Squeaky Clean!

Today has been an exceptionally productive sort of day, despite the fact that I've been fighting a killer (allergy-related?) headache on and off for about 6 hours. Normally when I clean, I start with the downstairs - kitchen, dining area, living room - and then head to both bathrooms, and by the end, I'm just too tired to get to our bedroom. Not so today! Our room was where I started, and man, I cleaned it from top to bottom. It started out with laundry baskets everywhere, clothes in them AND on the floor, papers and other trash-type things strewn about, our bed was in shambles...

And now, clean, tidy bliss :) Clothes are organized by color in baskets, and I've made a rather large dent in the amount needing to be washed (although, if I could use OUR washer and dryer rather than the apartment's tiny stackable ones, I would've been done already...). Washed the sheets, remade the bed, picked up and threw away all trash, put away shoes, and vaccuumed :) Bathroom is also clean. And thanks to the hubby-extraordinaire, the kitchen is too! Tomorrow after church and lunch, I plan to break out my vaccuum again and finish that mess, and then mop. These next couple of weeks are going to be rather busy, so getting the major stuff done now will be a big help :)

After all that cleaning, I'm a bit tired. It's a quiet night tonight - cold weather always comes and makes me quiet and introspective. Fall calms me down. In the spring, I'm bursting at the seams with excitement, energy, cabin-fever from the winter season - the second the weather hits about 70 degrees, and new green blades of grass are starting to poke out from the earth, my t-shirts are on, my flip-flops are out, and I HAVE TO GET OUTSIDE. I have to GO and DO and BE EVERYTHING and life is lived and felt in ALL CAPS, ALL THE TIME. I'm giddy, every time the sun comes out. It's like a big OD on Vitamin D or something, I don't know. But in the fall, all that is subdued. It's not that I'm depressed or anything - just calmer. I go slower. I tend to savor things more. I get nest-y. And now, fall has officially returned. My sweaters have come out, and a chill is hanging in the air. It makes me want to carve a pumpkin, go on a hayride, make crafty things with leaves and gourds. Mark loves this kind of weather. He said yesterday that he wanted to move somewhere where the weather is like this about 70% of the time. With the other 30 being much, much colder. I'm not too sure about that idea, but we'll see if we can't work out some sort of compromise... (I told him I'd live in a cold place if he bought me lots and lots of nice, cute, very very warm things. Like parkas. and Everest-ready garb.) But for now, I'm content with the 40's-50's, and will break out the flannel and drink hot chocolate, and use my kitty (who likes to sit in my lap while I'm trying to type on my laptop) as a blanket.

And once again, I can't reiterate enough, I am so content here. Where we are, where I am... I am so very, very glad that we moved when and where we did. And I'm so thankful that we have what we do. We're blessed, for sure :)