the labors of labor day

Sep 6, 2010

My home and our all of our property have been much neglected for quite some time…our cars, our plants, our stuff. With Richard working 75-85 hours a week there just isn’t enough of him to go around and with me mothering, homeschooling, doula-ing, teaching gym, selling Usborne books, and doing a million other things that I am seriously passionate about, the upkeep of our home and yard often falls by the wayside. What can I say…I need someone who cares about these things to come and live with me and keep me on track!

Richard had to go in to work early this morning, but he was home by ten! He got right to work on his car and trying to discover exactly why it sounds louder than a revved-up motorcycle with a major attitude. After cutting several pipes he found a huge clog that was immovable with pushing, pulling, or vacuuming. So he cut more pipe and got it all cleaned out. The car is much quieter now and I am sure our neighbors will thank us when he leaves for work tomorrow at 6 a.m.

While he was working on the car, he noticed the freezer in the garage was open. The ice had built up so much that the door would no longer shut. He emptied out the meat, defrosted the whole thing, and put back in the food that was still good. HERO!!!

Meanwhile, I was cleaning out the absolutely filthy laundry room and processing MANY loads of laundry. These are the batches from just today…towels, jeans, towels, reds, greens, towels, blues, creams/browns, blue, and red. I still have another batch of towels/sheets, and another batch of creams and then I will be all caught up. Even better, I cleaned the whole rest of the room, including baseboards and cobwebs! I cleaned out the diaper pail that hasn’t been used since March when Annes started using the toilet instead of our beloved cloth dipes. I put away all the camping stuff that had been tossed in there completely preventing me from reaching the washer without injury and I reorganized one of the cupboards. To top it all off, I scrubbed the washer clean and while it doesn’t look good as new, it looks pretty splendid for being 14 years old! I want to get a cute runner rug to go in there and make it look more homey…maybe a cute craft…something to draw me in there on a more frequent basis!

I also caught up on all the dishes…a small feat in and of itself. I hate dishes stacking up. Hate, hate, HATE it. We have a system to prevent it and it works well…until we get behind…and then it somehow takes days to catch back up.

After Richard was done with his car, he removed the nightshade that was growing on our gate. Apparently it is quite poisonous and one of my friends warned me a couple of weeks ago that my children were in danger of dying from it…and yes, even with that dire warning it took me this long to get around to asking Richard to take care of it.

He also fixed Blythe’s window that has been leaking every time it rains. Yes, he is simply amazing!

Next on his list was making the garage clean enough for me to park in! Yippee! We started this job back in early summer and he and I worked all day long on it. We made huge progress then and haven’t been back to finish it. With temperatures rapidly dropping and frost on the horizon (it was 31 F when I got up this morning) I am so excited to have a protected place for my vehicle. Now we need to do the other side of the garage so he can park in there too…when does he have another day off?

The children and I started on Fisher’s bedroom, which looks like a tornado hit it, but it is now time for Family Home Evening and then bed, so his room will have to wait till I have more time. When on earth will that be?

Now before you feel bad for the man, he also laid down and got his head scratched many times throughout the day by all of his lil’ munchkins that love to comb his hair at the rate of .25/five minute session and we got to talk more today than we have in a long time. What bliss!

We had wanted to go fishing today, but it wasn’t really all that warm and getting all these projects done is super exciting!

Imagine what we could do if my man worked a normal forty hour/week schedule? Even fifty?!!?