I have been remiss in my blogging duties. Apologies all around. Right now I am supposed to be grading papers and/or working on my own homework. And I was, but then I started searching my writing to look for things I might have written about my dad to help with my writing for one of my classes, and now an hour has passed with little to show for it other than a walk down memory lane.

I haven’t been a good daughter. I haven’t called mom as much as I should, and I don’t know how long it’s been since the last time I’ve seen her in person. She should report me. Mom, my lack of actually contacting you is horrible. I’m sorry. I love you and think about you lots more than I ever actually show.

I need to start thinking about making dinner and I have no idea what to make. Steve’s not hungry right this second, but that’s because the races are on.

My youngest child, age 7, wants to know why I no longer feel it’s necessary to make the kids lunch on weekends. I figure they are old enough to make their own lunch. How sad for him, that at age 7 his mom has already left him to fend for himself. That’s what he gets from learning how to make his own sandwich.

The children are now outside on the snowmobiles, driving them in slow circles around the house. They like it, and it’s good practice for them. The dogs, however, have to be relegated to the house. Especially Stupid Dog. In fact, SD even gets put in his cage to prevent him from escaping outdoors. Zeus is left to run from window to window to door by himself, peering out at the children as they have fun without him. Never mind that people might actually be sitting on furniture that is blocking the window that is demanding his attention. He just plows right over them.

Maxine swept and mopped the mudroom and kitchen floor the other day. She did so on her own, without any suggestions. She is turning into quite the Domestic Diva. On Thursday she helped her grandma do my dishes. But then everyone came in from the garage, getting wet feet all over the kitchen floor, and it dried with a white powder from the oil dry/cat litter used in the garage. Maxine came down to see the white powdery floor in the kitchen, bewildered about what could have happened. Poor girl. Welcome to my world.

Which reminds me. I forgot to do the weekly "Clean my house and leave no dirty dish in the sink" last Thursday. Because my MIL arrives at my house on Thursdays, bringing my kids home to get ready for bed while I’m at school and hubby is at archery. This week, I had left a sink full of dirty dishes, and my MIL did them with Maxine’s help. Yesterday, my FIL told me he told my MIL what I had said about her on Friday. (I mentioned that my MIL cleans things that I don’t even THINK about cleaning. And the things I do think about could never meet her standards. The woman scrubs the skins off her potatoes. For years, I wondered where she bought her potatoes. Turned out she bought the same kind I do, but she scrubs them beyond recognition.) I wasn’t worried about the scrubbing comment. I would have said it to my MIL, and as she said, I have in the past. But when I mentioned scrubbing things I never would have thought of, my MIL (fresh from doing my dishes on Thursday) said, "Like your cookie sheets?"

Um, yes. My cookie sheets. I have some that are black, and I don’t think they were always black. They are um, well used. How are you supposed to get some of that stuff off of them? I thought it was impossible. My MIL says she now knows what to buy me for Christmas next year — new cookie sheets. Hopefully, this time I’ll keep them cleaner. Or have her do it.