Exhaustion Sets In

Last night, I spent about two hours reorganizing the basement. The whole time I was doing it, I was thinking about how no one had bothered to make the basement look nice when we bought the house.  I wonder if everyone who sells their house thinks these things while schlepping plastic tubs filled with crap you don't need into stacks no normal person would ever maintain (how would you find anything?).

As I reorganized the tool bench and proceeded to accidentally dump out one of those holders of fifteen million tiny, plastic drawers to hide tiny, metal pieces that must be sorted and maintained, I thought about how my beloved, who is on a business trip in Madison, should really be doing this instead of me.  I personally have reorganized the tool bench five times since we have lived in This Old House, and my beloved has trashed my organization with each new house project.  I do not know what half of those things stuffed in Sutherland's bags are.  They must not be important. (Famous last words).

I noticed while doing this that the little angel has already outgrown a tub and a half of clothes. These are just the clothes she owns. We are also giving back two full garbage bags of hand-me-downs to the relatives at Thanksgiving. How is that possible?  Did she even wear all of those clothes?  No wonder people with kids have so much junk in their houses. Kids are like little consumption machines.  She doesn't even know what a frequent shopper she is - imagine what will happen when she finds out?

This morning I got up early to do some Pilates and throw real food in the slow-cooker so that I can feed my darling mother something other than SmartOnes on her third evening in our house.  So far, I have just come home, worked on the house until the little angel's bedtime, spent some time with her and collapsed with a glass of wine in bed.  No social time with Ma. No nice, home-cooked meal to reward her for taking care of the little angel so diligently or (as she did yesterday) doing my laundry while I went to work. Mothers are so wonderful.  I used to not be able to imagine being that nice to someone. Then I started thinking about what I would do if Lily called me and said she was trying to get her house ready to sell in four days while working and taking care of her baby.  I would probably hop in my car, haul my rear to her house and do the same thing, except I would probably order Chinese.