Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Catching up (yawn!)

As much as I would love the simpler life of the Amish (ok, I would love some small tastes of particular parts of their life...they can keep most of it for themselves), I have missed the internet on my computer. It's back after a long hiatus. I don't know why it stopped working or what brought it back. I am, quite simply, not an IRT lady. But the IRT lady was, and I have much to thank her for...and Mark, who resucitated it once again this morning.

First of all, for all of you who want to see Iain pictures, I have a winkflash account and I have, thus far, consistently posted pictures there at monthly intervals (his 8 month pics are now up). If you'd like access to that account, let me know and I'll add you there as a friend. That being said, I don't know how much I'll keep posting them here, it just takes too much of my time. Maybe...we'll see if I cave. I do think [my] blog without pictures is just boring. Your welcome. :)

So, what have we been up to since my internet stopped working? Not much, so I'll just ramble on about my baby: Iain's two bottom front teeth have appeared. His vocabularly has increased to include "ma-ma" and he seems to have some concept of that being me - that became apparent last night at 3 am when he included it in his wailing during which there was a notable absence of "bah-bah", the consonant sound in which he is most fluent. Along the same lines, he's become incredibly clingy and is inconsolable in arms other than mine, or other places for that matter. At this rate, he may never learn to crawl; though for those minutes and minutes that he's content on the floor, he has increased his arm strength and is quite the push-upper these days.

A friend called yesterday, just to ask how my weekend was. I couldn't remember. I just sat there trying to recall anything. She even gave me some prompts (ie, did you do anything for Lord's Day?); it was like grasping at fog...no, grasping at thin air. Nothing came to mind. Fortunately, Mark was there, so I asked him, so I could tell my friend. While I was slightly amused by my completely empty short-term memory bank, I was also equally appalled. Life really should be more memorable, right? I think so. I now see why I don't remember Iain's early months. Nadda. I remember how I felt, but I don't remember Iain. Good thing I have pictures. Hopefully I'll be more aware for my subsequent children...when I'm even more sleep-deprived. hmmm... Here's to hoping that tonight Iain sleeps better, longer and without fussing!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Worth the Hype

With varying degrees of vigilance and success, I have been pretending to keep house for nearly three years. I have also spent these 3 years ignorant of perhaps the greatest invention of mankind. Had I been aware of the freedom granted by this simple gadget, my husband may have spent 3 years in the home of the wife of Prov 31 instead of... Ok, let's be honest, I doubt my works will be praising me at the city gates anytime soon, but I do have to give praise where it is due. Let's have a big shout out for....

The duster!!! (electrostatic, feather...take your pick)

I have long loathed dusting. In terms of the rewards of housekeeping, there is not much that falls lower than pulling out the dust cloth and spray and wiping down a piano, computer, TV, etc. only to have it nearly instantly dusty again, leaving behind the lingering smell of dusting spray. yuck. And what about those little trinkets that are everywhere...the thought of tediously going over every one of those beloved knick-knacks just makes my eyeballs shudder (I'm not sure what I mean by that, but I think it conveys the idea).

I'm sure many of you are asking yourself what planet this poor sap grew up on, as most 27 year olds have probably been aware of the usefullness of this little gadget since they were old enough to swat their siblings with it, much to the horror of their Prov. 31 mothers. Well, first let me say, it was no fault of my mother's, as we did have a feather duster in our home. I actually even used it a time or two. However, at some tender age I heard some little tidbit about dusters that lodged in my head like the gospel truth. That being that dusters merely move the dust around, only to have it settle again, thereby not really accomplishing much.

While I realize there may be some truth there, it dawned on me, as I gazed around my dust-covered home, that using a duster that takes 1/52 of my time (or less) and leaves no awful smell in it's wake and solves the how-to-dust-the-Pieta problem would at least get the job done, (and leave me more willing to accomplish it with increased frequency!) which is more than can be said for the old cloth-and-spray method that was happening at the same frequency as the seasonal changes.

I write this in a dusted living room. Yes, there may be a bit more dust floating in the air tonight, and my home may not have that 3 minute post-spray gleam, but at least it doesn't smell of canned lemon, I'm not covered in a layer of sticky grime and there is no extra laundry to do. And when that dust settles, well, it has me and my duster to reckon with.

Take that, dust bunnies!