Home Alone

Mark's home! Yay! He was gone for a week to Bandon and New Orleans on a golf/business trip and now he's home. That means...I can put my knife away!

I get super paranoid when I'm home alone so, yes, I sleep with a knife in my bedside table when Mark's out of town. It's an old one that I use to cut foam and other stuff for my craft projects and when Mark's gone I just tuck it into the nightstand. Is that weird?

Here's a good story for you.

The other evening Caleb and I came home and the garage door was wide open. Now, I know exactly what happened -- when I parked in the garage earlier in the day I backed in (which I rarely do) because I had to unload groceries. When I left the house later, I pulled out, closing the door behind me but then remembered that I hadn't closed the pantry door which you have to do or the dumb dog will get into something so I opened the garage again, ran in, shut the pantry door, ran back out, hopped into our car sitting in the driveway and went on my merry little way...completely forgetting to hit the garage door button. Coming home in the evening, without Mark, to a house that's essentially been open to anyone and everyone for a few hours is pretty freaky. I left Caleb in the car and went in, grabbed my knife from the bedside table and proceeded to check every nook and cranny of the house -- closets, showers, attic, under the beds. And I did it totally bad-ass: throw the door open, jabbing with my knife. That's bad-ass, right?

I seriously thought for a minute about calling the cops to ask them to check the house but then decided that seemed a little extreme.

Anyway, there was no one lying in wait anywhere BUT in one of the upstairs closets there's a little trapdoor in the ceiling and it was ajar.

I think it's always been kind of open like that but, hello, under the circumstances, it freaked me out and I was pretty sure that someone had come into our house and was now hiding in the attic. There was obviously no way in hell that I was going to poke my head up there to check it out so I closed the closet door and closed the door to that room, put a couple chairs in front of the door, and slept with my knife under the pillow. I'm just glad I didn't cut myself in my sleep.

Obviously, there was no one hiding in the attic. If there is, they must be very patient and not need to eat. What I can't decide is if I was stupid for not calling someone to check the house for me or if that would have been overreacting. What do you think I should do next time? Oh, I know -- CLOSE THE GARAGE DOOR.

Anyway, my one task while Mark was gone was to clean up the craft room.

My craft room was a mess.

Look at it. It's awful. Don't judge.

I kept telling Mark, "You just don't get the creative process. Creativity isn't neat" and other BS like that but, honestly, he was totally right, I needed to organize it. The problem is that I start to do it but then get distracted by a project and then it gets all messed up again.

A few weeks ago I started to clean it up and then saw this tutorial for making your own boxes and I thought, "I totally need to make these for my craft room!" So I busted out my exacto and a crapload of cardboard boxes and happily started cutting them up. Mark came home, looked at all the pieces and strips and crumbs of cardboard that was now strewn about my already messy craft room and asked (calmly, to his credit), "What are you doing?" To which I replied, "Organzing my craft room!" And he just kind of shook his head and made some comment about one step forward, two steps back.

Anyway, I promised him the craft room would be clean by the time he got back so I worked my butt off and...TA-DA!

Doesn't it look great? Look at the boxes! I looooooove the boxes. They came out so pretty and were really easy to make and customize. Now everything has its place! We'll see how long this lasts.

Making the boxes out of cardboard kind of inspired me because cardboard's really durable and I have a lot of it and it's easy to work with. When I was making my boxes Caleb asked me, "Mommy, are you making me a garage?" I told him no but -lightbulb!- I totally could! Remember how I said I get distracted? I started making him a garage...

...until Mark reminded me that I was supposed to be making boxes. So the garage got put on hold for a bit but now that I'm done with the craft room, I'm all over it! I'll post pics when it's done.

My other plan is to make some little cardboard chairs and a cardboard table for Caleb's stuffed animals. He had a "cookie party" for them the other day and they had to sit on our dining room table because they're too little for the chairs.

And I may have to make some little beds too because...

Aww. Too cute.