Columbus is my new favorite mere mortal for whom a paid government holiday is named.
I had this idea when we moved here that every weekend would be jammed with magical trips through the European country scape. We’d be like Mary Poppins minus the penguins (although Rex usually carts along at least five different stuffed birds. Also I’d inherit the overseas Snap Cleaning trick she’s so good at). We’ve spent nearly every weekend the last three months traipsing through the German countryside, and you know what? I am freaking exhausted.
I have years to see Germany but right now I need to unpack my house. With three kids home all day for two weeks (Rex and Junie are out on Fall Break) I feel like Benjamin Franklin must have felt when Timmy the Neighbor Kid kept asking to borrow his kite.
This past weekend the traveling angels gave us a hand and sent rain. Instead of conquering Belgium we decided to stay home and conquer the office.
I should tell you, every day Jason comes home from work. Every day when he walks in the door I take him on the tour. “Look honey! See what I did? Did I do good?” Unfortunately what Jason sees is a room scattered with a few odd boxes, packing paper on the floor and the same obnoxious assortment of pictures and knicknacks that he left in the morning. What he doesn’t see are the three missing boxes, the unpacked boxes. The magical disappearing boxes.
“It looks pretty much the same, sorry Babe.” Then I have to resist the urge to throw things at his head.
On Monday I had him trapped. Since Jason is particularly good about making his own Honeydo list, getting him to help out on the weekend is no problem. I think he was actually happy to have a day off so he could, “Finish the house up.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
We worked all day. We hung pictures (fed the kids) and mirrors (changed diapers), set up my sewing table (fed the kids) and unpacked half the office (issued seven time-outs and two naps). By the time we made the final rounds at 10:00 pm to shut off lights I stood next to him and looked at our handy work.
The shelf was still leaning against the wall in the living room. The two boxes of odd pictures was still parked in the middle of the hallway. Bags of garbage and random paper floated mockingly throughout the house, out of season foliage cluttered up the tables. Books, DVD’s, bins…
It was a beautiful sight.
Thank you, Columbus.
It’s so nice when they find out that we’re not just sitting around on our butts all day long!
Yep. Livin’ that dream right now. I spent most of today discovering just how big my bedroom really is. Still can’t find my winter clothes or my scriptures. I can replace a few sweaters, but the scriptures I spent 20 years teaching out of? Not really. Kinda freaking out about that.
I remember a few months after we had our first baby and I was managing a full-time writing career from home (baby in tow). The house was one moldy dish away from being declared an environmental disaster. On one of his days off, when my husband had witnessed two nursing sessions, a couple calls to my employer, and a fast rescue of some eminent catastrophe in an hour’s time, he finally said, “This! This is what you DO!” He really had been thinking I was capitalizing on too much luxury.