Productivity? What?

Yeah, this is a shocker. Today I was a slave driver, and Dad and I got a lot done on the kitchen "cabinets." To make them seem more legit, I suggested tiling the counters of them. Dad got pretty excited about the idea, though, so now I've been studying tiling from his book, making a list of what we have and what we need. Hopefully, before I leave for New Brunswick, there will be at least one tiled countertop! Not gonna lie, I'm really excited. I hope we can find everything we need tomorrow. However, before I get started on the tiling, I'm supposed to have all the sheets, blankets, and decorations put away in an organized manner. :( So, maybe I'll wake up at a decent hour tomorrow and try to get that taken care of.

Additional shocking announcement: The house is really warm right now, and my cheeks are all flushed from the heat. Amazing. For those of you who are not aware, my Dad's house is in its very early stages of construction. Some walls aren't insulated, so the cold Maine air just falls down into the house, making a common house temperature 52.

By the way, congratulations to you brave warriors of Christmas vacation here. As Brad said, the water did eventually start running clear again. I spent today bleaching the stains off of the bathtub, toilet, and sink. Ladybugs are still crawling everywhere, but hey, I think they're pretty cute. Ohhh, fun new discovery: the fruit flies were coming from the CORN STOVE. Dad hypothesizes that the warmth allowed them to hatch while they were sitting inside. It broke today, Dad scooped out almost all the corn to get to the parts he needed to fix, and while he was showing me how it worked, I noticed that hte corn looked like it was...moving. Yes, moving. Upon closer inspection, I realized that it was actually just hundreds of little bugs crawling around among the corn. Whew, for a second there I thought the corn was moving. Wait...BUGS!!!! I pointed it out to Dad, and we were both amazed, though I was mostly just grossed out and alarmed. Once I saw that our bug killer stuff was nonflammable, I proceeded to spray the living daylights out of them. Undoubtedly, I am now inhaling horrible chemicals, but hey, it's worth it.

I took the geography test that everyone was bugging me about. Didn't do too well, scored a 119/150. :-[ So, now you know. I suck at knowing the states. They all sort of blur together once they're past the Mississippi. I read Anne's book BabyCatcher, by Peggy Vincent. It presents a really good view of modern midwifery, I think. So, everybody read it. There was an interesting line in the back that reminded me of Ann Niblock. Under the section Appendix I: Pearls of Wisdom, she says, "The mother of the laboring woman suffers most." I remember sitting with her in the waiting room for hours and hours, while she tried to not look worried, and while I tried to give her things to occupy her mind with, and how when Ben K text messaged from the delivery room that everything was okay, and the baby had arrived, and it was a girl, she just cried, and hugged me, and cried some more. What a great time, but I certainly felt terrible for how worried Ann was.

I have been sucked into looking at real estate in Maine, and I'm having a ball. Right now I've got my on this little baby. Really nice interior, and $140,000. Too bad I have no idea where Winterport is.

Well, now that I've binged on real estate, and it's midnight, I'm going to bed. Wish me luck with my tiling adventure!!