Nothin' sexier than a man who cleans...

It's not too hard to imagine that I've been in a funk this week. As I reminded myself, sometimes that happens and it's no reason to panic that the funk will deepen and last for years. Still, it's a bummer, in more ways than one.

One of the bummerations of my recent life is the fact that, as soon as I bulldoze one area of the house, another is in chaos and entropy. This is generally due to the tender ministrations of Entropy Boy (aka, my son David) who lives to mess things up. So I've pretty much given up on certain areas of the house, like the family room. Unfortunately for me, there were a fair number of strangers traipsing through our family room this week, in preparation for drilling a hole in the house through which to run our new gas line. I half-heartedly tried to pick up but I'm strange in that I feel no motivation to pick up what will be tossed again in a matter of hours.

Then Friend Husband stepped in.

This is where you hear the heroic groundswell of music.

Sometime early in the week, he decided that he, personally, had had enough. So he picked Thursday as the day when we would clean up the downstairs. You see, when I tell the girls to pick up the living room and dining room, they do it, but the family room was a mess of epic proportions. It was not something I could honestly look them in the eye and tell them to fix. And it clearly was not something I was willing to fix. But all of us working together were able to fix it up, although it took more than a few hours. That should tell you something right there about how messed up it was. I was told to go off at the end of it, feed the twins, and get them to bed, so I did not see how it looked at the end. When I walked downstairs, it was a lovely surprise. I almost got all teary.

The room was picked up, the trash was hauled out, the books and videos were put away. There was nothing on the floor but things that needed to be vacuumed. It was beautiful. It was peaceful. I thwacked myself upside the head for not realizing how overwhelmed I feel when my surroundings are so very messed up.

Seeing as I had also shoveled out the schoolroom, I anticipate being able to actually do school downstairs, all together, as I have always intended. Perhaps we can even keep on schedule better. All because of a clean room that was due to the wonderful and very talented Friend Husband. And being overwhelmed also meant that I could actually take a good look at him and realize how handsome he is and what a cute little hind end he has. And that, children, is how a man who cleans all of a sudden becomes majorly sexy. Who needs candy and flowers? Bring me some pretty yarn and clean my family room and I'm all yours. If your name is Friend Husband.

So Friday was a better day. Not better enough that I felt like blogging or doing anything beyond what I absolutely had to do but it just seemed cheerier all around. I had the energy to make blog comments for the first time in ages. I also had the wherewithall to call our local newspaper and place a found ad for Elof. It starts running tomorrow, so perhaps his people will find it and come get him. He's a sweet boy but we just don't need another dog who escapes.

I finally got hold of David's nephrologist yesterday as well. He must have been working overtime because he called me way after business hours. David's having another relapse of his nephrotic syndrome due to the cold that we're all passing around right now. Poor little man, his face is all swollen again and he looks like the Micheline Man. Anyway, now he's back on more than double the amount of steroid that we had just gotten him weaned down to. Once he gets down to a normal protein level, we get to go back downtown to Children's and figure out what next to do, since the steroid doesn't seem to help so much when he's in the throes of a virus. The things you don't know about children that you learn when you start parenting!

Today, Friend Husband and I were talking about Lucy and Elof and what to do with these jumping dogs that we've got in our back yard. I think he'd really like to be relieved of the responsibility for Lucy because we don't get too much enjoyment out of her. I can understand that but I'm not going to take her anywhere else. It just thrashed me when I had to take Sam and Frodo back to the pound and there was even good justification for that.

So anyway, I got to thinking about Lucy and remembered the place we took Sam & Frodo to obedience classes. After perusing their website, I noticed that they now teach a remote collar obedience class, which is something we had discussed doing with Lucy. While looking at the site, I saw that they were having a volunteer orientation this morning at 11:30. I have wanted to volunteer there for years but with the twins and all the inherent adjustment when you add new people to your family, I had shelved that idea. Today it was unshelved and dusted off, with a vengeance. I went through orientation and am now a volunteer out there! Woohoo! I stayed longer than the other volunteers today, did some filing, and then got to play with a couple of the puppies. It was nice to get a puppy fix without having to commit to dealing with them 24/7. The puppies I got to play with and walk were here. I know the one that I walked was Coastal (scroll down to the buff-colored puppies whose mother was Vella) but the name of the other one I don't know. It was one of Coastal's siblings. It was a lovely time and I'm so glad that I managed to get myself up and out of the house to do that.

After Circle Tail, I met Friend Gina at Starbucks for a little knitting and a lot of yakking, which was also a boost. By the time I got home, I was flying pretty high. And that's when I decided that the funk must be a temporary setback, which made me feel even better.

So, after all this business, there's not much to say. Not one of my more inspired blogs, to be sure, but there it is. My life is not all that inspiring, but it is my life and so I write about it. I wonder what my children and grandchildren will think about this in years to come? I wonder what I will think about it in years to come.

I leave you with well wishes for a beautiful new week. We're supposed to get some sort of arctic blast (wind chills to zero) and perhaps some snow. Time to break out my lined cloak for church tomorrow. Toodles!