As I mentioned here, VH and I had planned to take the Big-Eyed Boy to a movie tonight. But after spending the day looking for last-minute Halloween decorations, baking pumpkin muffins and spiced pumpkin seeds (yes, I’ll post the recipes eventually), then going out for dinner, well, I was pooped. Thank goodness VH felt sorry for me, because I know I’d be zonked out at whatever movie he decided to take the Boy to this evening.
Of course, this means I have the house to myself.
So, to borrow my friend Dean’s gimmick, it’s an open thread. What’s on your mind?
Saturday, October 28th, 2006, 8:29 pm | 
My Venomous Life, Time Wasting Bites | 
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October 29, 2006 at 12:38 am
Money and sex, whatelse would be on the mind of a healthy 46 year old man lost in Paradise? Hehe..
October 29, 2006 at 1:44 am
Well, seeing as you keep popping in on my site to tell me it’s broken, I’ve mostly had fixing the site on my mind!
Thanks again though.
October 29, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Is that you on the pic ?
October 29, 2006 at 4:55 pm
Yes, although the picture’s 3 years old. There’s a newer one with the fang photos.
October 29, 2006 at 6:28 pm
On my mind: why I remain totally unmotivated to clean my house even though my friend is arriving with her two little ones in three days.
I simply can’t imagine what else could be occupying my time.
No sir.
October 29, 2006 at 7:06 pm
You are so much more hospitable than I am. Whenever someone’s coming to visit with young kids, I make a point of only doing “big chunk” cleaning (dust table tops, sweep kitchen floor, change sheets and run vacuum through main traffic area) since I know whatever cleaning I do before the visit I’ll be redoing after the kids leave. And then some!
October 29, 2006 at 7:48 pm
…I’m so happy to hear that I am not the only one has the ‘big chunk’ cleaning mentality…and here I was afraid my standards had just sunk to new levels! Which even if they did simply leaves more time to read and and read more…ah!
October 29, 2006 at 8:01 pm
*laugh* You have to define first what “big chunk” cleaning is … because I have to say, dusting anything does not appear even several levels deeper than “big chunk” cleaning for me. :/ On the list before the friends get here: finish decluttering a few specific areas that have been collecting clutter for more months than I can count, vacuum traffic areas, prep guest room by getting my piles of clothes out of it and changing the sheets. And last thing before they come, make sure the kitchen and kids’ play room are presentable. And the bathrooms. Voila. Still in the decluttering stage at the moment, but hey, I still have three days!
October 29, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Oh, and, of course, pulling out infant apparatus since her younger son isn’t a year yet. Bouncy seat, baby bucket carseat, baby swing.
October 29, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Man. You must really *like* these people!
October 29, 2006 at 8:13 pm
Dana, I promise you’re not the only one. I used to get seriously OCD before guests visited. Years ago, my mother planned a 1-month visit to our house in Hawaii. We’d just moved in the month before that, and the place wasn’t “up to my standards,” much less to hers. I spent the entire month before her visit cleaning every little thing I could find… to the point where I got an old toothbrush and scrubbed the crevice between the walls and door jambs. Frankly, I doubt she noticed, and by the time she left the house looked all messy again to my eyes.
Nowadays, the only guests I do major cleaning for are my in-laws (since my mother no longer visits). Even then I’ve grown more relaxed over the years now that I know they don’t really expect spotlessness.
But regardless of who’s visiting — even if it’s just friends coming over for the evening — I find that I wind up cleaning the next day, anyway. So do more than “big chunks” before?
October 29, 2006 at 8:14 pm
More like I don’t want to admit the state my house is really in right now. Make it sound like a bit of decluttering and I’m the perfect hostess … tell you there are two whole rooms in the house given over to unpacked boxes and miscellaneous junk and you start to see why I’m embarrassed to have my friend come without doing a bit to alleviate the sitch.
October 29, 2006 at 8:16 pm
I find that I wind up cleaning the next day, anyway. So do more than “big chunks” before?
Because after, I only clean up as much as I have to.
October 29, 2006 at 11:56 pm
Look. Here is what I discovered about cleaning with a family: when they are young, its all hands on deck and teach them how to clean and train them to understand that it is a brutal reality in life that cleanliness has its own rewards. While not ever wishing to get sucked into a slothful vortex of messiness, I find that my deceased mother-in-law was so right when she exhorted me early on in my parenting to remember that the house will always need cleaning but the children will not always be small. Many was the time I let the little dirty handprints on the wall stay for days on end simply because I wanted to keep them etched in my memory. And many was the time where instead of cleaning we went and laid on a blanket in the backyard and read together while looking up at the sky. And I’m so glad I did.
October 30, 2006 at 12:58 am
That’s scary. I was skimming your comments on the way down here and discovered I’d already commented. Only it wasn’t me. It was some other Dana saying pretty much what I was going to say.
Eerie.