When I used to work in an office, weekends were exciting. They meant sleeping in, and if I wasn’t sleeping in it was because I was doing something really interesting. It meant eating breakfast in a diner, shopping, hanging out with friends, partying, maybe going to a bar, especially if George was playing.

Now weekends aren’t quite the same. You’d think they’d still be exciting, because I do work on stuff from home now but the joy of freelancing is that it all overlaps and I still have things to do on the weekends anyway. Plus, it’s not as carefree what with having kids.

On the other hand, Hayley is at school all week and although she’s home at a reasonable hour in the afternoon, she’s usually tired and a bit cranky, so weekends mean that I get to relax with both of my girls. It’s certainly not bad at all, it’s just different. I’m not sure where I was going with this, but I guess I’m just finding myself thinking of how different certain parts of my life are between now and more than five years ago. It makes me wonder how different things will be in another five years.

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Here’s a request, one I think I do for most of these daily post exercises. I’d like to invite you to ask me a question or two. If there’s anything you’ve always wanted to know, go ahead and ask. Even if I’ve discussed it before, it may have been from before you were reading. If I’ve mentioned something and then neglected to update you on what came afterwards, let me know.

It will help fill the gaps of these daily postings!

If I was pregnant (which I am not), I would be expecting to go into labor any minute now. This morning I went to get something from the bedroom and couldn’t find it, and well, I sort of lost my mind. I don’t know if other people do this, but the bedroom is the one door that can easily be kept closed when someone is visiting. Hayley’s can’t because she’s always in and out. The bathroom needs to be accessible for obvious reasons. The living room, kitchen, and dining area are all open rooms. George’s music room could theoretically be closed to hide a mess but if the person coming over is here for the purpose of recording or wants to hang out in there, that door is open too.

So when someone is coming over and there’s a mess of whatever on the floor of the living room, no problem! Stick it in a laundry basket and stash it in the bedroom! I’m in the middle of folding laundry? Dump that in there too. Pile of books and papers? Ditto! Also, if something needs to be taken away from one of the kids because they’re fighting over it, throwing it, breaking it, whatever, the bedroom is the best place since they aren’t normally playing in there. On top of that, it’s not a room we spend much time in while awake, so we don’t really see much of it.

As a result, without regular upkeep? Total warehouse. If you put a grenade in the middle of the warehouse first and detonated it.

When I couldn’t find what I was looking for – and I can’t even remember what it was because it was about 14 hours ago – I snapped and decided enough was enough. I started cleaning and tossing and folding and after awhile it was better. A little more effort involving dusting and wiping and it was even better than that. I want that bedroom to be in a state where I can keep the damn door open when people are over without worrying about it. Right now it’s there.

Once I got done in there I was tired yet strangely hyper so I just started doing other things. I had a load of laundry to start so I cleaned the bathroom, cleaning everything but the tub (and I would have but I need more baking soda). When I came out, I tackled the dining room (our deep freezer is a magnet for piles and doodads), the living room, and Hayley’s room. Breanna was really good throughout my entire whirlwind. Sometimes she would follow me around, chatting to me. Other times she would draw at the little table in the living room, and sometimes she would take some toys and play with them (on occasion she pulled out the basket of animals and chased me with them, making dinosaurs roar at me or gorillas screech at me). The nice thing is that she helped clean up everything each time she was done. Having a kid with OCD rocks.

I washed and folded two loads of laundry, washed a third which is still drying, made supper, cleaned up afterwards, swept the floor three times today, prepared George’s lunch and Hayley’s snacks (she’s getting a hot lunch tomorrow so that’s all she needs), did a bit of work, and managed to squeeze in some must-see CSI and Grey’s Anatomy.

It’s like I’m nesting but without the pregnancy. Which works just fine for me, thanks!

(Now someone has to tell me I’m not the only one who does the bedroom-turned-storage-and-disaster thing so I don’t feel like a big slob. Also, that will help distract me so I’m not that person who goes around shrieking, “I JUST CLEANED THAT UP!!!” at everyone. Not that I did that today. Nope.)

My good friend Heather is hosting a t-shirt giveaway with the molecular structure of chocolate on it. While it’s not edible, it’s the next best thing, something to show off your love of chocolate. Go enter!

There are no words for how horrible this crochet hat is. I think the only reason the model is smiling so much is that they must have doped her up with something potent. But hey, American Thanksgiving is right around the corner so there’s still time to make one or order one or whatever if scary-ass holiday hats are your thing. (thanks, Andrea!)

This afternoon, I went to throw some more stuff in the washing machine to get some laundry done, but I paused because I realized that the lint trap had fallen in. It was when I reached in to retrieve it that I screamed because something moved. Angel, who puts to rest any notion that all cats are smart, had decided that the presence of a small blanket and a few soft towels made the washing machine the ideal place to catch a little nap. Had I not noticed him, I would have thrown the rest of the towels in on top of him, dumped in some soap, closed the lid, and turned on the hot water. I’d like to think I would have heard him but Breanna and I had Rascal Flatts blaring at high volume, so I don’t know.

He’s a freakin’ moron but that doesn’t mean I want to first scald, then drown him. He’s one lucky little shit.

And of course, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a little cat macro.

A collection of love letters written to friends, strangers, enemies, etc. Easy to get sucked in and spend way too much time reading.

One thing I love about kids is how you can catch them doing something and in response they’ll flash the most innocent face in the world at you and totally deny it.

This afternoon, I gave Breanna a chocolate-covered cookie. She enjoyed it and then asked for another one but I said no, one was enough. Unfortunately I had been distracted by something (the phone? A loud noise? Something shiny? Who knows?) and had left the bag open on the end table. Naturally, Breanna wandered over and took one out. I decided to let her, because eh, one more cookie, big deal. I saw her glance at me out of the corner of her eye and then she snuck back over to the television where she was watching Free Willy (or “Fish” as she calls it, firmly convinced that the giant Orca is a fish. And also, there’s some stellar parenting, eating cookies and watching a movie, go me!). She ate it as discreetly as an almost-two-year-old can. When she was done, she was quite pleased.

And she looked at me.

Breanna: Hi Mommy.
Sherry: Breanna? Did you just eat a cookie?
Breanna: (looking at fingers, then at me) No Mommy.
Sherry: Are you sure? Maybe you had a cookie?
Breanna: No.

Sherry: Your face is kind of messy you know.
Breanna: MESS! MESS!
Sherry: I think you ate a cookie.
Breanna: Cookie? Peeeease?
Sherry: No more cookies, Miss Smuggler.
Breanna: Okay Mommy. See Fish.

And then she went back to her movie, convinced, I’m sure, that she had pulled a fast one on Mom. Yeah, right.

Totally awesome craft since there are eight billion leaves on the ground now – how to make roses out of maple leaves. I totally need to do this!

Our time at the park is slowly winding down. It gets dark too early now to spend much time there later in the day. That’s probably why the time change is hard for me because as nice as it may be in the morning to not have it look like 3 am, I tend to do things with both girls more in the afternoon. By the time Hayley got home from school, had a quick snack, changed out of her uniform, and was ready to go it was already 3 pm. We managed an hour but by 4 it was getting dark enough that I was ready to leave and it was also getting much colder than it had been earlier in the day.

Still, we had fun. They went on the swings, played on the slides, ran on the grass, and dug a huge hole for the sole purpose of getting to the slightly damper sand to make “pies” together. They even ooh-ed and ahh-ed over a caterpillar that Hayley found on a rock. Breanna kept screaming with joy over it.

I’ve gone to the park in the Winter on occasion, but I definitely prefer the snow-free park. I’ll be missing it when it’s too cold and dark to go at all.

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In other news, you read my sister right? And if now, you know OF her at least. Well, you should go read her latest entry. It’s a good one. Eeeeee!

Today I did my educational duty by going to Hayley’s school to vote for the shool commissioner in our elections. I’m not too hopeful that there was a big turnout – there was one other person besides me when I got there and all the volunteers looked completely bored.

I am currently annoyed by the time change. Breanna woke up at what she thought was 7:30 but it was really only 6:30 by then and everyone was off. It was also frustrating to see how dark it was by 4:30. On the other hand, at least it won’t be pitch black out when I get up at 6:30 tomorrow to get Hayley ready for school. Then again, it could be dark in another way sice Hayley inexplicably didn’t go to sleep until after 10 pm – it should be a great deal of fun dragging her out of bed for breakfast.

Iwish they would just pick one time and stick with it instead of doing this damn change twice a year. Blah.

And now it’s time for some zombies in 28 Weeks Later.