A full weekend

The weekend was about as great as it could be, given that M is still in India.  Zozer and I are learning to rather enjoy our "girls' weeks" even though we still miss him.  I look back over my weekend, and even I am amazed at everything I was able to cram in.  We kicked it off with dinner Friday night at Kobe to celebrate Gramma Judy's birthday.  My reunited family was there, and I shared my cake with my niece, Stella, although truth be told it was more like she shared her cake with me, seeing as how she ate most of it.  I grin every day when I think about how my little family is back together...what a phenomenal holiday season this will be.

Saturday morning we got going early with swim lessons.  Zoe has graduated to the next level, and I'm pleased to report that she's already showing definite improvement.  The text message M received was: "OMG she's f*cking swimming w a noodle by herself!!!  Awesome!!!"

After that we went home and opened up a can of whup ass on the house.  Laundry started.  Kitchen cleaned, along with her bedroom.  Holy crap, how much trinkety garbage shit can one little girl accumulate?  We dumped out her toybox and began the arduous task of sorting out what would be kept and what could be discarded or given away.

Kept: jewels and jewelry, headbands, the Elmo doctor kit, magic wands, all things transportation, including the two double-decker buses M bought for her in the UK (one open-top, once closed), balls, Gator Golf, and her electronic keyboard (oh, joy).  Give away: several toys and books that even she admits she has outgrown.  Discarded: a half-dozen cardboard Steak 'n Shake cars that look like they've been through a war, countless tiny dinosaurs, frogs and other plastic figures that she's gotten as part of goodie bags and has never, ever played with, broken toys that she no longer plays with mainly because they are, well, broken.

We're making room for her new purple Christmas tree, which she would like to set up right now thankyouverymuch.  I'm using the great toy clean-out in the bedroom (and its subsequent stop, the library) as an excuse.  "There's nowhere to put it...we have to clean some of this stuff out to make room."  With that, she was a discarding fool, just like her mama.  When it doubt, throw it out!

When she went down for her nap I had some one-on-one time with the vacuum.  House swept and dusted, and laundry continued.  After she awoke, we headed out for Cousin Joey's final football game.  It was, for the first time all season, a cool to cold day.  We bundled up in our Mizzou Tigers snuggie and rooted on the SoCo Tigers for what should have been a victory.  Stupid-ass refs got hacked at our time keeper and threw him out, then refused to go by the time on the field clock.  Although the ball was dead (out of bounds at the one yard line) in the last seconds of play, they extended the game by enough time to allow the other team to score and therefore win the game.  Grrrrrr.  We had a great time, regardless, and I'm so stinkin' proud of Joey I can't hardly stand it.  He received his medal after the game, and I took his picture with his team trophy.

After the game we went to dinner with Grammy and Papa, where Papa shoved about a gajillion quarters into a crane machine trying to win a stuffed animal for Zoe.  While watching them, I prayed silently for unsuccess, as we are still cleaning crap out of Zoe's room.  Zoe had an absolute blast playing with Papa, which is what it's all about anyway.  I think she gets that it's all about the experience, as she didn't cry or whine at all about not getting an animal.  Once we got home and I got Zoe bathed and in bed, I tackled the pictures from Joey's game and got them out to his parents.  I've learned from experience that if I don't post-process right away, it could be weeks before I get back to it.

Sunday morning was more housecleaning before going to 11 a.m. mass to welcome back my FIL from his Acts Retreat.  Mass was lovely (the men of the Acts Retreat sang for us after mass!), and afterwards we had a nice luncheon with the retreatants and team members.  Walked home to change and get the car, as the lawnmower needed gasoline.  Zoe went down for her nap and I headed out for a rendezvous with the mower.  I filled it with gas, adjusted the front wheels up to a high setting as I've seen M do, primed it and got it going.  Killed it heading into the thick zoysia in the front yard.  After several passes, and engine kills, and what appeared to be a general scalping of my front yard, my FIL came over and showed me how, indeed, the back wheels also need to be adjusted.  Oh.  Riiiiight.

We made a pact to tell M we don't know how the scalping happened, and call it crop circles.  Well, it's not so much a pact as my telling Dad that's what we'd say, and he laughed and walked away.  Dad took over the lawnmower (I, and my lawn, thank him) and I tackled the detail work: leaves in the flower beds, leaves in the garden, leaves in the front corner of the house/driveway.  Leaves, leaves everywhere.  I'm beginning to understand M's hatred of the two pin oaks in the front yard.  Since I only have to do this once a year or so, though, I'm not willing to give them up yet.  (Love you, M!)

I also cleaned out the garden and the flower pots on the patio, and put some things away in the Big Ass Shed.  Right as we finished Zozer appeared, all wild-haired and sleepy-eyed from her nap.  Off she went to play with Grandma while I headed inside to take a shower and lava-soap the damn pine tar from my hands.  We don't have any pine trees in our yard.  It's all from our pot-smoking neighbor.  Since we were all tired and hungry at that point, we headed up to Hacienda and had a muy deliciouso meal.

My head started to throb before dinner, and didn't stop after, so I asked Zozer if she'd like to snuggle in her big purple rocking chair and read books.  She was so excited that I felt guilty for the ulterior motive behind suggesting a peaceful activity.  We read about five books, rocking, snuggling and talking about them.  It was bliss for both of us.  Slowly the ache in my head started to wane, and by her bedtime it was nearly gone.  It came back with a vengeance after I tucked her in, though, so much of the rest of the evening was spent doing only what was absolutely necessary: emptying trash, gathering recycling, hauling it all out to the curb, catching up on e-mail, updating phone and computer.  I finally retreated to bed, where, still not content with the state of things, I spent about 20 minutes deleting image files off the phone to clean it up (dupe shots, closed eyes, bad lighting, etc.).

My head finally forced me to give up, so I turned out the light and went to sleep knowing that I couldn't have possibly packed one more thing into my weekend.

The one benefit to M being out of town is that I find myself being insanely productive while he's gone.  Keeping busy not only accomplishes a great deal, it keeps me from missing him quite so much.  Despite everything I'm getting done (and I have a list to keep every night busy until he returns, which should last through his RI trip next week), I'm ready for him to come home.