June 17, 2002
Our house looks like a cyclone hit it, which more or less takes us full circle to where we started two years ago. When we moved in, we had way too much stuff to fit into this tiny place, so it looked like a cyclone hit it, as we tried to unpack and fit stuff in where it obviously wasn't going to fit.
It was more or less messy for the next, what, year and a half? Until ... wow, I can't believe this. The letter that comes after Y? You know, the one that is the initial letter of my son's name? That key is stuck and I can't type that letter. Crap.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Wait, there we go.
You know, I could easily back up and delete all of that and you'd never know it happened, but I'm leaving it there, just for kicks.
So, like I was saying, our house was a big ol' mess until Zeke came along. About a month before his arrival, I had a primal urge to "nest", and cleaned the entire house from top to bottom, including dusting for cobwebs and scrubbing the kitchen floor with a sponge. It was so clean. It was to die for clean. Then when Zeke actually arrived, we managed to keep it mostly clean, at least until he got sick and went to Children's. Then it went straight to hell.
As a side note, I just found a huge pile of unopened mail today. It was all the mail that arrived during the first two weeks that Zeke was hospitalized. We didn't open any of it. We just threw it into a big pile and promptly forgot about it. I found two paychecks, a bunch of utility bills (which explains why all our utility bills from the month of March were so mysteriously high), and a newspaper clipping from my hometown newspaper that Mom sent me, which had Zeke's birth announcement.
Anyway, we've done an OK job with the housecleaning up to this point, although it is somewhat frustrating that the kitchen tap only has hot water, and the washer and dryer are subpar to say the least, and there's nowhere to store cleaning supplies, so the broom, mop, and dustpan are perennially being knocked over onto the kitchen floor. But now that we're packing to move, the house is once again a total, absolute nightmare. There's packed boxes all over the place, and stacks of stuff to be organized before it goes into the boxes, and plastic bags full of recyclable paper, and boxes of stuff that's going to charity, and empty boxes that haven't been filled yet, and just in general a whole lot of crap. It sucks. Every time I walk anywhere, I trip over something. The only part of the house that doesn't look like the back of the truck from Sanford & Son is Zeke's area, which is still neat and clean, except for a couple of stray toys.
In two weeks, we move! And then everything will be in boxes and we'll be able to unpack it in our nice new apartment that has lots and lots of storage space and closets. That's what I'm hanging onto right now, every time I trip over the damn mop again.
Our landlord, upon being informed that we were soon to be moving out, has taken the opportunity to build this interesting structure in our back yard. At first we thought maybe it was going to be a chicken coop, but then he started filling it up with dirt. Turns out he's making a waist-level garden. "Easy and convenient!" I'm really going to miss our landlord.
Of course Keith and I took advantage of an obvious photo opportunity (click for a bigger image):
