The Lady’s “new school” was closed on Monday, so she and I decided to take a trip to go visit friends in Syracuse. First, we stopped at her “old school” to drop off some fudge to her old teacher, Erin, and say hi to old friends. I was surprised that some of them recognized her and, just like that, they were all off and running like she had never left. And yes, these photos are all blurry for a reason since I didn’t want to plaster these kids all over the interwebs without their parents knowing I had taken photos.

Afterwards, we met up with our good friends Steph and Charlie for some lunch and a trip to Onondaga Lake Park where some hard core sand-playing took place. Luckily no volleyball teams came by to steal the big sandbox away from us.

Cecilia has also been very interested in all of the bits of electronics hanging around the house and always asks to go in “Daddy’s Other Room” to check things out. She loves singing songs and exploring the sounds that the microphone makes when hooked up to a guitar pedal.

Over the weekend, there was a chicken bbq at the fish and game club, so everyone came over and we had take-out dinners. Someone didn’t want to sit down at first, so I let her go off and read books by herself for awhile, but then she decided to run in and “surprise” us and have some dinner. Afterwards, she wanted to put on her Cinderella dress and dance around. We ended up outside when my uncle and his grandson showed up: apparently my aunt had put my name in for a raffle at the bbq and I won a large mum plant and some pumpkins! We played outside for awhile and Ceciliarella decided to “paint” the side of the garage with weeds and enlist Joe’s help.

All in all, a good long weekend.

There comes a point where the nice smell that you use to eliminate the bad smell becomes intertwined in your brain so that you smell the nice smell and think “cat poop”.

When we first moved in here, I had put the litterbox in the “office room”, however it soon seemed to make more sense to put it in the area where the little steps are by the sliding door in the kitchen (descriptions that, of course, mean nothing to someone who hasn’t seen the inside of this house). And then one of them decided to just keep pooping where the box was. That was a fun discovery. I started keeping the door to the room closed, though, and I think we’ve finally moved past that difficult time. I still close the door, but I let them come in the room now and no one has tried to poop (and the area where they, and by they I mean Brand O, I’m pretty sure, was right near my feet, so I would NOTICE). Suffice it to say, though, that I have thoroughly cleaned the area. But now I just expect to find a small pile of poop waiting for me under the desk and I expect to smell it. Time for a new candle or something in that room to introduce a new, non-cat-poop-memory-tainted smell.

My mom is going to be hosting The Lady for an overnight tomorrow. This means that I need to be Productive in the meantime. I need to try to finish up some freelance projects that have been lingering thanks to the Summer of Falling Apart and the bathrooms should probably get a deep-cleaning. And laundry and grocery shopping. And corralling the spread of toddlerania for at least a few moments.

I also need to brainstorm soon about how I’m approaching my business going forward. Things feel all a-jumble right now. In theory, I should have more time to devote to MyWork, but in practice it doesn’t feel that way yet, which I think is due to the flexible nature of my WorkWork. Flexible is good, but it also means that I don’t always have the same days/times off during the week and it’s hard to plan ahead, especially for things that need to be done during regular business hours. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to missing some of my regular Syracuse “remote office” haunts that helped to define the MyWork time more fully. There’s another post in here about how I wish I could live in about five different places simultaneously.