It's never too late to nest.

My bedside fan is making a death rattle. This is not good.

Bad enough that the man I married is cold-natured and ill-equipped to handle my preference of keeping the thermostat at a comfortable 68 degrees. After eight-plus years of marriage he's gotten used to it, or maybe he just doesn't fight it anymore because he has witnessed my heat-induced wrath on many an occasion.

Lucky for me, Alex tended toward my constitution as a baby and is still much more likely to complain of being hot than cold.

But alas, Katherine. Her little hands and feet (arguably little, and comparatively little, though people keep exclaiming over them like she's a puppy and they're trying to estimate what her full-grown stature will be) can turn icy a second after being brought in from the 5,002-degree temperatures of our Alabama summer. And because I birthed her and she's incapable (as yet) of engaging in the hot/cold war that has been ongoing since Steven first came to realize that I wasn't going to budge on the comfort factor, I've surrendered to it.

Rather than, say, dressing her in fleece-lined diapers, mittens, hats, and socks.

Still, this fan needs to reconsider committing suicide at this point in time, or I will be breaking out the infant-size long johns, throwing Steven a Snuggie, and having my way with the thermostat.

I hesitate to make the mistake I made a few posts ago and blather on about these smooth waters we're currently drifting. And maybe I will just leave it there, or risk the karmic counterbalance.

Alex is loving school, and Katherine is sitting in a Bumbo, cheekily pleased with herself.



The work is holding steady, and it's been a while since I felt like setting the dogs loose and reporting them to animal control or shipping Alex off to boot camp or donating Katherine to my BFF to raise in a fleeting moment of perceived incompetence.

In short, I'm happy. Let it slide this time, karma.

Happy notwithstanding, I'm also as neurotic as ever.

Now that I'm home a lot I have started to notice everything about my house. Everything. Everything. And there are a trillion little annoyances (and a few big ones) to distract me from work, feeding the baby, or putting deodorant on both sides (heh).

The guest bathroom has become the bane of my mornings because every single time I open the door it looks for all the world like the Colgate factory exploded in there. How does he get toothpaste on the ceiling, I beg of you? He's like three feet tall!

So today, in an effort to keep crazy at bay, I cleaned the house and rearranged the living room and dining area, and it felt amazing. Tomorrow we are going to look at a cheap-but-not-cheap-looking couch that I think I can squeeze in enough extra work to afford. (My hatred for the couch we have now, which has been boiling in my blood for at least four years, is now a constant seething itch and if we don't get rid of it soon I'm just going to set fire the hell to it.)

This is Labor Day weekend and I am going to spend it laboring. I have big plans to buy a good mop and new dusting cloths and clean every surface of this house that sits still long enough, which means Katherine better not be sleeping when I get to the top of my game. Steven gets the outside, because, as noted above, I don't do heat.

I'll try to find some room for the mainstream brand of fun when I finish the kind that's its own reward.

Maybe I'll treat myself to a new fan.

Happy long weekend!