Making Your Home a Haven, Day 3

Today's Challenge:

1) Refresh Your Spirit (5 minutes)

I actually got to sing Vespers last night, and Matins this morning. I hate when I sleep late, and have to miss my prayer rule -- the day never goes as well as when I get up a bit earlier and get this done.

The blog I cribbed this idea from (Crystal Paine's blog -- see down a couple of posts) was encouraging participants to list three things we're thankful for. In my case:

1. Being Orthodox
2. Having a good roof over my head. It's small, but we raised two kids in it, and it still does us well.
3. Having an absolutely sterling husband, who loves me and puts up with a mind-numbing job to provide said roof over our heads.

2) Take Time to Plan (5 minutes)

Ahem. I can either pray, or plan. ;-) That said, at least I have dinner planned: Spaghetti with shrimp sauce. This is cheating, though, since this is our usual Wednesday dinner.

However, I'll take the challenge and share my to-do list, such as it is:

1. Bredenbeck's Bakery in Philadelphia sent my son's Christmas cookies to our house. Every year since they were born, we've celebrated St. Nicholas Day with the kids by putting cookies in their shoes; the year Chris moved out to PA, I was wondering how to continue this tradition when I came across Bredenbeck's online, and they actually ship real German cookies. So Chris has not missed his cookies at all, until this year -- and he won't this year, either, if I have anything to say about it. I'll ship 'em overnight express. So that's my first item.

2. The "Maintenance Required" light has come on in my car, and won't shut off. I suspect it's because when I had the oil changed last week, the people who changed it forgot to turn off the blinking "Maintenance Required" light, and now it's on permanently; but I do have to check with the dealership about this.

3. I need to pay some bills. :-(

4. And I need to study for a Russian exam that takes place tomorrow. We don't have finals in these classes; we get one test that covers each chapter, and then go on to the next one. So this test will finish out Chapter 11. I'm not sure if there will be time to cover Chapter 12 completely before all our classes wind up, though.

3) Do Something! (15 minutes or so)

Quoting from Crystal's blog now:

Today we're going to focus on the laundry and laundry room. Your goal by the end of today is to have all of your laundry finished, folded, and put away.

Uh-huh. In my dreams, maybe. What I can do in this area is wash a load of towels and hang them out on the drying rack so that the house gets some moisture into the atmosphere. But folded and put away?? That waits for tomorrow, when the stuff is dry (and I get to hang out a new load of laundry!).