As it turns out, my mother was right

There it is, Mom, right there in the headline. For all these years, you've been right about that whole "clean up as you go" thing. Who knew? See, my basic cleaning philosophy has, for most of my life, been "it's just going to get messy again, so why bother until you really have to, like when company's coming?" This method has, to be fair, served me quite well...until The Children came. See, The Children are messier even than I am. And they don't clean up after themselves much (they're still quite small, as most of you know, so it's a matter of ability and not necessarily inclination). Let me clarify here for a moment -- I'm really mostly talking about picking up, not the cleaning of surfaces. I tend to clean around, say, piles of paper/yarn/unhung pictures/etc., but I don't necessarily want all that crap out when people come to visit.

So. Last weekend, we had a visit from the ever-delightful O'Kulpells, and in the interest of a) having room for them to sit on the couch (one of my personal favorite clutter collecting areas) and b) our friends not thinking we're total slobs, I cleaned the house. Now, there are a few problem areas that did not get addressed, but I think I did pretty well, and one of the main areas that has tended to be a problem is the "play area" in the back of our living room that often spills over into the front of our living room, and the dining room, and the kitchen... I clean it up every once in a while, and it usually takes me a couple of hours. Which is pretty annoying. So I got it clean for the company coming (in fact, I was still finishing up back there when they arrived), and then decided to try this whole "pick up as you go" thing that my mom's been carrying on about for all these years. For the past week, we've been stopping playtime 10 minutes before TV/nap-reading time/going outside and Becky has been helping me pick up the back (Zack is still pretty useless). It really only takes a few minutes, and the back is still looking pretty good. Does this mean Mom was right about all that other stuff, too?

Here's a picture of Zack sharing his bagel with Argo, who some of you may know as the gypsy dog or the Valerius dog from Otherworld:



I'm heading to San Francisco Thursday to hang with cool Otherworld peoples and am super excited about it, though I'm going to miss Kit and Becky and Zacky bunches and oodles. But I'll be back Sunday morning, so it's not for too long. Hopefully I'll get lots of writing and knitting done (I'm taking my laptop with me -- I'm flying Virgin America and they have plugs at every seat! Wheee!). I'm trying to finish up a couple of projects before I go -- socks to wear on the plane and a super-secret project, and maybe another pair of socks to wear at Alacatraz, though I could work on those on the plane and during the day Friday, too. I'm also hoping to get the first full sample chapter and project done, the intro edited, and the proposal drafted out. I won't be able to get any photography done obviously, but if I can get all of the writing done, the photography should be pretty quick and easy. (Photography which will be made much more awesome by the gift of a macro lens for my camera! Thanks, Dad!) I did finish these, which I will be wearing around on Friday if it's chilly enough to need socks (San Fran's always so unpredictable!):



Which are also my Red Sox Socks -- I started them last year on the way up to watch a Sox game with Kit and then put them down to work on other things. I picked them up a couple of weeks ago and it only took about 3 days to finish them. Blerg. Someday, I'll just finish what I start in the order I start it (HAHAHAHAHAHhahahahaha. Ha. Ha. Yeah, that's a good one. Heh.).

posted by Laura Y. @ 5:41 PM