Ashes

Yesterday, I was on fire, domestically speaking. I had felt the urge to do some housework creeping up on me, and yesterday it burst forth in a glorious bevy of industry. While Mabel was at school, I did two loads of laundry, hung one on the line and put one in the dryer, swept the downstairs floors, cleaned the bathrooms (oh so horribly overdue), cleaned the mirrors, and started on some yeast bread. By pre-dinnertime, I was juggling the two loaves of bread, a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and some quite delicious from-scratch pseudo-Indian stuff that would do two nights' worth of grown-up dinners, as well as a corn on the cob in the microwave for Mabel.

So today, I'd probably have been all tapped out anyway, but the fact that then it turned out one ear of corn (is it an ear? a cob?) and a cookie do not a sufficient dinner make for my daughter, so that she was awake half the night gnawing on me, meant that this morning I was pretty much toast. Fried toast. Toast that is also fried, and burnt, and has had the burnt bits scraped off. The sort of toast you should probably just toss and make anew.

Then, in spite of a morning spent jumping on trampolines and playing with other people's toys, followed by a total needle-stuck-on-record meltdown on the way home ("I don't want to take the short cut, I don't waaaant to taaaake the short cut, I don't... I didn't waaaant to taaaake the short cut," etc), Mabel did not nap. So we got up again and made banana pancakes, she ate five, and the afternoon progressed. She had to be shepherded gently through the hazardous waters of four to six pm, and probably didn't eat enough dinner again, but the upside was that she was fast asleep at five minutes past seven.

I'm going to bed early.