Domestica

Today was a great Saturday spent in and around the house. I slept late and then spent the rest of the morning watching tennis, which made me feel, by afternoon, as though I needed to pay for this leisure with extra industry. And that my kids needed to help me pay.

We all trouped upstairs and I started hollering instructions. Hank put away a basket of his folded clothes while Laura and I started on the kids' bathroom. I left it in her capable hands and went into my bathroom to try to fix the toilet. It had been continuously running a couple weeks ago, so I'd jammed a wire coat hanger under the floaty ball arm thing. Apparently that isn't a permanent solution, so I sat astride the seat and went at it with a screwdriver. I tried tightening the screw holding on the floaty ball arm, which worked once before, but no. Finally I summoned Matt and asked him to go into the world and find one of those kit things that has all the toilet tank parts in it. He went and did that. So now we own a kit thing that contains a bunch of toilet parts. I'm not sure if the next step is my job or not.

Then Laura helped me change a lot of bedding (time for the PB Swedish House duvet set, yay!) Then I sent them down to the basement to bring up the bins for the Halloween decorations. Then we un-Halloweened ourselves, packing away the black feather wreath, the purple and orange tinsel garland, the stuffed pumpkins, black felt table runner, the string of spider lights, the black velvet pillow, the scarecrow boy and girl, the terra cotta jack o' lantern, and Hank's sign that says, "WELCOMEGREATPUMPKIN." I was sad to see them go.

But, my cleared-off table inspired me to go into my table linen archive and bring out these Orla Kiely for Target placemats, which I haven't used in a long while. I love the stuff from that line; I think it is maybe my favorite of the Target-designer special lines. That was like, three years ago? It is good quality, I use some piece of it every day, and I'm always glad to see it. I think the overall Winner of Winners was the canister set. It's the Missoni-for-Target of my heart.

Then it was late afternoon and I still hadn't gotten any real exercise, unless you count sweeping leaves off the trampoline and double-bouncing Hank. So Matt and I went up to the tennis courts to hit for a while. We left Laura in charge of Hank at the house. We've been experimenting with doing this--letting her watch him for short times while we're in the neighborhood, like at tennis practice. She has her phone, I have mine, and my instructions are, "Laura, your job is not to boss Hank, but to watch him and help him. Hank, mind Laura." So far it has worked out great. She has good instincts, and he is a pretty sensible kid anyway.

We went and played a set and darned if I lose to him every time. It is distressing to me, since I've played two seasons of ALTA now, and he's just picked up the game in the last couple of months. I won one game off of him and that was because I got him chatting about something. Wiles!

Then we came home and I said, "Do you want me to make that chili?" And Matt was all, "Wellll..." So I went in to the kids and he left and got Mexican takeout. Then we watched Gnomeo & Juliet. Then I vacuumed my rugs while Matt gave the kids their nightly wrestle. Now they are all three asleep. Matt will probably rouse himself in a minute here and lumber back downstairs to his lair.

Now you are fully up to speed. It is a thrill-a-minute, but daily blogging, you know?

What are y'all doing?