Theseus has drill this weekend and I have a ceremony to photograph on Sunday, so he's in MA with the baby and I'm here in NJ by myself.

So, party time, right?! Hardly. It's not even 8 p.m. and I can hardly keep my eyes open to type this. I'm going to take a cup of tea and my Kindle Fire to bed in a little while, probably read for 15 minutes and fall asleep before my tea cools off. What an exciting life I lead.

My plans for tomorrow are even more heart-stopping: laundry, cleaning the guest bathroom, dropping some unwanted stuff off at the Goodwill. Someone should develop a movie about my life. Blockbuster for sure.

Wish Theseus and Austin didn't have to go to MA this weekend - or wish I could go with them. The house is lonely and kind of scary when they aren't here. Every little creak or thump and my brain screams "MURDER! WITH A CHAINSAW! NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU SCREAM!" I set the security alarm and sleep with a knife, but it doesn't really help. Plus there is a ghost that lives here and sometimes does creepy things that I don't appreciate, like turning on the ceiling fan in the living room or opening all the cabinet doors in the kitchen or eating the rest of the chips (oh wait, that last one was me). I hate being here alone. No husband to snuggle, no baby to snuggle, no one to share a Saturday adventure with. Sucks.

I'm done feeling sorry for myself - now it's time to grip a kitchen knife in rigid terror for the next 12 hours. :(

- Antiope

 
but then my internet browser reloaded itself and I lost everything I had typed. Gahhhhh!!!!

The short version:

- school starts in two days
- I am taking six classes this semester
- we finally found a babysitter for Austin for Monday nights when we both have class
- work is going great
- I made a friend on Freecycle who gave me a bunch of 18 month boy clothes and a baby gate
- we are signing Austin up for swim lessons (more like water familiarization)
- he has three bottom teeth and two top teeth
- Theseus has been sick for the last two weeks :(
- while sick, he managed to perfect homemade sweet potato fries
- I love seltzer water
- our seeds arrived and we are about a week away from starting them

Sorry that is unorganized and brief, but I'm frustrated that my long awesome post got deleted and can't bring myself to retype the whole thing.

Check out today's photo!

Ok bed.

- Antiope

 
It all blew away.

So this afternoon Theseus and I bundled up and went out again, collecting all the cardboard and stacking it behind the house. We'll have to wait to spread it out until we get all the hay delivered, I guess. We called a guy that is offering mulch hay for $1/bale; hopefully he'll give us a call back tomorrow and let us know if he will deliver.

I also ordered all the seeds today. We are using two different companies this year: Victory Seeds, which supplied all our seeds last year, and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, which is a little more expensive but offered a few varieties we wanted that were sold out of Victory. Now that we have a year of serious gardening under our belts, we were able to select seeds with a bit more knowledge for the coming spring. As a result, we scaled back the different types of vegetables and focused on variety of the ones we had success with. Our potatoes, which we haven't ordered yet, will again come from Wood Prairie Farm, an organic family farm in Bridgewater, Maine. Always happy to do business with New Englanders! :)

After dinner (salad and a cup of hot soup) we gave the baby a bath - he's so funny in the tub. My grandmother bought him a little whale that floats in the bath and shoots water through its spout. He loves it! I can't wait for him to get a little older so he can spend more time playing in the water. I always loved baths when I was young. After he was rinsed off, I lotioned him up and Theseus put him down for bed. He's such an agreeable little guy.

So now we've settled into the couch by the fire. I'm so glad we got the chimney inspected/repaired this year - having a fire in the evenings is the best!! I've also attracted a lonely cat who has made himself at home in my lap. Not a bad night.

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Today's photo is up!

- Antiope

 
It is January and we are running out of time. :(

Today we braved a chilly wind and moved more of the leaf pile(s!) from the front yard to the giant leaf pile in the back. I hate to keep whining about the raking, but we have a TON of leaves on our property. It's absurd. Theseus made a sled for the leaves out of a tarp and a random wooden pole he found in the basement, so we raked the smaller leaf piles onto the tarp and then dragged it into the back yard to add to the big pile. Sounds pretty easy, but it's actually kind of exhausting. We did that until lunch time and then came inside to eat and warm our faces.

After lunch and after the baby went down for another nap, we headed back outside and took out the tractor, Bess. She's seen some better days, but she still has a couple years left in her, I think. Anyway, we forked compost from last year's leaf pile into the trailer and hauled it to the main garden for spreading. Once that was done, Theseus sliced up some cardboard boxes and I spread it over the compost. We had a heck of a time combating weeds last season; hopefully the cardboard will at least slow them down. Before we went inside, our faces freezing, Theseus hosed down the cardboard so it doesn't blow away.

We've been inside for over an hour now and I still can't feel my nose!

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Today's photo is up. :)

- Antiope

 
I don't know what got into us today - we got a ton of fun stuff up on the walls! Two years after we bought the house and we're just getting around to decorating, haha.

Our new mirror went up in the living room, to the left of the window. On the other side, we put up two multi-photo frames that I'd filled over the summer; one frame for Theseus, one for me, each a collection of new and old photos. I'm really proud of them. :)
     

 
Theseus has left for class, the baby is at day care, and I'm alone in the house in complete. silence.

Does that ever feel refreshing to you? Too often I have something on for background noise, whether it is the television or some music. Right now it is quiet enough in the house to hear a cat yawn in the other room and a car move across the bridge down the road. I can hear the wind and all the creaks our house makes. It's lovely, actually. I don't get to enjoy the silence very often (a consequence of having a 7 month old) so I try to savor it when I do.
    

 
We are not out of the woods yet, but we are getting there. Today I cleared another hurdle. Theseus has been clearing hurdles of his own as well. Continue to keep your fingers crossed for us, please.

Somewhat related: poison ivy is no longer itchy/terrible, now just a small group of discolored blotches on my forearm. Unless you are looking closely, you might not even notice them. Hopefully they will vanish completely in the coming week - we have a wedding to go to next weekend! (Which is also our 5 year anniversary.) I have nothing to wear. Jeans are probably out of the question, right?

Additional, somewhat related: vicious cold is going away, albiet s--l--o--w--l--y. I'm now weaning myself off the NyQuil addiction I developed. (kidding)
    

 
...just me and the baby!
    

 
Some things I did today:

- Played Rock Band with my office-mates at lunch
- picked two acorn squash
- found a recipe for salsa made from cherry tomatoes
- read 5 poems by Robert Frost
- listed my Bio texbook and Theseus' Anthropology textbook on Amazon
- immediately sold my Bio textbook (woo hoo!!)
- tried to soothe a very angry baby for two hours

Some things Theseus did today:

- washed a billion cherry tomatoes in preparation for yummy salsa
- took his PreCalculus final
- made some delicious moo shu vegetables with soba noodles
- found a watermelon growing in the garden!
- signed the baby up for daycare in the fall (two days a week) :(
- was awesome. all day.

- Antiope

 
So Screen Free Week was pretty cool. It really made me realize just how much I rely on the internet. Probably 30 times during the week I thought to myself, I need to look that up. Of course, I didn't. And the world kept turning. I spent a lot of time reading, which was great. I'm nearly done Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet. It is sooooo good. It sounds like a textbook but it's not, and it's awesome. I love learning the histories of things.

I also discovered I could live without the television, probably indefinitely (and especially since we don't get any New England sports games down here). The only time I really missed it was during the middle-of-the-night feedings, when there was nothing else to do but sit silently in the dark until he finished. After the first couple nights, even that wasn't so bad.

I'm going to try to continue to be aware of my internet usage and not let it take over my life again. Today was good - it's after 9 p.m. and only the second time I turned on the computer. I picked up the house for a bit, watered all the vegetable plants and sent out some thank-you cards and spent a little time outside. It was nice.

Ok, going to shut this off and snuggle with the baby. Good night!

- Antiope