Cleaning and Baklava

A little garden on our bedroom windowsill.

In about twenty minutes, Vassi will head over and start teaching me to make baklava. (This is part of the payment for the railing down the hill to the lower married student housing parking lot; Southeast Railing donated much of it, but the owner said he would like that one Greek pastry with the honey and nuts.)

Some preparations for baklava.

In preparation, we obviously needed to clean the kitchen ... rather drastically, since there will be at least two people working in there and there's almost no counter space. Also, about a week or two ago, we (okay, I) decided (it was necessary) to rearrange the living room. Following FlyLady's ideals, I decided it wouldn't be worth my time to rearrange the clutter. I went through (with Dn. Virgil's help) several boxes, pulling things out of drawers (where I'd thrown them for unannounced company, or when I was tired of looking at them). I got rid of 5 boxes' worth of unecessary papers.* We still have more to go (which were unearthed today), but it's wonderfully liberating, and now there's room.

*If you don't have answers to things like: "Why am I keeping two copies of Notre Dame commencement exercise booklets wherein there are three names of people I know?" then you are allowed to get rid of it. Even then, it was still hard. I'm *good* at keeping.

We turned Dn. Virgil's desk around, moved mine into the corner (previously storage) with the (so lovely!**) filing cabinet. The couch went where my desk went. The comfy chair and ottoman went where the couch was, opening up the icon corner.

** Yes, I'm a dork, but it was a great Christmas present, and I can have an "away" in which to put things!








Top left: Dn. Virgil's corner; top right: my corner; bottom right: couch; bottom left: our new "mail station"; center: comfy chair and framed Panagia icon sketch (by the teacher of last summer's iconography class).

Dn. Virgil has been fully on board, cleaning the kitchen and his corner looks amazing. He's taken out lots of trash (although I was out the door first, having followed (again) FlyLady's advice on getting dressed to lace-up shoes). He clarified the bookshelves in the living room, and taken loads of things downstairs to storage (ready for the move or to be sorted later after further consideration). Also this past week, he's prepared my first computer (Cicero) to be given away by moving all the files and miscellany onto his computer and checking the 3.5" disks (you know, in case I need old papers from classes I don't even remember). I'm not emotionally ready to give away my old computer, but I'm not using it, and someone else may need it, and I don't want to have to move it.

Also this morning, when Dn. Virgil was taking out a towel to shake out on the balcony, we saw deer (he saw six, and I got a picture of one on the camera and saw three at a time) moving through the woods.

My "shot" of a deer.

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Later: The baklava has been layered and is in the fridge, cooling. All the cleaning and baking involved lots of standing, and I am thus exhaustifyied.