Lion and Magic Boy

I love Saturdays.

On Saturday, the idea is that first thing after breakfast the entire family cheerfully works together in cleaning the whole house, from top to bottom, and then the rest of the day we can enjoy the fruits of our labor in a sparkling clean house.

It wasn’t always this way, but after Michael moved in with us, he noticed my discontent about trying to keep the house clean and finding time to do it, and he proposed what I thought was an absolutely brilliant idea of having the children, and himself, along with me, create this beautifully clean house every week.

The first week was wonderful.

The children were eager to get to their tasks, assigned in another stroke of genius by King Nathaniel (to increase his excitement in the matter by encouraging him to use his powers for Good), and directly after breakfast they were off. Serena polished the bannister and dusted, Nathaniel mopped floors and swabbed toilets, and I cleaned the kitchen and vacuumed. It was magical.

Where was Michael? He was sick, sleeping on the green chair in the livingroom while bedlam reigned around him, awash in Windex fumes.

The next week, Michael had recovered and I got my first glimpse of a man vacuuming. He fell to with gusto and my own load was further lightened and we again had our clean house.

In the weeks that followed, the children’s excitement waned significantly but they still participated, and the house got clean. Michael, however, after the first few weeks of this seemed to have an awful lot of work home with him, or got sick a lot, or had to go in to the office, or something, but still the children and I soldiered on without him, doing the cleaning and getting it done. Sometimes we even broke it up a bit and did some of the work on Friday, and other times we just did the first floor and let the upstairs go. But still it got done, mostly.

Last week I noticed a pattern developing, and I asked Michael, in my best non-confrontational manner, what was up.

Me: So I’ve noticed you haven’t been doing much of the Saturday Cleaning lately, you’ve had work, or you’ve been sick, or something, and even though this was your idea, I’m wondering if there’s a problem?

[how's that for non-confrontational? no? well, don't come to my seminar on it then! see if I care!]

Him: I hate Saturday Cleaning. Saturdays are for Sleeping In!

Me: Oh.

Yesterday when Eric awoke us at 7 am, I said nothing, just got him up and went downstairs and began making Saturday pancakes. Michael made it down for the tail end of pancakes, and after breakfast, without a word, he mopped the kitchen floor, and I must say, it’s now the cleanest it’s been in awhile.

New seminar: The Art of Compromise.

cleaning
family
Saturdays

Need I say more?

I wish I had a better camera, though. I know, I know…..it’s not the camera, it’s the photographer. Right. Working on it.

But wouldn’t a really cool camera make me feel like a photographer?

After TEN MONTHS of being without a functioning iTunes Music Store (can you imagine?), and countless hours of trying all sorts of things to attempt to fix the problem, including chatting with the folks at not only iTunes but also Comcast (benevolent providers of my high-speed internet connection), I actually fixed the problem myself.

It might not have taken this long had I been a user of Microsoft products, but since I refuse to use IE, I never noticed until today that it doesn’t actually work. And hasn’t since the move to Colorado ten months ago, which is precisely when I could no longer access iTunes Music Store. While chatting online with the decidedly unhelpful Rocel at Comcast, an actual lightbulb appeared over my head, illuminating the possibility that my non-functioning iTunes might be connected with my non-functioning Flickr Uploadr and my non-functioning IE. Easy fix from there.

I spent about four minutes yelling “YESSS!!” repeatedly.

But the upshoot of all this, is that I can now display these (although I can’t figure out yet how to put them WHERE I WANT THEM ARE YOU LISTENING BLOGGERPEOPLE??!).

iTunes
Flickr
techno geek

Okay, so I finally got Michael on a bike (not his own yet, but he can ride mine (Cannondale Silk Path 700, in blue) for awhile until he decides he really wants one of his own, at least as long as he puts the seat back up). After one ride he agrees for the need for those funky bike-specific shorts. You know, the ones with a, uh, “diaper” sewn inside? But no Lycra. No, no, no.

Mine are Lycra of course, and black, which is de rigeur around here as far as I can tell, but Michael wants to remain casual about this, which means no cycling gear. Not even a helmet, but that’s a different story.

So today I dragged the three children to the local REI to investigate the world of men’s cycling shorts. Who knew there were so many kinds? And so expensive? Can you see why I got my own cycling gear from eBay and Sierra Trading Post?

Eric immediately went down on the (not so clean) floor to practice his pouncing crawling technique, while Nathaniel jonesed for a pair of cycling gloves (oh, the blisters that boy endures! Did I have cycling gloves at age 10? Did I buy him some anyway?).

After choosing an acceptably baggy pair of gray shorts for the paltry sum of $55, I asked the bearded and sandaled clerk what the differences really are in men’s cycling shorts. Apparently, gel ($80) is the watchword here, but he first asked whether Michael had been riding with no padding at all. When I answered in the affirmative, the clerk basically let me know that he’d whine and moan about how it feels like he’s got on a diaper, but after one ride he’d be incredibly grateful, so the $55 shorts would do fine.

Incredibly grateful. I like the sound of that.