Domesticity

Planning six to eight weeks in advance for a gathering never seems to equate to actually having my house ready in advance for said gathering.

*sigh

Yesterday I drove 120 miles -- and it was good. I haven't been off my usual routes between work, home, and parents' house for a month or so. Wolfling and I drove south to a store I'd been planning to visit before the snow hit, then I dropped her off at her dad's place and continued north to another store I hadn't been to in more than a year. It felt good to just go.

But that means I still have a lot of housecleaning to do today: cleaning the kitchen floor, dishes, vaccuuming pretty much everything (with my new vaccuum cleaner!), getting books up off the floor and onto shelves, sorting the laundry on my bedroom floor, making my bed, taking out the trash. Plus going to the grocery store to get some treats. I had been thinking about baking brownies, but I suspect I'm not going to want to fuss with that.

I also need to clear off the dining room table, which is currently covered with my beading supplies, plus odds and ends of stuff, and get everything off the coffee table. There needs to be room to lay out tarot cards!!

Once again, I prove that I need to have friends over at least every two months, just for the housecleaning involved.

GPS Irony

It seems that in inheriting a lot of my father's intelligence and rationality I also got his utter lack of a sense of direction. I get lost even when I have clearly printed instructions in front of me, and it can be a cause of significant stress. I hate being lost. Thus I was utterly delighted when my dad got me a GPS unit for my car for my birthday -- the same model he has. ;-)

The last time I got lost, I set out from the site of an appointment in Woodinville with a nice set of directions. Somehow I ended up driving through the hills of a high-end rural residential area, in the dark, in the rain, knowing that wherever I was headed wasn't where I'd intended to go. I managed to re-trace my steps back to a place with multiple street signs and tried a different route, calling my mother (whose gaming stats for "Area Knowledge" would be at the top of the scale) once I could give her street names. She confirmed that I was at last headed in the right direction -- but it clearly was not the route that my directions had laid out.

Last night I was driving south after my shopping trip and had the GPS on just for kicks. I didn't need help getting home, but it's fun to watch the route unfold. I usually take 405 south to 520, and was surprised when the GPS instructed me to get off 405 at the Monroe exit instead. I wasn't in any particular hurry, so I said, "What the heck" and followed the instructions.

The GPS ended up routing me through Woodinville, onto the exact same route I should have taken several weeks ago.

I'm going to need to check the settings on the unit. I see no advantage to driving around on dark rural highways when I could be doing a straight shot down the freeway.

But it was an amusing turn of events.