Tuesday, March 31, 2015

HADA 2015: Day -2

John Wallace took it upon himself to wake me up an hour early this morning, to make sure I had time to do my daily Bible reading. Wasn't that thoughtful of him? I even had time to make oatmeal for breakfast!

It actually was really nice to be up and moving before the daily battle with my never-wants-to-get-up eldest daughter. And that battle went a bit more smoothly than usual today, because I had promised her that we would put our new betta in his tank first thing in the morning, once his water was the same temperature. I let Valerie buy lunch today, so that was one less thing to worry about, too. All in all, it was a pretty smooth morning. Then, John Wallace, determined to help me meet my goals, went down for an unprecedented morning nap, and I was able to clean the entire living room, strain the broth I had made overnight, and do two loads of laundry. Woot!

Then John Wallace woke up, we had lunch, and I started wondering whether we would have time to go shopping today after all. I had been planning to go tomorrow, but a morning nap is such a rarity, I wasn't sure what I would do if I didn't have to spend the entire afternoon wrestling an over-tired baby. I looked at the rough draft menu that our family had brainstormed the night before and tried to decide if I had time to sit down and hammer it out properly by days and make a list of what we would need for each meal. But cooperating kids are a ticking time-bomb, and ignoring them long enough to make a list seemed unwise, so I threw caution to the wind and went shopping without a list. (Aside: I pulled together the menu for the first week of April when I got home, and I think I did okay. I have enough meals for the first week, and then some, and I only went a tiny bit overboard in the beef department when I changed my mind about making burgers tonight from scratch, and bought frozen ones, but forgot to put back the fresh beef. Oh well, maybe I will just make double tacos on Tuesday, and freeze the extra until next week. Does taco meat reheat well?)

Drove to Aldi's for groceries (it's half an hour away, but worth every minute!), then to the farm for milk and eggs (and peanut butter eggs!) then home again. John Wallace fell asleep on the ride home, so I was able to unload the car uninterrupted, but he woke up before I got to put everything away. But then he shocked me, for the third time today, when he decided to help me work towards my goals by playing quietly by himself and looking out the window at the construction workers, until I was able to finish putting everything away. This task took slightly longer than it should have, because I had to clean out the fridge to make room for the new stuff. But I was able to get it done, and I even had time to fold another load of laundry and transport the folded clothes up to the clothes room!

Then I crashed. There comes a point in every day when I just can't do anymore. Today, it came at 4:30. That's a common time for it. Right when I should be getting up and making dinner. That's why crockpot days are usually better days than oven/stove days. I let myself crash on the couch for a little while (while the littles climbed on me and didn't really let me rest). Today had been pretty productive, and I hadn't really had much down time. And I had been up early, too. Then Valerie annoyed me into action at around 5, bugging me for a snack. I got up and made burgers for dinner.

After dinner, I told Jer I needed to lie down for a few minutes. I fell asleep for over an hour. I woke up to my kids banging on my door telling me it was time to come read them stories for bedtime.

(Heh, I had myself convinced that I would mostly just do list updates this year. Apparently, I have too much fun rambling on needlessly.)

I put away dinner, and made Jeremy's lunch. I filled four bins with recyclables to go to the curb tomorrow, and I can finally see the floor of my side porch! (Along with the broken glass that I never cleaned up that was the reason I fell behind on recyclables in the first place.) I have dishes soaking in the sink, and I promised myself I would go do them when I got to the point in my blog post where I was about to mention the dishes. I guess I'm there, now.

Phew, okay. I'm back. The table is cleared and wiped. The floor is swept. The high chair is wiped down. Valerie's lunch is made. The sink is empty. (The counters may still be overflowing with dishes, but at least every dish involved in preparing and/or eating tonight's dinner is clean.) It is well past my bedtime, but I just heard the dryer finish, so I'm going to fold one more load of laundry, then flop into bed.

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