We've become very domestic.

This weekend was a very nice weekend, despite the fact that I got about 10 hours of sleep total. Today I'm feeling the two nights in a row of 2:30am bedtimes and 7am waking times. Friday night I was doing work until 2:30am, and then last night I was doing housework until about 1, then watched TV until about 2:30. Why? Just trying to get everything done. Tonight, though, is a night for the couch. Once I get done blogging and revising my self-assessment...

Yesterday we met Jipty and Chris for dinner, and they brought along little Ely. He celebrated his 5-month birthday. Wish I had photos! He's adorable, and Jipty and Chris are doing well. After that I came home and was planning on catching up on some of my Cash in the Attic viewing (I believe we have a month's worth of the show saved on DVR, and considering it plays about two or three times a day, that's quite a lot of show to watch), but Doug decided that we should forge ahead with chores, so he started to set up the new steamer that we bought earlier in the day. Have I mentioned before that I hate ironing? Well, I do, and I was faced with this pile of ironing to do this weekend: I thought maybe the vertical steamer would help me get through the pile, and it did, but it steamed the varnish off the beams on the ceiling in the living room in the process. What happens is that I stand there in the living room steaming the clothes, like this: and the steamer is producing so much heat and so much steam that condensation collects not only directly above the steamer but all around it as well. After using it for about 25 minutes I felt water dropping onto my head, which is a pretty freaky feeling when you're standing in your otherwise dry living room. I steamed for about 3 hours last night (yes, a long, long time... while the steamer saves space and allows you to just roll it around with you so you don't have to lug out the ironing board and plug in the iron, it does not really save any time doing the actual ironing), so that means there was three hours worth of steam and condensation collecting on the ceiling. When Doug went to wipe the ceiling off he got some of the varnish off of the beams... didn't make him too happy. Needless to say, I'll be steaming in the basement from now on.

Today was a lovely, slow day. After getting the rest of my steaming done in the early hours of the morning (in the basement, of course) I sat down to a very nice breakfast of a scone and some cookbook reading. I've grown to like reading cookbooks, but I rarely make the recipes. Tonight, though, we did make one of them - BBQ chicken sandwiches with avocado and cheddar cheese. Doug got the grill going (love this shot of him starting the fire... look at the smoke! )and we had a nice, home-cooked meal. I also read some cookie recipes and found two that would have been good to make today, but one I needed a pastry bag for, and the other I needed quick-cooking rolled oats. We went to two supermarkets today and you'd think that I would have remembered the oats, but no, I didn't, so I made neither recipe. Oh well - maybe next weekend.

But today was too nice a day to be inside making cookies, anyway, right? We did some more yard stuff today... I mowed the grass in the front (Doug and I have a system - he grows the grass, I mow it), and then surveyed the flowers to see how they're doing. We've gotten plenty of rain these past couple of weeks, which is good because this means that I don't have to try to remember to water the flowers. Doug still waters his grass, though, and it looks like all that watering is working because his grass is actually growing! Look, we have evidence: Not only is the grass nice and green and beginning to grow nicely, but the lilac trees in the front of the house are blooming and smell wonderfully. I was worried that these wouldn't come back after the hard winter, but they're here! What a testament to the strength of Mother Nature. The grow box is also a testament to Mother Nature, because there's stuff growing in it and it's certainly through no handiwork of mine. I don't know if this is a broccoli or a spinach (I'm guessing spinach), but whatever it is it's sprouting, green, and looking like some kind of plant. The broccoli is not growing, or at least not that I can tell. I'm wondering if the grow box is too wet. Not only is there a massive pool of water on the inside of the grow box (just following the directions on that one), but it gets watered from the rain and from Doug's sprinkler every single day. Plants can have too much water, can't they? It would be very ironic if my spinach and broccoli didn't work out because of over-watering. That would be a first indeed.

Let's see. What else. We took a short bike ride, but I don't have photos of that. It's difficult to ride and take photos at the same time. After the ride and after mowing the lawn I installed some hooks in our little vestibule area at the back door of the house. That area had been bothering us for a while as an inefficient use of space, and since I'm on a hook kick I thought we'd add some in there, too. So far so good. We're hanging up our grilling tools, our bike helmets and safety vests (dorky, yes, but safety first when riding/walking at night!), and then anything else that might need hanging. I love to hang things. It's my favorite mode of storage.

So, that was our weekend. It was rather quiet, rather uneventful, but good nonetheless. I called my mom and Doug called his mom - it's Mother's Day, after all. My mom had a good day with my sister and the kids, so that was good. We didn't get to see her, which was too bad, but she's coming up in two weekends to visit and then coming up again the following weekend. We'll do lots of fun stuff then, and I'll get to tell her in person how lucky I am to have a great mom like her. In the meantime, she can read it in the card I sent her and in the blog. Thanks, Mom, and Happy Mother's Day!