lissmo . dot . com

I’m going to start checking in here more often, I think, in an attempt to keep my sanity in the coming weeks. After a great weekend, the cough that J has been carrying around turned into a real sick, so he was home at the beginning of the week. Yesterday he went back to work only to be told that they’ve decided that they don’t really need his position after all, thanks-very-much-now-get-out, and he’s officially out of a job.

I’m trying to be optimistic that this will lead to increased creativity in the kitchen (leading to weight loss and increased health for both of us) and a renewed ability to get some of those nagging things done around the house, but it’s mostly just really awful at our house right now.

J is taking this surprisingly well and is very positive about making a change that he’s wanted to make anyway, but the timing pretty much could not be worse, for a lot of reasons, and I (pessimist and worrywart that I am) am freaking right the hell out.

While we were in Baltimore this weekend, my little brother and his wife and kids stayed at our house to watch the animals and have a (ultra-cheap) mini-getaway of their own. It saved us the expense and hassle of boarding the dogs—and was much more fun for the dogs, too.

Apparently, the had a terrible fear that they (with their 9-month old and 21-month old and their own three dogs) would create such a havoc in our house that we’d come home and be horrified at their treatment of our castle. (Anyone who knows us and has seen our house is laughing really hard by now.) We left the house pretty clean - we even left clean sheets and towels all ready to go - and they were determined to leave the house in, if anything, even better condition than they found it.

Not that we don’t appreciate this, you understand, but we sure as heck didn’t expect it. I expected that the house would show a few days of dirt and traffic, but their own house isn’t exactly a cesspool, so I wasn’t worried. (Maybe I should have been.)

They cleaned. From what I hear, they cleaned constantly. They washed our (brand new, never even used once) placemats. Unfortunately, they only washed two of the four placemats, and we now have two somewhat smaller, wrinked placemats and two slightly larger, smooth and pristine placemats. That’s okay, since they were something like three dollars apiece at Target, but funny - who washes placemats that have never even been used?

They also mopped our (almost new, solid cherry, polyurethane finished) floors. This we expected, of course - five dogs and at least one good rainstorm, and some mopping is absolutely necessary. What we expected, though was a damp mop or the Swiffer Wet-Jet or, if they were feeling really motivated, the electric floor cleaner.

We weren’t expecting that they would dig out the nearly forgotten bottle of Murphy’s Oil Soap and use that on our floors. Did you know that (despite what the Murphy’s people will tell you), Oil Soap leaves a really nasty residue on polyurethene-finished floors? Oh, yes it does. And it attracts dirt like a magnet. One walk through my house and my feet were absolutely filthy—the whole floor felt greasy.

You know that I can’t possibly be upset when they were so obviously working hard to do everything right and leave us with a sparkling house—but boy, I’ve mopped more in one day now than I did in the last month all put together. I think I have the floors almost clean.

The only problem with having fabulous getaway weekends is that you end up back at home staring down the front end of a plain old ordinary work week.

Baltimore was great - we had a nice hotel room and great weather (for the most part). Good weather, great baseball, and good company was all I really needed, and I got it all in spades. Add in some good food and a little bit of shopping and sight-seeing, and you have a recipe for don’t-wanna-come-back-itis.

Camden Yards is a beautiful ballpark, and (as major league ballparks go) not horrifyingly expensive. (As long as you don’t want to eat or drink, of course.) Both of the games we saw were exciting and well-played—both teams were in it right up until the end (11 innings, in one case), so we got our money’s worth of baseball action both nights. Even better, our team came out on top both times, so we definitely left happy. (Also, fireworks!) We were really happy to have the chance to see Clemens pitch one more time, even if he didn’t end up with a decision for the game he started.

J and I are hitting the road this weekend for a much-needed break. It’s not quite a vacation, but three days in another city (and two baseball games) will hopefully go a long way toward refreshing, rejuvenating and restoring our collective sanity.

We’re leaving tomorrow, staying until Sunday, and refusing to feel guilt of any kind or to think about any of the things that we “should” be doing.

I can’t wait!

If you’ve been here awhile, you’ve seen this picture before - this is my nephew, older brother to the gorgeous niece. He’s exactly a year older than she is, but this picture was taken last summer, when he was about he same age that she is in the picture below. (Do I need to point out that this one is heavily modified?)

The cutest niece ever:

I love my family. No, really—I do. Sure, they drive me crazy sometimes (individually and collectively), but overall, they’re not a bad bunch.

This weekend was going to be a very quiet one - nothing but hanging out at home and (hopefully) making some progress on the endless list of things that need to be done around the house. Being the antisocial soul that I am, I wasn’t initially all that thrilled to get a call from my brother asking if he and his household as well as my parents could come by for a visit. I’m glad that my higher brain said “sure”, though, since it ended up being a very nice day.

There’s nothing bad to say about hanging out with an adorable and very happy infant, following it up with an adventure to the (huge, very nice, recently upgraded) playground with a two-year-old, and then heading to a steakhouse for a big family dinner.

I needed this afternoon more than I thought. And it beat the heck out of doing laundry and scrubbing the bathrooms.

After weeks of complaining and moaning about the state of my head, I got my hair cut this afternoon. This is possibly the worst haircut I have ever had. Not only did it not solve the problems I’ve been complaining about, it has introduced new ones.

I can tell already that I’m going to be spending a good long time in front of the mirror in the morning trying to make my hair look like something other than very bad shrubbery. I’ve never been so thankful that my hair grows very, very quickly.

Yes, it’s all gone. Everything - well, almost everything - that used to be here has gone to the big filing cabinet in the sky, and I’m starting over. By popular demand, I’m keeping some of the older stuff to provide a little context…or so you can see right up front how dull my life is and move along quickly before you’re bored into a stupor.

August into September: the time of fresh starts, clean slates, and new beginnings. I suppose that it’s been like that for most people who grew up in this country; a new school year begins with infinite possibilities - at least for the first few days. It might be as long as a week before things settle down and you realize the truth: everything will be exactly the same way it was the year before.

I’ve passed the point that I can easily rearrange my entire life, ditch everything that’s not right in my world and start with a clean slate. I did it more than once in the years between high school graduation and the time I “settled down” in my mid-twenties. (Maybe I settled down a little too soon: suddenly I think that twenty-four seems awfully young.)

Now, though, I have Obligations and Responsibilities. A husband, two dogs, a car payment and a mortgage. A “real” job, with people that are counting on me to show up and pull my weight. Not to mention 1800 square feet of…well…stuff. A lot more stuff than I really know what to do with, and definitely more stuff than would fit in the back of my car - even if the car in question now is an SUV and not the hatchback it was when I was twenty.

Don’t get me wrong: I have a good life. I could not ask for a better husband or a happier marriage. I have a nice house and a good job. I’m a fortunate person, and I know that. But I catch myself staring into space sometimes, thinking not about the life that I have, but the infinite lives that I don’t have.

When did I get so bogged down by minutia that I stopped looking toward the future? Somewhere back there, when I wasn’t looking, I went from being a girl with unlimited potential to…what exactly? Here I am, no longer wondering what I’ll be when I grow up…but pretty sure that this isn’t it.

I didn’t get an instruction book with this thing. If this is my life, what do I do next?

It’s been five months since I posted here?! That can’t be right.

Where have I been? What have I been doing? Somebody please tell me!