And then...

The past 24 hours have not been very good. They haven't been terrible, horrible, no good or very bad but they have not been very good either. That being said, there is humor and smiles to be had too.

Eleanor is learning about a million new things every minute*. This is wonderful and entertaining. What she is not doing is sleeping very well. So, of course, neither am I. The lens of sleep deprivation makes everything grainy and gritty and sometimes cranky.

Yesterday, I went down to clean the pool filters, since it's fall and there are leaves, well, FALLING everywhere but mostly in the pool. My parent's pool. I do not have a pool. Down to the (fabulous salt-water) pool to do the thing with the places where the leaves gather so the motor to the pump/filter/thingy doesn't burn out. Emptying these things is a Sisyphean task but you do what you do, right? This time it went pretty smoothly. An earthworm had gotten in the Velcro bag of the crawler dodad and that was kind of icky, but not as bad as the half-drowned spiders from a few days ago. Then comes the very satisfying part--I get to throw the crawler back into the shallow end of the pool. Hooray! Toss! Splash! But the cord part was still mostly on the side of the pool, so I went to kick it in. I missed. Try not to be surprised. My athletic prowess is... admirable. But! Wait! Not only did I miss the hose/cord completely, my shoe also flew off my foot and... yep. Right into the pool. Thankfully it floated long enough for me to retrieve it with the crowbar I use to fish the crawler out of the pool in the first place. Floating shoes are good for clumsy people.

Today, I wore lace up shoes. I wasn't going to make that mistake again. But this time, when I went to empty the basket of leaves, the basket was mostly empty. All the leaves were puddled up BESIDE the basket. Not in the basket. Just near it. This meant I spent some time with the net-on-a-pole scooping the leaves out. It was actually quite soothing in a Zen gardening kind of way. But what was in the basket? Not a spider. Not an earthworm. A mouse. A tiny mouse. A wee, morbidly cute mouse no bigger than my thumb. A mouse that upon closer inspection turned out to be a possum. A BABY possum. Now, there are lots of things to say about Darwin and the circle of life, rodents, pests, blah blah blah, ok? Tiny baby possum. Sad.

I went Christmas shopping today and was very successful. Eleanor was all decked out in her cutest polka dots. I love this outfit. I love that headband. I am a rookie who wasn't paying enough attention to the baby strapped to my chest as I shopped and that headband is now lost to the Kohl's in Weatherford. I am irrationally upset. I know it's just a headband. I know babies drop things and if I want to keep them, they should be attached to cords. I know this isn't the last thing that will go missing randomly while out and about. And yet, I'm bummed. It was so cute! Navy with white polka dots and a bow. It matched the pants!

All that aside--enough whining for one day, right?--there are some definite perks to staying at my folks' house. A fully stocked fridge/freezer/pantry. A giant bathtub. A marvelous shower. (And Eleanor is content to crawl around on the tile playing with her bath toys, the Bumbo that she can now get out of, and any random thing she finds. She will play long enough for me to take a shower or bath AND put on makeup. Not at the same time. One after the other.) A BMW X5 with satellite radio. The world's most patient cat, Bandit, who lets Eleanor maul her, manhandle her, try to eat her tail, paws, face and whiskers, and does it all without a growl, hiss, or swat.

I'll be working on Eleanor's 8 month update just as soon as I get more picture storage so you can see how cute this little girl is being!

*Slight exaggeration