Ha!

This post had already been written.  Badly.  I'm sparing you that, and will instead get to the point.

Tom said this afternoon (after a full day of cleaning and organizing while Margaret watched the girls here at home), "This is fun!"

And again I say, "Ha!"

The End of Christmas

What?! It's the end of February, so how can I still be talking about Christmas?!? 'Cuz I just gave my last gift, that's how. With money being tight, Tom and I talked our families into cutting back on the gift exchange. When it came to my mom, she said we didn't need to give her anything, but if we wanted, we could clean out her shed.

Oh, she's a crafty one, my mom. And I don't mean that she's into doing crafts, either. She's probably been asking me to clean the shed since... oh... ahem... when I lived here more than three years ago. Most of the crap in there was hers, some of it was mine and all of the mess was Corey's. So today he and I spent two hours or so pulling everything out and sorting it into recycling, trash, donation, keep and hey-that's-mine.

It turns out that the recycling program that her park used to run is kaput, and I'm not jamming four years worth of dust-covered crap into my car. So I had Corey put it out near the dumpster. Same with the donation stuff.

One of the boxes that I'd assumed was more of her Christmas decorations turned out to be a box of kitchen stuff from my old apartment. Most of it I went ahead and "donated," but there were a few things I could still use more than someone else.

So I am covered in dust and webs, but Mom's letting me use her computer anyway. Pretty sweet, that woman.

In the room adjacent to this one, there is a massive collection of boxes. I have lost count, but a serious quantity of our kitchen stuff has been packed up and brought over. Some time this weekend Tom's supposed to pack up our office. Once he does that, I'll hopefully be able to use some of that space instead of bringing so much over here.

In Mad-a-news, she's starting to get the hang of the whole "where's your nose" thing... but we're just at the very beginning. This morning as Tom and I were playing with her in our bed, I kept pointing out our noses and also the nose on Pooh. For the remainder of the morning when asked, "Where's your nose?" she would grab Pooh and touch his nose while looking like she wasn't quite sure that's what we wanted.

In Coreyland, the day hasn't been so great for him. He spent the morning helping me pack. We attempted to make hash browns, but came out with one batch of hash grays and one of hash blacks instead. (Now I recall why I don't make them from scratch.) Then he and Tom had a minor spat, but it resulted in Tom realizing how messy Corey's room is... thus he was to spend the rest of his "free time" cleaning it. (Personally I say we wait another 10 days before having him clean... then there's less chance of it being as bad right before we move.) Cleaning the shed wasn't fun, but it was really a nice time that he and I had, all things considered. However, now that the work is done and he knows he'll be staying the night at Grammy's, he found out that his best friend, Ricky, is grounded. Grr!

And in bigger news related to Corey, it seems that his counselor and psychiatrist are coming closer to making a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Part of me feels like saying, "Who cares?! Call it what you will, we've been living with it since nearly forever." The rest of me doesn't want my baby to struggle with mental illness his whole life.