New Year, Clean Closets

So, apparently either my cleaning streak was just due to overzealous winter break getting ready for the New Year neurosis, or those Rock Star drinks last for several days. In the last few days I continued my cleaning streak adding:

• finished cleaning out the garage, including sorting through all the beach toys and sporting equipment that my kids have outgrown
• cleaned out the craft closet, which resulted in about nine bags of trash and a big box full of more stuff (another three bags) to donate
• cleaned the boys' bathroom (which required a haz-mat suit and a full can of cleaning product)
• ripped out all the old caulk in that bathroom (which involved lots of scraping with a razor blade and completely ruining my manicure) and recaulked everything
• reorganized, alphabetized, and made new tabs for my music binder for the praise band
• saved then deleted my list of books read last year to start the list for 2011
• solved the mystery of our internet freeloader, whom I affectionately refer to as the Lawnchair Laptop Larcenist

Here's the deal with that: just as I suspected, he was a college kid who was home on break and didn't have access to the internet. He was staying with his grandparents and had no wheels, so he wandered the neighborhood until he got a wireless signal. He was trying to check his grades online. We talked to his grandmother this morning, who wanted to know if she owed us anything for his using our wireless connection. How sweet is that? Turns out, we think he was leapfrogging on someone else's connection, because ours is password-protected and Dan disabled the Guest access. Anyway, Grandma was very apologetic and kept telling Dan what a good boy her grandson is and that he teaches Sunday School in Florida and didn't mean any harm. I'll never forget looking out the window and seeing him all bundled up in his hoodie, surfing the net in front of our house.

I've also decided that it's ridiculous to start a diet when there's still Christmas candy in the house, so I'll worry about that when all the goodies are gone. Which reminds me, I have a date with some peanut butter fudge.