Becoming Presentable

I spent eight hours on Sunday dusting, vacuuming, weeding, mulching, doing laundry, cleaning bathrooms, and cooking. Oy vey. I'll be glad to forgo any domestic activities for the rest of the week. We were having T. and R. over for dinner, and somehow having people over for dinner puts me in obsessional-cleaning mode. Mr. Flossie can do things like write whole book proposals the same day people are coming over, but I can do nothing but clean.

Making meals for people also freaks me out a bit. To show how bad we are at returning dinner invitations, when T. and R. last had us over to dinner they announced that R. is pregnant. Last night I asked when she is due and she said next month!

Luckily, with all the cleaning and gardening, I planned something easy for dinner. We grilled portobello mushrooms marinated in lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil to make "burgers" and also grilled some veggie burgers for the mushroom-averse. We grilled corn too. I am somewhat wary of the grill because I never know when it crosses the line between too hot and not hot enough. But everything went well (I did a test run earlier in the week and learned that keeping them on the grill longer is better than shorter--it ended up being just over ten minutes for each mushroom/burger/corn). We served store-bought potato salad and T. and R. brought a green salad.

I weeded our "mulch garden" because I thought we might eat outside, but it ended up being too humid. The main visual difference, besides less weeds and more mulch, is this circle I made of bricks around the forsythia, in the hopes of preventing it from being weed-whacked to a nub again.

Much appreciation to T., R., and others for being the guinea pigs in my first forays into domesticity.