Last Things First

My mind is almost in vapor lock. Too many things to do, not enough time, money tight as always. Sherif is in Egypt at the moment, preparing to bring his father back to stay with us. It must be pretty stressful over there; he hasn’t even called me yet to tell me he’s there, but since there are no news reports of planes diappearing into a Bermuda Pyramid, I have to assume he made it okay.

There is still a lot of junk – er, I mean, eBay stuff – in the basement. I have to finish taking it all to the storage shed, which is full of junk – er, I mean, eBay stuff. Then I have to clean the room and put the bed together. I really, really want to paint but I don’t know if I have the time or energy. And decorating will have to wait since we have no income coming in with Sherif overseas. I’ll try to make it look decent for Sherif’s dad. Our goal is to make him feel like he has come home, not that he’s “staying” with us.

So I’m supposed to be cleaning. Today, I decided to start with the kitchen floor first. That floor is my nemesis. It is made of hard smooth white ceramic. When wet, it is extremely slippery. It attracts dirt and shows each and every footprint, crumb, or drip. Usually I ignore it as much as possible. I decided to start with it today to get it out of the way. Having the floor dirty created kind of a mental bottleneck. I still have unwashed dishes and, well, everything else, but at least the floor is clean. Now I can do the little stuff that needs to be done.

Todays list: dishes, put rest of groceries away, make spaghetti for dinner, carry boxes out of the basement, do two loads of laundry, put laundry away, clean my bedroom and take toys down to the playroom. Clean playroom, pay bills, clean bathrooms. Take kids to the park. Host lecture in Second Life at three. Vacuum. Ah, where to begin….

It’s going to be a busy few days. Sherif and Abdallah come back on the 22nd, inshAllah. I pray that I have the energy to do everything; I have to keep track of work as well and make sure packages get shipped and any issues are dealt with. Once Abdallah is here and settled, I am going to fulfill the promise to myself to a) hire a cleaning service to do a one-time whole house cleaning and b) take myself out to lunch – Korean, I think.

Oh, and I should work on my Arabic and I need to keep memorizing surat Yasin. Gonna be a busy week….