This morning I was determined to maintain my motivation to clean. I sprang out of bed when Will's alarm went off and opened our shades and curtains. We have our windows practically boarded up to keep the light out at night (we have a stinkin' streetlamp about 5 feet from our Master Bedroom window) and we usually just leave everything closed up all of the time. I want to change that and keep our windows open during the day. It was so nice this morning to have all that natural light coming in! I changed our sheets, collected a load of laundry to start and showered before heading downstairs to breakfast. Will had made a pot of strawberry oatmeal so I had a nice bowl waiting for me.
We were out of eggs though :-(
I realized the other day that both of my girls were wearing pants that stopped above the tops of their socks plus we were facing a season change. I decided to swing by Target to get some more basics (white t-shirts for layering, leggings for wearing under dresses etc.) in the next size up and ended up buying a bunch of clothes. Kids clothes are so fun! Kids can pull off pretty much anything and the sizing is so simple...definitely more satisfying than shopping for clothes for myself. Although I will say...Harajuku Mini for Target? WTF? There are some seriously weird clothes in that line.
After Target I went over to Common Market for a super-quick meet-up with my sister Kathleen. Thanks to my obliviousness to the time and the SUPER SLOW checkout line I only ended up being able to chat with her for about 15 minutes before I had to leave to go get Emily :-( Plus we were being distracted by this sushi-snarfing cutie the whole time.
My lunch:
After getting Emily we drove out to Middletown so I could get my free cup of coffee at The Main Cup. This was quite out of the way, but having grown up and lived in the Middletown area for years it was quite nostalgic and therefore worth the trip. I used to go get ice cream at Main's after school when I was 14. My friends and I felt so mature walking to the shop after school...before you can drive you take your freedom where you can get it! And The Main Cup is where the term "Oddly Muscular" was coined by a waitress in reference to my husband, which has remained part of our common vernacular for years. I got a cup of bourbon pecan...delicious! It rivals Dublin Roasters' VOLT blend for my favorite cup of coffee yet in the contest. Too bad Dublin Roasters lost to Frederick Coffee Co. last week (even though they roast their coffee for them!).
After getting my coffee we drove by our old house in Middletown at Emily's request. It was quite a weird experience! Seeing the plants I planted all huge and mature and the shutters that were installed while we lived there looking all sun-faded...it's hard to believe we haven't lived in our new house for as long yet as we lived in the old place! Well, since Will grew up in that house it will be quite awhile before he can say he's lived here longer than there, but for me I have about a year and a half to go. And it's weird to think that Emily lived there for a chunk of her life but Charlotte never did. I always seem to get used to the way things are now and forget (except in an abstract way) the way things used to be.
After THAT we went to my mom's house where I put the girls down for a nap, then mom and I went up to Smithsburg to go through my Great-grandma's things and see if there was anything we wanted. It felt so wrong considering she is still alive and kicking. She was living in a retirement community before her recent downturn, but she is now in a room in a nursing home and will not be going back to her old condo. Since she was renting it we have to get all of her things out by the end of the month and whatever can't fit in her new room and isn't claimed by family members will be auctioned off on Friday. She's not happy about the situation (would anyone be?) so that just made me feel all the worse pawing through her stuff. But at the same time, if it were me I would prefer that my things go to family members vs. being auctioned off, so I took a couple things. Some butterfly pins, since I remember how she always wore a butterfly pin on her shoulder when I was a child and I thought that was the coolest thing. Her 2 cast iron pans because I cook almost exclusively with cast iron and I know how much a well-seasoned cast iron pan means to a southern lady. One place setting of her wedding china, because I love to picture her young and newly married picking out the pattern she'd proudly display in her cabinet for the next 70 years, plus a couple other odds and ends I can use around the house that will remind me of her when she's gone and that I can pass down to the girls. Ugh. There are few things more depressing than seeing someone's whole life boxed up to be sent away.
Once that depressing errand was over with, I returned to my parents house to wait out the rest of Charlotte's nap, which turned out to be epic. The poor girl was feverish again when she woke up this morning and it was actually seeming to bother her this time, so I dosed her with some advil and that helped a lot. Her right eye also looked a bit more gook-y than usual upon waking, so I grabbed the pinkeye drops to keep with me during the day (and warm in my pocket) so that I could strike immediately if I became certain it was in fact pinkeye. That moment of certainty came when she woke up from her nap looking incredibly strange because the entire top right quadrant of her face was swollen and red :-( The good thing about pinkeye though is that it's quick to abate once you start with the drops and she's looking more normal already. My friend Carolyn is probably THRILLED to be reading all of this, since Charlotte was playing with her daughter a couple hours before all of these highly communicable issues became symptomatic. To her I apologize, and say make sure you have some infant advil, plus our pediatrician's office is good about calling in prescriptions for pinkeye drops without having to actually go in and see the Dr. And also, I'm sorry again :-(
While at my parents house I had a couple snax to make up for the fact that I forgot to bring my customary smoothie:
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| Kale chips and grapes |
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| A pear |
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| "Dibby almonds" (homemade tamari almonds) and a boo-nana |
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| 1/2 of one of my dad's miracle biscuits, made with 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup greek yogurt and 1.5 tsp baking powder. SOOOO good! |
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| It works if you OWN it |
Once Charlotte was awake, fed, medicated and strapped into the car we could head home, and on the way I had to stop by Martin's Farm Market to pick up some jumbo local organic eggs for $2.50/dozen (I just can't get over that!) We finally arrived home at almost 6PM thanks to Charlotte's nap running long and the girls' habit of feasting for an extended period of time in the late afternoon whenever they're at Gemmy and Dibby's house. Luckily I had all the ingredients for my favorite super-quick meal, and within 20 minutes we were eating.
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| Brown rice spaghetti, sautéed peppers and onions, chopped Applegate Farms organic chicken apple sausage and Muir Glen chunky tomato sauce plus some seasonings on top. |
Once Will got home and Emily was in bed I had another of my tasty Bocks.
And 2 Tbsp of my chocolate chips.
My kitchen did NOT stay clean today, which is funny because we weren't even home most of the day to dirty it. But that meant I was not home most of the day to clean it either. I promised the girls we could go feed the ducks and go to the playground tomorrow after preschool though, so hopefully I'll have enough time at home after that to get things neat again. I really need a live-in maid and a cook. And a landscaper. And a personal assistant. And a part-time nanny. I'm just kidding of course, but when you think about it it really is amazing how much of your life you could contract out if you had the money and the inclination! You could probably get it to the point where you only needed to go to doctor's appointments and the spa yourself. But that would get old real quick. Probably.
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