My niece Rock Grrrl arrives tomorrow for Stage I of her Belgian adventure. She's going to be staying at Chez V and tending Petey the Handsome Black Cat for five weeks while we go to America and stay in her condo in Virginia and visit E's mom in Florida.

Y'all may recall that about two weeks ago I embarked on my "room a day" spring cleaning program. It sounded so wise and so moderate when I conceived of it. I wrote how I would deep clean one room a day, (no more, no less) until the whole house was done. I was off to a good start, but then the kids got out of school, we traveled out of town for two consecutive weekends, and I got behind on my timetable. The rooms I did first now need to be done again.

This morning reality slapped me silly when I realized that not only did I have to finish the stupid cleaning, but DUH, I had to organize some menus, do some grocery shopping, and get the beds made up, because geez, I'm having GUESTS. All this in addition to getting ready for our trip.  And let's not talk about washing all the sheets and towels plus our regular laundry while also dealing with a heap of funky smelling clothes that E and A brought back from their weekend camping trip.

All day long I was spinning around, not sure what to do first or what to finish. Laundry, cleaning, vacuuming, packing, writing, phone calls, e-mails.  I had to finish writing my guide to living in Belgium for Rock Grrrl, I promised Martina, Sylvie and the editor of Expatica another cat story, and I needed to pinpoint the location of some Very Important Papers related to our trip. Did I mention I need to file papers from school and clear other papers off my desk?

As I kept spinning out of control from one task to another, my list got even longer: must return library books, check on film sent out for developing, pick up framing, claim my refund check, buy cat food, remind E to get trash bags, buy bottled water...

So if I'm so busy, why am I sitting here blogging?

Because I'm TIRED, y'all.  I need to sit down. If I have to carry one more stupid load of laundry from the basement to the second floor, I'm going to collapse. And if I stay upstairs and face the pyramid of clean clothes on my bed that need to be folded, I'm going to cry. And if I stop and consider that I need to clean the toilets AGAIN, I'm going to run away from home. And let's not even talk about the kitchen and all that needs to be spruced up there. Sigh.

So I'm going to just keep blogging until I get my second wind--and tomorrow I'll post the naughty photos Di took of me at the sculpture park and make all y'all SMILE.

June 25, 2007