Pickled Brains

1. I have been faithfully taking my antibiotics and antihistamines and am slowly recovering. I think. 8 days straight of Clarinex and Benadryl has left me with a rather wifty personality. If you received any kind of correspondence from me this week that seemed stranger than usual, I apologize.

2. That replacement dryer that I mentioned in last week's post? Well, it never worked. So I have now washed 11 loads of laundry here at my house and then hauled it 2 miles down the road to my parents' new house to dry it. The installer claimed it was an electric problem with our house but on Thursday my father loaned me the electricians doing work at his house and they proved it was the dryer at fault. So the dryer repair guy is supposed to come today. He was supposed to come yesterday. I am a bit peeved.

If you know me, you know I love to do laundry. It makes me so happy to make dirty things clean. One of my favorite books, thanks to Kimberlee Conway Ireton, is The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work by Kathleen Norris. 2 weeks of no laundry has compounded my I'm-grumpy-because-I'm-sick attitude. And all I see as I look around my house is sheets and towels and piles of clothes that desperately need washing. Shower curtain. Rugs. Pillows that need fluffing in the dryer. It's pathetic, really.

Maybe it will get fixed before dinner. I can hope.

3. Thursday was Alex's birthday. We had a small celebration with my folks at supper where he got 3 pairs of Angry Birds pajama bottoms from us (even though they are just the next size up from his last ones, the waist is too wide and has no drawstring, so we'll need to cinch them a bit; he is a skinny boy), the newest National Geographic Angry Birds Book (50 True Stories of the Fed Up, Feathered, and Furious), and from my parents, an Angry Birds Space shirt with long sleeves. We'll have a larger family party, celebrating Miranda's birthday as well, on the first Saturday in November.

Here is my happy, 9 year old boy, with my parents:

Of course, he's holding the other National Geographic Angry Birds book that we gave him in August for the plane ride to California. Still, he's a happy boy. And now 9 years old. Wasn't it just yesterday when he was a toddler? Yikes.

4. My dragon proceeds apace, although I was too tired (or brain too pickled) to stitch much this week:

I've reached the clean-up stage for the current section (5 stitches in this color, 6 in that one, ugh!) and then I will move to the bottom corner section. I realized that if I finished the dragon body and left the golden-chain designs for last, I might never finish. They are a pain!

Previously, I loved the dragon's head best, in terms of design, but now I love the tail. It's just so gorgeous! And I had the same thought I've had before, when I was stitching his foot earlier in the week. Why are his feet green? I mean, he's teal and gold and iridescent, but why does he have dark green feet? No idea.

This week: more baseball, more stitching. Bring on the post-season.

5. Thursday was also my work day with my mother-in-law and we took Miranda's room apart, sorted through lots of old toys and clothes, the closet, the toy bins, and cleaned out everything she'd thrown behind her bed (seriously, ewww). Should have taken some "before" pictures, but I have a few "after" to show off:

We found the new bookshelf on the street 2 weeks ago that I can use to store everything that was on the old bookshelf and a bunch of toys that were in a big bin on the floor in smaller bins I had bought for Alex's room but will work fine for here for now. Now if we can just get Miranda to put her things away?! I know, she's 5, what do I really expect?

Big thanks to MaryLee who kept me moving and motivated to finish the job. Hopefully, we'll get to Alex's room in the next few weeks as well. But no room in the house has quite the piles that my bedroom has, but that's a shared problem with Marshall and myself. Too much life, not enough time to sort and clean and do anything beyond what has to be done RIGHT NOW. Like I said last week, we are living Crisis to Crisis.

6. Here's my darling girl from this morning with her too-small princess dress from 2 years ago on over her pajamas this morning, with her belt doubling as a tiara:

In recent weeks, she has been eating as much as I usually do, so I expect to be replacing most of her clothes by December.

7. The children have yet to settle on Halloween costume choices. They usually pick something over the summer and do not change their minds, even as October starts. I am a little concerned.

And here's Jen.