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around the house

Cinderella Around the House

Friday 05 April 2013

I got my book to clean. I got the laundry and put it in the washing machine. It got me stressed out because it was hard. I did a lot of work to do it.

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I cleaned the toilet after I read the page in my book. It told me to get the cleaner, and I got the brush and cleaned the toilet.

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I read the page of my book and it said to scrub the mirror, scrub the floors, and mop the floor.

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While I was cleaning, my stepmother was resting, playing a game of chess on the computer, and taking a nap. She was eating and telling me chore after chore.

Sweet and Sour

Wednesday 01 August 2012

Summer is sweet and sour. It is vines of filled with tomatoes turning a gentle orange before shifting to deep, sweet red. We pick them and smell the perfume that lingers on our hands. Romas provide consistency; Better Boys provide juice.

August Harvest

Then there's the sour: weeds. They grow in the now-composted mulch that's supposed to be keeping them out.

Waiting and Weeding

But there's the sweetest of all: a boy who will wait patiently while mom tugs at the weeds.

August Morning

From Dawn to Dusk

Friday 27 July 2012

Breakfast

Breakfast should have been a hint of the day to come. While at Aldi yesterday, we found a real deal on small fillets, so we had steak (one fillet shared between the two of us) and eggs for breakfast.

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The Girl entertained the Boy while we finished up breakfast, and I joked, “This is the kind of breakfast that sticks with you until dinner.”

Little did we know how busy we would be

  1. Applying another coat of Thompson’s on the deck (it didn’t make sense to leave a touch in one can) while K took care of the kids and did laundry;
  2. Mowing in 95 degree pure sun as K took care of the kids and cooked barszcz;
  3. Cleaning the house while K took care of the kids and did more laundry (The Boy goes through so much laundry that it’s a miracle there’s still water left in the county);
  4. Taking the Girl for a promised swim as K took care of the Boy;

It looks like such a short, innocuous list, but between steps three and four, K and I fell asleep while the Girl watched an episode of Martha Speaks and the Boy took a post-meal snooze.

And nature provided the first test of four mornings’ of waterproofing

Resistance

You’d think

Thursday 26 July 2012

that after spending the last three mornings/early afternoons spreading a liberal coat of water sealant on our deck that I could get by with a post-wash, pre-treatment picture from 2008, when I last did such a thorough job.

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After all, I’m just trying to post this thing so I can get back to my cigar and YouTube snooker…

Schedules

Wednesday 18 July 2012

Weeding

It’s easy to weed when you have a semi-set schedule, when there’s not a little squirmy body waiting for regular feeding, when evenings seem to drift by. But we have a wonderful squirmy baby, and evenings don’t drift by, and we have no schedule of our own. As such, weeding happens at six in the morning…

Weather

Monday 16 July 2012

Why talk about the weather unless you’re in an uncomfortable situation? Perhaps when the weather is exceptional? Perhaps a week with almost daily rain in the heat of a South Carolina July?

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Still, it’s not so much the rain, or even the storm, that’s worthy of comment: it’s the still-green grass in the front yard midway through July that’s striking.

Eviction Notice

Sunday 08 July 2012

A few years ago, we had our first problem with yellow jackets. I took the problem very seriously. Well, somewhat seriously.

Yellow Jacket Warrior IV

In short, I was terrified. I didn’t want to get stung, and I had this vision of them swarming out of their hole to attack, hence the layers and layers and layers.

Recently, a new batch took up residence in our front yard. I took things a little less seriously than I did in 2007. I threw an old window screen over the hole at dusk and went at them through the screen. Still, I was cautious, wearing jeans, long sleeves, and boots.

And so yesterday, I chanced upon our third nest of visitors. I’d inadvertently run over the nest a couple of times with the mower, so we were well on our way to making friends already.

Hive

This morning, I gave them a housewarming present: three gallons of boiling water.

Pour

A few more gallons in the early evening and I think they’ve got the point.

If only I could leave pheromone signs up: “You’re welcome to hang out here, but build your nest in a far corner of the backyard, well away from anywhere my children would be likely to play.”

Sucker

Sunday 27 May 2012

This year I’m leaving them alone. We’ll see what happens.

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Spring Babies

Wednesday 23 May 2012

The Girl was born in December: to go outside was a major project requiring actual planning and considerable logistics in the form of layers of protection. The Boy, on the other hand, is a spring baby.

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This means that he and the berries are ripening together.

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Spring Saturday

Saturday 28 April 2012

Saturdays have set-in-stone morning rituals: a talk with Babcia and Dziadek in Poland; coffee (for we’ve given it up during the week); ballet lessons. Once it’s all done, we have time to play.

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And time to work.

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We have several bird pairs nesting in our Leyland Cypresses that block off our deck from the sides. One builder seems more industrious than the other, though. I watch this fellow make at least half a dozen trips in the space of five minutes.

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But I have my own work to do: a backyard that’s been neglected since the end of last summer, with enough twigs and branches to make five piles throughout the yard. Plus there’s more tomatoes to plant, stakes to arrange, hedges to trim, grass to mow.

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Most of it gets done, but by dusk, I’m ready to put the tools back, lean the wheelbarrow against the house, and call it a day.

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