We spent the whole day doing a Clean Sweep on Brian’s mom’s kitchen and front room. Both were seriously completely taken over by crap — party supplies, copious amounts of food, extra dishes and old old kitchen stuff, trash, and so on. It was a real mess, some of it just from getting ready for our party, and some just built-up clutter.

It took pretty much all day. Brian’s sister helped. After we had done the kitchen, we hauled trash to the dumpster (many bags), and a few boxes to the Salvation Army. Then headed to the mall to get a black metal wire shelving unit and a TV stand for the front room, along with 3 wicker baskets and 3 plastic bins for the shelves.

Oh it looks so much better now. And it was a total surprise. His mom came home at 5 and said “am I in the right house?” It was great. I remembered the satisfaction I would get from my housecleaning job years ago.

I now sort of know the meaning of humidity (finally), because that’s what it has been here. So humid that it starts to pour down rain just as a kind of catharsis, then back to muggy.

Brian’s mom has tomato plants in her front yard; they are totally out of control. I’m deeply envious… She has dozens of fat ripe tomatoes, which of course taste PERFECT too. I have got to get that going next year somehow. I will have to grow them in a huge plastic bin, but that’s fine. But they will never be as good as the ones from a garden with a real summer.

Tomorrow morning Brian’s brother’s pregnant girlfriend is getting induced, so we may have Brian’s first niece or nephew by the end of the day, wheeee! We don’t really have other plans, except doing laundry and hopefully going for a walk.

I dreamed about the cats. I always do that when I travel.