Inside the Mind

I just got in from a night out with my friend Kelli to celebrate her finishing up her Masters, with a 3.9 GPA. If you know Kelli at all, she’s going to kick herself for all eternity over that .1, but I’m so very proud of her for what she’s achieved and how far she’s come with everything else going on in her life, and if you know Kelli, you know just how much that is. I don’t think she knows how to sit down and relax!

It’s funny to think how very different our lives are even though we both started off going into university/college to do the same thing. She finished her degree. I deferred mine to travel the world. She just finished her Masters, and I just finished cleaning up the mess my son made after mauling roasted potatoes into mush.

Sometimes I wish that I’d stuck it out long enough to have finished off my degree, but most of the time I wouldn’t change the way my life has gone for anything, and these days I can’t imagine living or even wanting to live a different life to the one I have.

Is it sad to sit there and feel like you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but watching your baby boy gleefully waving around a stick of broccoli while the dog waits expectant and hopeful that he’ll get to eat what’s left over, and your husband is pulling faces and claiming that no child of his would ever love broccoli?

Anyway, congratulations Kelli. I really am proud of you and everything you’ve fought so hard for. Keep on fighting.

My first instinct is to say that I hate vacuuming, but that’s not strictly true. I just hate the idea of vacuuming, and having to drag the vacuum cleaner out, then empty it once I’m done, fold the cord up and put it away in the hall closet again. I actually sort of enjoy the act of vacuuming and find it rather zen like (Dan’s never going to let me live that confession down), and with every square inch of floor surface about to be invaded by an increasingly more mobile baby, I have little choice but to vacuum if I don’t want him to end up covered head to toe in dog hair and coughing up fur balls.

I’m not sure what Bailey thinks of the vacuum though. He never used to mind it as a puppy but then one day he decided it was the devil’s own instrument of torture and to be avoided at all costs. He would bolt when he heard it and stay far out of reach of the dreadful menace.

Lately though, I think he’s been trying to conquer his fear and has been following me around as I vacuum while maintaining a safe distance should a sudden retreat become necessary. Considering he will stand or lie down in front of it in some bizarre game of doggy chicken, he has certainly perfected the art of looking put upon when he has to move yet again out of its way.

The monkey is fascinated with the vacuum cleaner and will sit there zoned out watching it go back and forth across the floor until the cows come home. Unfortunately I don’t enjoy vacuuming that much that I am willing to use it as a form of entertainment to keep him occupied from one nap until the next. I’m just hoping his fascination holds until he’s old enough to push a vacuum cleaner around himself.

As for Dan, well I think he falls firmly in the category of  ‘vacuuming needs doing because it needs to get done.’ On the other hand, he regales me with tales of being a wee boy when his mother’s canister vacuum cleaner was a double agent, cleaning floors by day and then secretly acting as his robot dog when not in service!

Maybe I need to invest in a canister vacuum cleaner…