I would love to ship Kara to you, Cass, though I think Aidan might be better at shaving the puppycat. In order to get Kara over her fear of animals, we've been letting her give cat treats to our cat. She's only just now gotten to where she can stay within a foot of the cat while the cat eats the treat.

So, I've picked up all my dirty clothes and gotten most of the toys out of my bedroom. It suddenly seems twice as big as it did. Now I'm taking a break.

Oh then she can feed puppycat (she thinks it is a treat... even though it's only dry... and they are free-fed so there is always food there... I mentioned not the brightest kitty in the litter?) and Aidan can shave.

I think that if I manage to do laundry (and put said laundry away), pick up around the house and vacuum today, I will consider it a win. That will make this place seem a lot cleaner. Especially the vacuuming, which I loathe doing but the cats are shedding crazy amounts of fur.

We have been rebuilding our shed because we had to tear down the old one when we sold the back lot. We are reusing the old materials for the most part. The issue is the rain. It has thunderstormed in a big way every day for the last week or so. I just looked at the forecast and the next 10 days call for thunderstorms every day.

It doesn't rain all day or anything. Typical tropical stuff. A couple inches in an hour. Just enough to totally soak all the boards. I want to be able to seal and paint the thing, but it won't be dry enough for that to happen until next winter. By then the whole thing will be warped.

Brendon is going to put the roof paper and shingles on the roof anyway and I think that should be ok on wet wood. I don't really want to put down the ourdoor carpet before sealing the floor.

What a mess. Does anyone know about this stuff?

Laura, I have absolutely *no* idea. I'm sorry!

Anyone up for playing literati or anything?

Easy labor~ma to Stephanie.

(Y'know, it's kinda weird to have a child, one who's right here next to me, in fact, being cute, and yet to not have the faintest notion what it feels like to go into labor.)

and Aidan can shave.

Man, they do grow up fast!

I'm not sure what ~ma to send to Stephanie! Slow-down-baby-ma? Quick-easy-labor-ma? Surprise-early-flight-for-Daddy-ma?

I'm feeling very productive. Despite the fact I woke up late I've managed to empty some boxes. Make order out of my kitchen, well as much order as I can.

I thought I had put away all of my books but it seemed I had less than I thought, so I stuck my dvds on a shelf -- and then found two more boxes of books. And there's a box still in my car and maybe some boxes still at Mom's. I'm not sure about that. I had lunch. Cleaned out my purse. I need to throw some laundry in the wash. And also rinse off the dishes I washed.

Washing dishes is going to be interesting. I know there are some books out there about cooking in small kitchen, I should see if the library has some.

Tomorrow I go to the library and return all my books, pay my fines, and figure out why my password doesn't work for the website.

I need to get some cute, but cheap magnest for the fridge and figure out where I'm going to store all the broken down boxes until recycle day and then put the trash out.

There's still so much to be done that it doesn't look like I've done much.

And I need to vacuum.

Lots of baby~ma for Stephanie.

Hee. I still have a scar from a Shaving Incident when I was about Aidan's age. I recommend he wait a year or twelve.

It's cleaning day here at chez Mercer. Beautiful day out though, which we haven't been getting much of lately. Dog is walked and wet - the maintenance guy let her play in the hose for a few minutes when we were coming back in, hence making himself her BestFriendForever!!1!. It's about her favorite thing in the world. She attacks the stream of water trying to bite it - really funny.

Stephanie, it's been a long time since I've done this, but have you called your midwife practice? Short contractions or not, 3 to 4 minutes apart seems pretty close. I just mention it because my first indication of that Ben was coming was at about 11:30pm. He was born at 6:51am, about 2 hours after they told me I might be a mother by noon.