Long time, no blog. Things have been busy around here. Research is going well and progress is being made on all projects. When I'm not working I'm playing with Ana, which is why it has been over a month since my last post. How am I supposed to sit down and write something when I can play with Miss Ana, who now gets a kick out of playing peek-a-boo and laughs the greatest laugh I've ever heard when she's tickled?
So with such a cutie in the house why am I writing now? Because she isn't at home. Ana and Lidia have gone to visit my parents this weekend. I talked to them a few minutes ago on the phone and they were at Ana's great-grandma's playing. I think this evening is the gathering of my aunts so they can all get their time in with the baby. Of course my mom, Gmama, is sure to get her quality time in as well. This was Ana's first airplane trip and she did great. No problems with her ears going up or down and she slept from Dallas to Amarillo. That was my biggest worry with Lidia traveling on her own. A fussy baby is hard enough to manage without having to worry about bags.
While their gone I'm taking the opportunity to steam clean the floors. We've lived here for a year and a half now, and with Ana about to start trying to crawl we wanted the carpets done. I've got all the living room furniture packed into the kitchen, and in the bedrooms I've got everything over in one half of the room. I've done my first pass over the open area and a second pass over the living room, and now I've got 15 more minutes of waiting for the carpet to dry before I can move out on it. So I'm taking this moment sitting on the side of the bathtub to update my blog. Life is good.
Some words of advice for any of you that may ever want to clean your carpets.
1) Take a set of clothes out of your closet/dresser before piling chairs and bookshelves in front of them. Thankfully I did have a pair of shorts and t-shirt on the dryer so I was able to go and rent the cleaner clothed after I moved all of the furniture.
2) Take a couple of beers out of the refrigerator before you park the couch in front of it. You may think that you're not going to have time to have a beer, but there is some downtime to this, and a Shiner would hit the spot right about now.
3) Grab a large pitcher and measuring cup from the kitchen as well before the couch goes in if you're worried about eyeballing measurements of cleaning solution and water. Me? I don't need no stinking measurements!
In short, think about what you're going to need and get it out before you start moving furniture. You don't want to go to the store first and get the instructions though, because the big red cleaner in the house on the 24 hour deadline just urges you to do nothing but run it, moving the furniture is out of the question.
10 more minutes until I can move again. Time to count the tiles on the floor I guess.
