Of Baking Bread and Pine Needles

When I said yesterday that this blog took me forever, I wasn't joking. Also in the running for my time were Blackboard (for school, since our grades were being posted), Facebook (because I am cloistered, also because our grades were coming out...my classmates and I all had to congratulate each other on good ones and secretly try to figure out who didn't make the 75% minimum grade), and Baby Center. Ah Baby Center. You suck me in and take so much of my time. Why is it that I feel drawn to you, filled mostly with first time mothers, the great majority of whom seem to be from Arizona? It must be a mix of genuine boredom/obsessiveness, the desire to spread my great deal of child-raising knowledge and experience (I say this humbly, of course, but I do have a fair amount stemming from all those siblings, working at the daycare, and the BB's), and I suppose sometimes I actually do have a question to ask other mothers, or at the very least a funny story (like the impromptu peep show for the UPS man. Merry Christmas!).

Like I was saying, with all my important internet work and nursing like it's my job, combined with throwing a ball to bounce off Grady's head over and over and later tossing him on the couch over and over, not to mention reading "Hush Baby," you guessed it, over and over, I didn't get much in the way of that thing some call housework done. No real pressure...after all I'm here until January 24th with not much to do besides holiday til I drop. Not so, says el esposo on his glorious return home. Obviously, if I had been doing my job during the day, that keyring he's missing would have appeared. That is all I will say on that matter, because while explaining this blog to said esposo, I swore it was not an outlet for marital frustrations.

So today, with the obvious exception of the present, has been and will be spent in domestic dominance. As I type, two loaves of whole wheat bread are (hopefully) rising in the kitchen. There is nary a dirty dish to be seen. The only reason the clothes washer isn't running is because it is in fierce competition with the dishwasher for water pressure, and the deadlock spells crusty dishes for mama to scrape with her fingernails. And I am really not ok with that whole fingernails-on-the-chalkboard grating noise. I vow to vacuum, mop, and wrap presents single-handedly (no really, you try putting this baby down) while Grady naps, because while he is awake, the (plastic) ornaments are not decorations, they are ball-balls that only adorn the tree branches when they happen to land there. In fact, at this very moment our tree is garnished by a blue rubber ball, a foam basketball, and three kitty balls that belonged to our last few unfortunate feline friends. And, since I insisted on getting the darn tree Thanksgiving weekend, the pine needles are shedding like an English Sheepdog.