In Which I Account For My Long Absence...

I've been a very busy gal lately, so the first thing to go is the blogging... sorry! John and I have had some really big projects around the house with a deadline, so we've been scrambling to complete them. The good news is that we were successful and the even better news is that the house is in the best shape it's been in since we moved here. Piles and piles of clutter were taken to consignment or Goodwill; loads of trash were moved out; laundry is was done; paint touched up; carpets all cleaned (except for the Silly Putty that will not come out of my Berber downstairs); garage, office and laundry room all organized; long-standing outside projects completed.

And we did it with nary a squabble, mostly thanks to the fact that John and I worked in completely different areas of the house at all times. I once had visions of the two of us happily working together a la This Old House, but after we yelled at each other for two hours had a heated debate on either side of the ceiling while trying to replace the kitchen light fixtures a few years back, I have given up on that idea. We are excellent independent workers. We did have a brief clash over the highly prized living room bookshelf space, in which he moved half of my Encyclopedia Britannicas off the shelf in favor of his ugly black set of fat Jewish Encyclopedias, which he picked up at a book sale in college for a dime a pound. We've been lugging them from house to house ever since. Our preacher did me a huge disservice by gladly offering to take them off John's hands, because then John knew he had a real find. Sigh. The kids were appalled when the Britannicas were dumped unceremoniously in a box, and John Mark cleared the top shelf of the desk in his room to accommodate them. Go figure; I guess he is his mother's child.

Whew! But it is done and we are enjoying the fruits of our labor for however long they may last, for past experience has taught me that a perfectly clean house is like a mist, a vapor- here today and gone tomorrow...

And now for the bad news: while this was all still going on, we started dropping like flies around here. John Mark was the first to go down with a really bad cold, then Nathanael got Pink Eye, then Philip got the cold, then Becca, John and I. Benjamin has a raspy voice, but he's hanging in there while everyone else hacks a lung out. Fortunately, John and I are still functional; if a kid goes down, life goes on, but if dad or mom goes down, things get really tough. (oh, who are we kidding... if MOM goes down, things get really tough! Suddenly no one has any underwear, there's nothing to eat, yada, yada, yada...) Anyway, we all figured it would be an act of goodwill towards our community to quarantine ourselves for a while. The kids are not at 100% yet but are making a diligent effort to catch up with their work for co-op, which is no easy feat for John Mark and Becca, who have a solid four days of homework each week in preparation for co-op day. Anyhow, I think (hope) we are on the mend, and will soon re-enter life as we once knew it.