Company from Florida*

I woke up much too early this morning. I'm not getting enough sleep, but I have so much to do I've kind of been soldiering on and catching sleep when I can. When I woke up this morning, I decided to go ahead and get up and breakfast and stuff. I knew I needed to straighten up the house, but the call of the flea market was just too strong. There was hardly anyone at White Horse today. On the Sunday before Christmas, I'm sure they were all in church. Plus I already bought glass yesterday, and I have it sitting all over the house now. Still, I did the walk-through and came home.

When I got back, I had breakfast and a nap. I talked a bit online. I was trying to get motivated to clean, and Robert was trying to help me, but I loathe to clean the bathroom, and it had to be done. I started the day right by throwing the shower curtain in the washer - that was the dirtiest part - but I knew it all needed to be done. I'm bad to clean the dirtiest place and then go "Meh, I'll get the rest later." But I really needed to do some serious stuff today. Even if Chip didn't care, Robert is coming to stay next weekend, I reminded myself. I really should be able to clean without company as a motivation, but whatever works.

I eventually started cleaning, in between texting back and forth to Chip, my friend from Florida. I told myself I only had so long, because he was supposed to be here in the afternoon, but then I found out he wouldn't be here until 7. Good thing. When I really stopped to look at the house as a stranger would, I was horrified. No one really comes over. Since I'm the single one, I go visit everyone else. It's so easy just to let a little bit go, and then a bit more when you live by yourself. The cats don't care; and I mainly stop at the house to eat, sleep, and change clothes these days. It's so easy to say "I'll put that away later." In a house as small as mine, those 'put away laters' pile up pretty quickly. I really needed to de-junk. I cleaned straight through until he got here at about 6:30. I had just stepped out of the shower when he knocked on the door. The house was pretty much presentable, except for the junk room, where I just abandoned all pretense.

It's a Christmas Miracle - the bathroom is clean.

Chip was drug out. He had been driving since 1am. But we sat and talked for a bit. He showered up, and we visited for a while. We talked a good bit. He is a conservative (surprisingly to me) but not a fundie. Plus he's very smart and funny. I really do enjoy talking to him, even if we don't agree on everything. There is enough we can agree on. But eventually the subject of food came up. There are lots of good places around here. The last time he was here, we went to Pita House and had Middle Eastern food. Zero atmosphere, but the food is excellent. Of course they were closed today, as were most of the cool little funky restaurants. They seem to have all reached an agreement to close on Sunday, I guess because so many people have Sunday dinner with their families. I intended to take him over to Stax Omega for cool Greek diner food, but when I got in the car, the Chinese food he had for lunch smelled so good we ended up eating Chinese buffet. The one near my house could use the business anyway. They are watching food costs very closely, apparently, because there wasn't much on the bar. They weren't very busy, so I can understand that. They were really nice about cooking whatever we wanted to order though, and we had plenty to eat.

After that, he told me that he wanted to run through Kmart. Apparently he is still Christmas shopping, and has just kind of been shopping along for gifts as he goes up the road, but needed some wrapping stuff. Surprisingly, Kmart was still open. It was about 9pm at this point, but apparently they are working longer hours for Christmas. I needed some boxes anyway, so that was perfect. We goofed around in there for a while. Apparently he is a serious present wrapper, but they were out of ribbon, so he got big wreath ribbon to use on his packages. This involved a lot of mental coordination of colors and digging through the little that was left.

The young woman who checked us out was very pleasant. As we were finishing up, I said "You have been really nice to us - especially since you are having to work so late on a Sunday." She replied "Yes I have." I got a huge kick out of that, and told her I hoped she got some rest after Christmas was over. Fortunately, she doesn't have to work returns.

We had planned a serious Aviance night for later, but by the time we got back to the house, the driving, the earlier visiting, the heavy meal, and my cleaning had pretty much piled on and we were both fading. We decided to go ahead and turn in.