Maid to order

When I was laid off one of the cost-saving things we did was to discontinue the housekeeper. (Insert big sad face here.) I volunteered to take on the majority of the housecleaning since I have more unscheduled time than Spouse.

Today was all about cleaning, but not because the family is coming for Thanksgiving. Unlike the last 14 Thanksgivings, the family is NOT coming to our house for Thanksgiving this year. Spouse's niece (a freshmen in college) has a part-time job and has to work on Fri, and his nephew had surgery on his knee (due to a football injury followed by a fall) and can't get around very well. So we're going back to VA to have Thanksgiving at Spouse's mom's house.

The reason I'm cleanin' like a demon is because we are having some friends over on Sat for a tree trimming party. Instead of spending hours and hours hanging ornaments by myself (Spouse loses interest after 10 minutes), I thought it would be fun to invite friends to help me hang the ornaments and have a snack and drink. So today I cleaned the entire house, all 3 floors, which took almost 6 hours.

I did take a break for lunch and met up with my realtor friend Andy. It was really great to chat about real estate and regular stuff. It was very generous of him to spend 2 hours with me, although the time seemed to fly.

Tonight Spouse & I will pack up the car and head to VA, returning Fri night.