I’m posting this from the comfort of my bathtub, where I’m Enjoying a fabulous bubble bath. Pardon any typos.

We got a lot of work done on the basement yesterday. Eddie cleaned the kitchen and scrubbed down everything while Mom and I went through the bedroom to clean out a tote and clean off the bed. We had thouht that we’d found all of the boxes of pictures until eddie pulled another bag filled with them from the kitchen. Not only were there several million greeting cards and photo envelopes stuffed full of pictures fresh off of Mystic Color Lab’s presses, but there was also a small wooden box filled with photos from my great-grandfather’s time along with his war medals. Nice find.

It’s much easier going through Nanny’s stuff now than it was last fall. It’s both as raw and fresh as it was back then. We’re actually able to actually throw stuff out this time around. We’re trying to get as much done as possible while we’re on vacation so we can just move stuff in come July. Hopefully in the next few weeks we ccan get some painting done down there.

Work’s still slow, even for the beginning of the month. I think it’s the rain; the elderly seem to be afraid of water and thus stay in their homes. Those people that did make it out today were all losers who managed to convince their doctors that they needed their controlled substances weeks early because they are either going on a 3 week vacation and need refills before then (bullshit, because she just got it 5 days ago and would have plenty of time to get her refill when she gets back) or my personal favorite, “my husband is going away on vacation and no one will give me a ride here to get my oxycontin”. And then there was the woman taking coupons off of one lightbulb brand and sticking them on another brand that was on sale, with her ultimate plan to do her usual buy it now then return it after she gets the mail-in rebate. She was pretty pissed when she discovered that the coupons were all expired.

Eddie cleaned the entire house today. It’s beautiful. He also did the laundry, and we’re going to spend the rest of the night watching season 1 of Lost.

Today is Thursday. It’s Survivor night. I leave for work in about 15 minutes, and we’ll see if I get to do anything interesting today. Probably not. At this point, I’d be content to work the pick-up registers for the next week, since that’s all I’ve been doing for the past 5 weeks.

Tomorrow is Eddie’s day off, and he plans on cleaning the kitchen and bedroom a bit in preparation for us getting a new bed and dresser this weekend. I work a short 4-hour shift from 10-2pm tomorrow, and will rturn home to clean some stuff up with him.

The house is almost clean. The living room is pretty well done - the cage is disassembled and hidden away, all the ferret toys are gone (even the box with 20lbs of rice in it), and all the floors are swept. The man-cave is tidier; the only worry we have is that he’ll come in and say “Move everything away from the walls because it’s a fire hazard.” Should that happen, I plan on telling him to take his fire hazard and shove it up his pale Polish ass, because if he wants to discuss violating fire code I’ll be more than happy to bring up the fact that he won’t give us a key to unlock our front door to the local police/fire station, since they’re about 2 blocks away.

My oral presentation went fine. We also had a quiz today, which I completely forgot about but probably aced anyway. And, in a fit of complete stupidity I put my shirt on backwards this morning, just noticing it while Eddie and I were in Stop & Shop tonight. Eddie’s been offered overtime tomorrow, but with only 1 car I’m still debating about whether or not I want to get up at the asscrack of dawn and drive him down there for 5am. I could come home and sleep (doubtful - who wants to go back to sleep for just an hour anyway?), or put some finishing touches on the housecleaning to get that out of the way tomorrow rather than Wednesday, or work on some of my crochet.

I came home this afternoon, drove around the block once to verify if Comrade was home, and then parked in front of the house once I knew he was gone (he makes me very, very nervous, to the point where I will avoid going outside if he’s out there so I don’t need to talk to him). I ran inside, packed up some food for Pickle, peed, packed up Pickle inside one of my purses, and bolted. Of course, in the span of the 5 minutes that I was in the house, Comrade pulled into the driveway and was messing around somewhere, which meant that I had to take off even faster than intended because if I had met him in the driveway or stairway I’d have to explain what my purse was writhing around and jiggling on its own. Thankfully he was nowhere to be seen and I drove up to Burger King and put Pickle in her carrier. She’s currently at my mother’s house for at least tonight. Poor girl. I’d like to bring her home tomorrow if possible - I supposed we could leave a note on the door telling him to come in while we’re not home and we could have dinner at Mom’s tomorrow and bring the furry home later that night, but that would require us to know for certain that he’s checked things or risk bringing her home and having to sneak her out again because he hasn’t inspected.

Eddie just too off to the grocery store to cash in a jar of change, and I think I heard him outside talking to Comrade. I’m not sure though, and I can’t find my phone to call and find out.

Eddie and I cleaned the bedroom last night. All the clean clothes are in the dressers and all the dirty stuff is in a hamper. The cheap dresser has been moved back into the bedroom, freeing up a wall in the kitchen for us to put the dishwasher against. The one thing we forgot? The trash didn’t get put out, and I wasn’t up early enough to get it out there before they came by.

We ordered a deep dish pizza for dinner, with an order of breadsticks smothered in garlic butter on the side. It was heavenly. It’s a rare treat that we get pizza lately. I’ll eat some for lunch today, and we’ll probably make some chicken or something for dinner tonight.

I was up later than expected last night, which may have played a part in missing the trashmen. Eddie wanted me to go to bed early with him, but I just wasn’t tired, so I stayed up and continued to debug the new layout on my homepage. I ended up crawling into bed at about midnight. Eddie was up a couple of times after I went in, presumably taking some Advil to help his toothache, and I heard him get up and leave this morning. I’m not sure how much sleep he got, but even without the toothache, being up at 4am to go back to work isn’t fun.

Comrade is doing something in the basement, and has been since I got up. I don’t know what it is, and frankly as long as I don’t see any wires, spy cameras, or microphones coming up through our floors or ceilings, I don’t give a shit what he’s doing in there. The man has a way of making me paranoid.

I have no idea what I’m doing for Christmas presents this year. I mean, I know what the rest of the family is getting, but I don’t know what I’m going to do for Eddie’s gift. We tell each other we’ll understand if there’s no presents to each other, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a greedy bitch who likes getting things, and the more the merrier, and I know that Eddie likes his presents too.

Tomorrow we’ll be going over to my mother’s house in the afternoon. We’ll probably spend the morning cleaning up some crap, and if we get most of the rooms clean and tidy then I’ll go through them on Monday afternoon with the broom or mop and just make sure things don’t look too shitty (like the windowsills that are slightly dirty). I’ll disassemble the cage and hide the bits of it and the gates, take Pickle to Mom’s for the night, and have the walk-through on Tuesday. If there’s time after that, we’ll pick up the furball and bring her home, if not, I’ll grab her Wednesday afternoon.