biohazard.

I’ve been an uninspired blogger lately.  Hopefully my muse will be revived with invigorating anecdotes and witty insights soon.  Until then…here’s what I’ve got.  It’s a bit more of a diary-esque entry.

Saturday was a b-e-a-utiful day.  The weather was pristine, a glimpse of the glories of spring to come.  I was awoken by sunlight, not an alarm clock – that alone is enough to make for a beautiful day!  My morning was slow, yet productive.  The domestic part of me has begun to flourish as I have adopted Saturday morning routines of cleaning and laundry, interspersed with some seemingly pointless rituals (who cleans their washer and dryer?  their mailbox?  the tape decks of a stereo system that hasn’t been used in a year?  yep.  me.).  This is evidence that I am my mother’s daughter.  I settled into the couch to watch some basketball as I painted my nails.  The nails were ruined by the end of the day.

I made my way over to Ben’s in the afternoon.  I sat on the deck, being adored and fought over by Hurley, the most easygoing and low-maintenance Westie who was a guest at the house for a week, and Bentley, the sweetest, most adorable – yet incredibly jealous – puppy in the world.  Ben and his housemate, Eric, were busy doing very important boy things – splitting cables and getting tangled in different wires in order to hook up two televisions right next to each other to allow for simultaneous video gaming and t.v. watching.  Priorities, people.  After some time, the boys were successful.  But it took some time.  I enjoyed the sunlight, and the love, with the dogs.  Hurley was a bit rambunctious and playful with Bentley, stealing his bone, biting his legs and causing trouble.  After awhile, Bentley took refuge under my chair, resting his head on my foot and holding the other with his paw.  It was a Kodak moment.  Finally, Ben emerged from the tech project, ready to take the dogs for a walk.  Each dog had to be walked separately, of course, to accommodate their difference in size and stamina. 

After the walks, I was asked the question of every girl’s dream: “will you help me clean the kitchen?”.  I wish I had a picture to show you what I was up against.  Dishes, pots and pans composed an unstable tower in the sink and covered the entire counter-topsurface.  The stove was a sticky mess.  And the fridge.  Oh, the fridge.  Words cannot even begin to express the fridge.  Ben assured me that this was normal male kitchen maintenance.  This moment convinced me that when God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a helper suitable for him”, He had this very moment in mind – men can’t be alone, especially in the kitchen!  We took everything out.  I washed all of the shelves, drawers and whatever else was removable.  Not too terrible…for the most part.  As we started to put the food back in the newly radiant fridge, I was in for a surprise.  Some of the containers had turned into science experiments – full of mold in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors.  Ben and I laughed as we discovered all of the gross-ness and quickly threw it into the garbage.  Our finished product was quite impressive – and Ben was exhausted from all that hard work.  : )

We finished off the day with some food off of the grill.  My work was compensated with a fantastic grilled hot dog –  doesn’t take much to make me happy.  Various projects were done around the house that day – it was wonderful to come together and share a meal after a day of hard work.  We felt like a little family.  And for that, I am thankful.  We weren’t made to be alone.  And days like Saturday, even with the kitchen cleaning, remind me of how blessed I am to have people here to share my life with, through the good and bad, the excitement and monotony.  I get by with a little help from my friends.