Phew. Long couple of days. But I did SO much that I just have to brag a little...

Friday:
8:00 a.m. - Wake up, stumble around house incoherently. Nurse Jacob. Mumble and smile at him.

8:30-9:40 a.m. - Clip coupons. This means 5 newspaper inserts' worth, since it'd been a while, plus emptying the little folder thing of expired coupons, which Jacob took from me one by one to put in the drawer of Emily's old dresser which was temporarily in the kitchen. He's in his "gazinta" stage - everything gazinta something else, always in a random way!

9:40-9:50 a.m. - Get myself and Jacob dressed and ready and out of the house.

10:00-10:55 a.m. - SPRINT through the grocery store. I have never shopped so fast in my life. Running old ladies over with the cart, swiping items out of strangers' hands, tossing frozen goods onto Jacob's lap...

10:55-11:05 a.m. - Drive behind a series of the slowest people on the planet to get to Emily's school for 11:00 pickup. Get there just in time to interrupt the message she and her teacher were leaving on my cell phone. Apologize profusely, then pack everyone back into the car.

11:08 a.m. - While about to pull onto my street from the busier road, I see a smallish gray fuzzy thing wandering around in the road. I realize it's a puppy, so I pull over to the side of the road and call him over. He comes right over, very sweet and docile - which is good, since his road-wandering activities suggest he's not going to make it through life on his brains. I stand there by the side of the road, holding this snuggly fuzzy thing, looking completely dumbfounded - now what?
After a few minutes with no divine intervention, I decide to take it home and call the police from there. I put him on Emily's lap, and as I'm getting back into the driver's seat I notice a woman at the house nearest me. She's just standing in the front yard, sort of scanning the grass - not calling, not moving around much, sort of looking like she's lost a mitten or a set of keys. She looks at me oddly, and continues scanning her yard. After a few seconds, I say, "Do you have a dog?" She says, "Yeah. I don't know where he is."
I say, "Is it a puppy?" She nods. I say, "Oh, well, I just found this puppy in the middle of ______ Rd. I was about to take him home to call the police." She says, "Oh." She takes the puppy, who does seem to recognize her, and they disappear into the house. No "thanks for not letting my dog become roadkill." Hmmph.

11:18 a.m. - Get home. Shovel yogurt into Jacob at lightning speed, then put him down for a nap.

11:30 a.m. - Start spaghetti sauce. This takes hours, intermittently. But it's soooo good.

12:00 p.m. - Start reorganizing breezeway. This involves dragging Emily's very heavy old dresser from the kitchen to the breezeway, after first rearranging all the stuff that was out there to make room, then rotating freezer to a different wall, then carrying a cupboard out so that we could store canned goods out there.

12:45 p.m. - Nearly done with breezeway when I hear Jacob start to peep and squawk. Rush in, snuggle him into submission, lay him back down, and finish at breakneck speed.

1:15 p.m. - Finish with breezeway. Gasp and pant for a few minutes, then realize I forgot to eat breakfast or lunch. Shrug and start gathering materials to hang pot racks in kitchen.

1:20 p.m. - Jacob awakens. Change and feed him, and bribe the kids with TV so that I can put up the pot racks.

And so on, and so forth, you get the idea.

By the end of the day, I had cleaned the kitchen, started laundry, gone up into the attic crawlspace to put some things away and ended up rearranging most of the boxes up there to be ready to get down the Christmas stuff next week, made chicken parmesan to go with the sauce, fed and bathed the kids, and put Jacob to bed. Then we had dinner guests, who were gratifyingly appreciative of dinner and who looked at my photo albums as though they were actually interested, so they earn mucho brownie points with me.

It was a long day, I was totally exhausted by the end of it, but it felt so good to be productive!

Today, "all" we had were Emily's dance lesson and then a trip to the Science Center in Manchester. We got to meet Nisa and her gorgeous girls, all the better!

Tomorrow I really, really don't want to leave the house.

Or rearrange it.