The After-Christmas Clean Freak

I am a freak. My family has been saying it for years, and most of the time I just brushed it off. Freak? Me? No. I just like things how I like them. This year, I realized that they are right.

I am not the bearded lady, or the elephant man. I have no serious mental disorders (that we know of :P) and no urges to do things that most people don't have as well. Except for my cleaning binges. Those enable me to proudly let my freak flag fly.

Christmas this year was great. Monkey was enamored with the tree, and the presents, although I'm sure he thought we were crazy when we encouraged him to rip the paper off them. Although breakfast was late, it was good...homemade espresso cinnamon rolls. Then nap...yay for naptime!

Ben and Monkey had a great afternoon of playtime and snuggles. Me? I was in the kitchen. All. Freaking. Afternoon. Ben wanted Boeuf Bourguignon, and I refuse to make that without homemade bread as well. The Bourguignon takes, on average, 4-5 hours to make. The bread takes about 3.5 hours. Both need the oven. Timing is crucial.

So I didn't fully clean that night. All the wrapping paper, ribbons, boxes and bows were either saved or thrown away, needles from the tree swept up (don't need Monkey choking on those!) and dishes were in the sink, if not clean.

Needless to say, the day after Christmas, I went full on freak. The kitchen was cleaned (because it desperately needed it), and then I thought "I'll just do the floors." That turned into me on my hands and knees for an hour, scrubbing all baseboards, moving furniture, sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping. In the process (which needs to be done on a fairly regular basis due to having 2 shedding dogs) one of our speakers fell off it's shelf and hit me square on in the back of the head. What did I do? Said "ow," held frozen veggies to the quickly-forming lump on my head, and then got back to work. Seriously. Who does that?

Did I stop there, even though I felt nauseated for the rest of the day? Nope. Played with Monkey, worked on laundry, and worked some more on the needlepoint for Monkey's quilt (that I meant to have finished before he was born. Oops).

Oh well...it's all worth it. I'll leave you with a few pics from Christmas (that don't show our faces, sorry. I'm paranoid.)


I have to go attack the baseboards in the Master Suite.

Watching Daddy put the
 tree on the car

Before opening presents

Is all this for me?

Monkey's "Haul"

Time to play!