. Getting ready for vacation is usually such an incredible pain for me... I end up packing for everyone, and invariably I farg up and forget something for someone. When Doug's sister got married I neglected to pack Doug's suit jacket or his pants or something, and he was reading in the wedding... so I vowed I would never pack for him again, seeing as I simply suck at it. That was five years ago this past April. So, I organized everything I felt I was supposed to, and left it at that. And it all went smoothly. They got going later than I thought they would, around 11am, and I anticipate they'll be at their first overnight in Western PA at Doug's parent's house by 9 pm tonight... even if they stop to eat.
I am slightly jealous, as hanging around here makes me feel as if i should be DOING something productive with my time. I'm a very poor (lousy, crappy, insert negative adjective here) housecleaner, and we have half the house in a kind of remodeling state, and this room... the study, fuggedaboudit. It's an atrotious mess of old papers, files from Doug's graduate school years, boxes from my last job which I left over 15 months ago, more papers, magazines, all kinds of stuff, intermingled with rolling tumbleweeds of black dog hair... oh I'm nauseous just typing about it.
Thing is, I feel like with them "freshly gone," as it were, I deserve a moment of doing nothing. Yeah, I deserve that. Some down time. Time to myself. I wish I had a beer or something!
On the other hand, I tell myself I spend most of my time here doing nothing in the first place, so while I have no boy up my back, or in the cabinets, or messing with lotion in the bathroom (he loves lotion. Go figure)... I ought to make use of these precious alone seconds and start cleaning. I could clean Jessica's absolute pig sty of a room, reorganize all the stuff I pulled out of the closets to go through to give to Doug's sister's new baby (our niece, Elyse... it rhymes), clean the kitchen, clean my messy room... clean Geoff's black hole of a messy room... oh the possibilities are endless...
I'll be sleeping in about 15 minutes. Out cold... Right on the other end of the couch from my half naked four year old. That's Saturday afternoon fun family entertainment. It would be justified, a big nap that is... we did lots of yard stuff, watered plants, had the biggest mud puddle under the swingset in history... it was a good day for science in my backyard! And who could ask for anything more when you are a four year old (and you need to be distracted from the fact that your dad and sister just split and you won't see them for about a week, plus, you have to fly on a plane! Oh, it's too much to think about). More mud please.
On another note, I discovered wild strawberries growing underneath the swing set last week. There are about six or seven plants beneath the platform going to the slide. The plants cropped up right along the wooden bottom, where if you wanted to you could fill it with sand for a sand box. I "harvested" six of the berries this afternoon. They are lush, huge, very red, perfect in ripeness, but they don't taste as good as they look. Why is that? How disappointing, to bite into what looks like will be an amazing piece of fruit only to find out it's an "okay" piece of fruit.
Still, the fact that they are there amazes me. I had tried to replant all the wild strawberries I had found in the yard when we moved in, and they didn't take to the new spot in the garden. I'd given up, thinking I'd rounded them all up and killed them all. But here I find a flourishing colony. I'll leave them be, they seem to be doing quite amazingly well on their own. And the Boy hasn't discovered them yet, which is extra great. There are a good 20 more berries on the remaining plants, I am going to keep a close eye on them, harvest them as they come due. There is a huge black raspberry bush in our yard that is out of control this year, so I am looking forward to fighting the birds for that bounty. There usually are so many, that the we get all we want and the birds still get well fed. That's lots o'berries. I hope they don't come to ripeness while I'm away and we don't get ANY. That would be the first time since we moved in here.
That's about it... I do think that nap sounds good. And I'll get Geoff to at least HELP me clean his room. Later.
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