18 July 2010
The word of the day is: Maintaining.
We tried to maintain the house in the clean, organized fashion in which it has been for the past few days. See, now that we’ve cleaned every room, scrubbed the bathrooms, done the dishes and the laundry, and gotten rid of things we don’t want anymore, we now have to try and keep that state going until the baby arrives. We’re working against thermodynamics here.
And that’s tough to do at the moment. Last night, my niece slept over, so she and Owen are trying their best to take apart his bedroom. I notice that about other kids when they visit: they pull out all Owen’s toys – even ones that I forgot he had. I guess that’s understandable; after all, those toys are new to them. I try to get Owen to put away one toy before taking out the next one, but somehow this falls apart when other kids are present. At least this is an improvement from last year when he and his niece would, for no apparent reason, take every single toy, game, article of clothing, and puzzle piece off the shelves and put them in a pile in his bedroom. Not sure what the appeal of that was.
By the time my niece left this evening, Owen’s room was the most disastrous one in the house. It took me a while, but I think it’s well-organized and clean once again.
19 July 2010
My awesome co-workers held a mini-shower for me this morning. I’m not exactly wide-eyed and happy to be around people on a Monday morning, but I tried my best to be amicable. There were store-bought donuts (these are definitely to be preferred over the cafeteria’s ‘donuts’), an array of drinks and, for the baby, a hand-made cap – made of 100% organic cotton – and a gift card. What a great way to start off the week.
Later, during my lunch break, I stopped at the new and unimproved Maple Grove library. On my way back to my car, I looked down at (what I presume is) a man-made lake and saw a loon. A loon! In Maple Grove! I stopped and stared at it for nearly a minute before it dived down to look for some fish. What is a loon doing in Maple Grove? I don’t know. It’s kind of weird because, in the six years I’ve been driving to this suburb for work, I’ve noticed that the city is intense on driving out any vestiges of nature. So, to see a loon in that strip mall of a town is like seeing a deer walking through downtown Minneapolis.