What a Life!

Steve has both today and Monday off for Christmas. When I told him some of the things I wanted to do this weekend – while he was watching Ben – his comment was “You just want to get away from Ben.” Okay, so maybe so. I mean, I love Ben, but do you blame me for having a list of things to do when I can have a complete, uninterrupted thought?

So today Steve decided to do a few things around the house while he was watching Ben and I was doing things on my list. He vacuumed downstairs, swept a little upstairs and mopped all of the linoleum floors. While he was mopping the bathroom, he noticed the ever-growing problem of mildew in that room. It has been haunting me for a while, because when I scrubbed it, it didn’t come off very well, so I wasn’t sure what to do about it. And for me to climb up on something and scrub the ceiling…let’s just say it’s different for someone who is 5’6″ than it is for someone who is 6’1″. He says he just used a sponge and hot water, but it looks beautiful. I’m telling you, the ceiling is white again. I was working downstairs in the office, organizing my Action drawer in my desk, and when I came upstairs and discovered what he had done, I got tears in my eyes. What a wonderful husband I have!

Shortly after lunch, we got one of the three packages we were expecting today. This morning, we got calendars from my parents via DHL. Then at 11:30 the UPS man brought a Terry Linden picture that Steve ordered from Cabellas with his 5-year anniversary gift card that he received from his company. And shortly after lunch, the new notebook computer that we had ordered last Sunday for Steve to use for his graduate studies arrived. It’s nothing fancy – 40 MB hard drive and just 256K of RAM. But it was only $499 with free shipping and it’s more than enough for what Steve will use it for.

He’s getting his masters in agronomy via distance classes from Iowa State and he needed a computer that could read a CD, could save information onto a memory stick (via USB drive) and had a word processor. Really, simple specs so a simple computer would do. We looked into buying a used computer, but the best things we could find in that price range had a 4 MB hard drive and 56K of RAM, if you can imagine. Yes, in that price range too. It only ran Windows 98 and didn’t have the memory for the current version of MSWord and other simple programs Steve uses.

The computer came, and after all the work Steve had done all morning cleaning the house and watching Ben, he certainly deserved to spend some time playing with his new toy. Of course, Ben wanted to help. So Steve put one of the CDs my parents gave Ben for Christmas – Heaven is for Kids by the Heritage Singers…the exact same version Traci and I listened to as kids – and put the headphones on Ben’s ears. You should have seen Ben’s face light up when he heard the music come on. He just sat there next to Steve, happy as could be, listening to music.

After a while, he did what little boys do when they sit still – he fell asleep. If you took the headphones off his ears, though, he work right up. So we left the headphones on his ears until the CD ended. He’s so cute when he’s asleep [says the mother who just wants to get away from her son].