Busy much?

It's been pretty quiet lately in my neck of the blogosphere, and I'm sure my faithful readers are wondering why.  So here's a brief overview of life chez littlegreenbums this past week---from our journey to The Cream City last week, up to and including my thwarted attempt at retail therapy this very evening.

See that big yellow truck?  It took two trips in that bad boy to ferry all of our worldly goods from Des Moines to Milwaukee...and I can assure you, we are buried---buried!--- in boxes at the mo'. (Matter of fact, we'll probably remain buried in boxes for quite some time.  My spin bike is at the base of a mountain of empties as we speak---guess who didn't get to ride today, despite her intentions to the contrary?)  Anyway, the kitchen is mostly unpacked, the children are all accounted for, and the rest of it is a disaster of absolutely epic proportions.  (I'm exaggerating.  I sometimes exaggerate when I'm so far beyond exhausted that my hair hurts...)  And did I tell you about the Haven o' Craft?  No?  That's probably because I've only entered it in the past 5 days to add boxes labeled "Art Room" to the teetering piles already contained in its very small walls.  And the dining room table?  Have you seen it?  Me neither...buried. But tomorrow we'll fetch the bookshelves from storage, and then I can put away the forty-some-odd boxes of kids' books, which should improve the obstacle course-like nature of the dining room.  (And the living room.  And a couple of bedrooms, now that you mention it...)

Whenever we pick up and plant ourselves in a new location, the kidlets and I find it helpful to get out of the house and see the sights a bit.  Get our bearings, determine the lay of the proverbial land.  Check out the libraries, the grocery store, the emergency room... (No worries...she's fine.  Just a little bout of nursemaid's elbow.  Can you think of a more amusing way to spend a Sunday evening?  I thought not!)

Right.  So, as a little sanity-boosting measure ---and to replenish the perpetually diminishing supply of lunchbox fare, again---I took my new produce bags out for a spin at the fancy Pick and Save a few miles from the house.  I was over the moon to discover that the store has a nice bulk section, and that my beloved  (and elusive) red lentils were one of the items on offer.  Feeling ever-so-virtuous, I whipped out a produce bag and proceeded to fill 'er up.  After a good meander around the store, I headed for the checkout.  Where I demonstrated, as lentils rained out of my bag, through the wire frame of my shopping cart, and speckled the floor of the checkout aisle, that the mighty drawstring is a fabulous closure for a produce bag---so long as the produce in question is sufficiently bulky to remain in said bag when gravity-provoked.  (This minor glitch was rectified posthaste with a spare (new) hair elastic I just happened to have in my coat pocket, and I'm pleased to report that the lentils and I arrived home without further mishap.  Whew!)