Monday - 332nd

My thought today? Be careful what you wish for!

For any number of reasons, Ed is making a concerted effort to pick up some household tasks. For example -- this morning I hear him telling me: don't you get up, gorgeous. I'll go feed the animals. And he did! I was in bed until 9!

And after breakfast...

... I see him taking apart the dish rack. I had been wiping it down and now here he is, screwdriver in hand, tearing the thing up, wiping it with vinegar, scraping it with sharp objects. 

Now, you have to understand, cleaning the dish rack is a big deal. We have such hard water that you may as well be pouring calcium pebbles out of our faucet. And no, we're never going to soften the water. We're not wanting to dump salt into farmette lands. So we live with the minerals and everything sooner or later gets a hard coating of white stuff, with an orange hue. And when the urge to get it cleaned strikes you, then you gotta go big. A wipe down will accomplish nothing. So Ed goes big and now dish rack pieces are all over the kitchen counter and I of course feel compelled to help him. We spend a big part of the morning cleaning the damn dish rack. And you know what? You can't even see the effect. It's covered up by dishes that rest in the rack during the day.

And because Ed had been putting in some effort, I force myself to get moving on the huge job of tidying up the kids' playroom. There are a lot of lego pieces and partially decapitated structures floating around that need some organizational magic to get them looking like something other than a mess. And the gate keeping Sparrow out has to come down. The kids were freely walking through it daily. Away it goes. There's still much to organize and give away, but at least I started in on that project.

I should be pleased. We both worked hard to get things in order at the farmhouse. So that's good, right? 

To a point. Too much cleaning and clearing leaves you depleted. As in -- I wasted a day on tidying? How mindlessly boring is that!

On the upside, I had my weekly Zoom call with this girl:

We discussed, among other things, monsters that are, at night, out to get you.

And toward evening, Ed feels strong enough to go skiing with me. We do the big loop in our park and the trail is completely empty. No Super Bowl to thank for that. It was the cold that kept people away. Did I tell you -- we are still in the deep freeze. When the wind kicks in, we are going to really feel like the Arctic is some nice tropical retreat by comparison.

A winter sunset.

Home. With cats, leftovers, Netflix, pop corn, and a clean dish rack.