Sunday

You know, diet Red Bull is really dangerous/amazing stuff.

This is how today went. First, I slept in until 9:30ish. I walked the dog, fed the dog, counted the boys (all accounted for), took a shower . . . and went back to bed for, oh, another hour. Until Ben came along demanding I really do something about the day. Milo had come along right before him, but I'd succeeded in putting him off for another ten minutes. Not Ben.

So. Up and at 'em. At eleven, or so. I worked on a sock heel for awhile, while verbally coaching the twins through the riggors of dressing themselves. Max was getting himself dressed at two or three. With the twins it was just SO much faster and easier to either a) dress them myself or b) let them wear jammies all day. Ben is morally opposed to dressing himself and Milo didn't have an opinion on the matter until recently when there is, as far as he is concerned, nothing he can't do for himself (including driving, retrieving casseroles from the oven, lighting candles, etc. You can't leave this one alone for long right now). So on the one hand I have Ben who thinks I ought I to dress him myself and Milo who changes his own underwear four times a day. (How fastidious, I know, but the laundry ramifications are staggering.)

Once the twinks were dressed I headed off to Wegmans to do a big grocery shopping trip. This was kinda sorta successful. The "I'll do it myself" phase is tiring and constantly flirts with the edge of rudeness and when they're both in it, well, I get snippy. "You MAY push your own cart, but NOT over my FOOT!"

Then, I had no list (I know!) so mentally I'm trying to think of nutritious, easy-to-cook things for us to eat and then go buy the ingredients. But the reason I hadn't made a list is because I'm just sort of uninspired in the kitchen right now and nothing sounds good anyway. Nothing. So I guess we're going to eat a lot of burritos and sandwiches and chili and macaroni and cheese with hamburger and that kind of thing. At the same time, we're planning on mailing out the first batch of Christmas presents this week so I was mentally going over the ingredient list and I'm sure I bought way too much stuff for fudge, but the fudge should be good this year, anyway.

Eventually the cart was full and I decided to quit while I was ahead. I went to pay.

My cashier's name was Emily and Emily has made up her mind to win today's little competition among the Wegman's cashiers. Apparently the store is equipped for curbside pickup but the program had fallen into disuse. Some manager had noticed that even the little old ladies were pushing their carts out into the 10 degree night the other night and thought, "Wait a minute . . ." so they gathered all the cashiers together, explained what curbside pick up was and how it works, and offered some incentive to the cashier that could get the most of their customers to use it.

At this point Ben and Milo were flirting with the "naughty" list--enough so that I had them sit down on the Wegmans floor just to keep them in sight while I was unloading the cart. So I accepted the curbside pick up offer and made Emily very happy (this put her in first place in the competition). It was at this point that I bought and drank the diet Red Bull.

When I got home I grabbed five bags and let Chris bring the rest in.

I (FINALLY) did the weather proofing of the big window in the kitchen. I'd been procrastinating on this window because a) it is so big b) it needed washing inside and out and there are literally three layers of window panes in the two side panels and c) the sheer curtains that hang over the window needed washing, too. But thanks to the Red Bull, the windows are washed, the curtains are washed and rehung (including me finally uninstalling the old blinds that were above that window--only blinds and small children creep me out, so we never use them--and then I unscrewed all the related hardware and installed new hardware to better place the curtains. You can see why I'd been putting this project off.) I replaced the burned out light bulb above the sink and washed those curtains, too.

We had Wegmans pizza for dinner and I worked on the Christmas packages and did the first batch of fudge. The carpet cleaner is coming in the morning, so now that I have dutifully blogged, I get to take the very last bit of energy from the diet Red Bull and finish cleaning the living room so that the carpet cleaner can get at everything.

Then I'm going to crash. Tomorrow I have LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of workwork to do, and the same with Tuesday, and then for most of the next two weeks I have equal parts work and holiday cooking/cleaning to do. Our first guest arrives on the 19th and our last leaves on January 5th, and it looks like our Christmas packages will get out in time--so I'm happy. Life is good. (And I have three more diet Red Bull's in the fridge.)