weekend recap, february 17

1. valentine's candy that I almost ate all by myself | 2. blood orange hearts | 3. flowers from my valentine | 4. sleepy beagle | 5. breakfast of champions | 6. the real "breakfast of champions" | 7. spring training | 8. monuments men at the macarthur monument

Shhhh.... I'm going to let you in on a little secret. So because of the snow that hit the mid-Atlantic this past week, we had a little extra time with Cal at home. He spent one day shadowing a friend of ours who is a judge and the rest of the time resting and doing homework, but now he's back in Richmond and raring to go.

It was a little funny to have him here. Nice, but funny too. There are only three weeks left, and I think we're all sad about that.

I'm not sure what it is, the weird hiccup in our schedule or the heavy, cold rain on Saturday or what, but I'm feeling the weight of not only winter (not really winter) but of all of my accumulated clutter lately. And I really mean weight. As I walked around my house, it felt as if trails of clutter were following along behind me, sending off sparks. It was as if I were wearing a heaving Victorian skirt made of extra ladles, cookie sheets, books I'll never read again and jeans I'll never wear. This skirt has a train made of post-it notes with two words scribbled on them, old CDs I need to burn to my computer, old receipts, and shoes I don't love anymore. It swishes at I walk. The ladle clangs when I go down the stairs.

I don't like this skirt. It's stuffy and hot and hard to get in and out of. But, apparently in another fit of clutter-clearing, I got rid of one of the books I found to be really helpful on the subject. Shrugs.

What about you guys? Even if we're really good at dealing with it, we all have to handle clutter. How do you do it? And honestly, if you just did a bare sketch of my house, it would look like we had things under control, but Neel's phrase for getting rid of this junk is "shaking the dust off your karma." That's what I need to do. Maybe I just need to get to work.

weekend recap, february 10

1. jump | 2. capital day | 3. cal's office | 4. opening ceremony | 5. close up | 6. salad days | 7. river walk | 8. cal's chex | 9. cheers to a friend

The first thing I did when I got up this morning was check the forecast for Richmond. It looks like a big snowstorm building for central Virginia, and oh, I hope! Let's face it. I'd like it to move a little east too, but I really want it for Cal. Not sure he'd really get to get out and play in it, but nothing beats that excitement when you're a kid, right?

Neel and a colleague had to give a presentation for a grant in Richmond on Friday, so I tagged along with them to pick up Cal. They headed off... somewhere and I took my book (This one, Petra, you didn't miss a thing. I think we'd talked about it in the comments.) to the General Assembly Building (that's the main office building for the capitol) and hung out. The room the parents wait for their pages in is in a committee room and they streamed the senate session in that room. I didn't catch a sight of Cal while I waited, but there was a peanut gallery of lobbyists working on their laptops in the darkened room who would occasionally shout out, "That's bullshit!" to something a senator said.

So I grabbed Cal, just as Neel got done, and Cal (looking terribly grown up and official) introduced me to one senator after another before taking all of us over to the Lieutenant Governor's office. The session had just ended for the day, so the LG was in his office and he took a few minutes to show us around! This is the space where Cal works every day, and we were so touched that the Lieutenant Governor spent some time with us. I know Cal was proud to show off for sure.

Oh, and so you noticed how I captioned that one photo (#3) "Cal's office," did you? Well, the pages do a Mock Senate near the end of the session and Cal ran for LG and won! So I like to think we were standing with the LG and the LG-elect. Right? Right.

But man, my kid is worn out. Slept on the drive home and took a three-hour nap once he got here. After school on Saturday, he napped for another hour and a half and went to be early Saturday night. It's a lot. The work is a lot. Keeping on top of school is a lot. And enjoying all of his new friends is a lot. And balance is hard to find when you're a teen. I want him to soak up every single second, but I don't want him to get sick.

I know this whole post has been full of mama-bear pride, and I'm sorry about that. How can I help it when we ran into his Latin teacher on Saturday and (even though she thinks he's spoiled) she told us that Cal has actually brought his Latin grade UP from last term?

Good kid.