Yesterday, my nephew and his dad left for Indiana, there to meet up with his mom and baby sister. They’ll be back next week.

In the late morning yesterday, my nephew woke me up. Actually, he’d awakened me much earlier, around 7:30 a.m., with his charming smile. I’d tried to convince him to go back to sleep. (The “It’s not time to be awake yet; shall we try to sleep more?” approach actually worked once, so I keep trying it…usually to no avail.) However, he parried me. “I’m wake!” he said, holding out his arms to be lifted from his crib. So I spent an hour or so playing with him while my mom was gone, then when she returned, I went back to bed.

Ahh, blissful sleep…interrupted several hours later by a two-year-old whose grandmother had suggested blowing bubbles. She meant it as an activity they could do together, she and Zach; but for some reason, he usually insists on blowing bubbles only with “Mowique.” I don’t know why; it’s not like I have some special technique or bubble-blowing secret. But it’s flattering all the same that he associates this activity so strongly with me.

So he liked the idea of blowing bubbles but required Mowique’s presence, thus came upstairs to wake me. Then he decided he didn’t want to blow bubbles just then after all; so we read books and hung out until his dad woke up and we all went for lunch. Afterward, while his dad showered and packed the car, Zach and I went outside to blow bubbles. As usual, he shrieked in delight when he produced especially large bubbles, when they popped on his face or hands, and when they drifted on air currents around the corner of the house and out of sight. One bubble landed on a spiderweb and lasted for a bizarrely long time, perilously perched on silk. Zach wanted to “pop it!” I had to run interference to keep him from plunging his chubby little hand right into the web.

Pretty soon he lost interest in the bubbles and suggested, “Shall we go on the grass?” Well, okay. Then he wanted to take a walk, so I took his hand and we crossed the street and walked down the hill a bit. He wanted to step on the rocks in people’s yards. “Walk on rocks hard,” he kept saying. When he decided we should go back, he noticed a small trickle of water running down the edge of the road; someone must have washed a car or watered a lawn. Water fascinates him, not least of all because he loves to throw rocks into it. So he crouched down on the side of the road and I stood behind him like a pudgy guardian. He watched the water, dipped his fingers in, and narrated both his and the water’s actions. Then suddenly he said, “Djink water” and began to lean forward. I swooped down and grabbed him. “No! No! We can’t drink this water. It isn’t clean! We can get clean water at Grandma’s house!”

So we went back up the hill, but by the time we got to “gamma’s” house, he had lost interest in drinking water. Instead he wanted to “djive gampa’s car,” by which he meant sit in the driver’s seat of my dad’s muscle car, which lives in the garage, and play with the steering wheel and shifter. (The one time he almost went for an actual ride in gampa’s car, the revving engine terrified him so badly that he had to be carried, shrieking, from the car and wouldn’t set foot in the garage again for hours.) So we did that for awhile, and then it was time for him to leave. But suddenly he didn’t want to leave, even though he had earlier talked about riding in Daddy’s car. “Not finished djiving gampa’s police car,” he insisted. So my brother reached in through the open window and scooped him up. Zach had been surprisingly amenable to this type of thing throughout his stay with us, but this time he thrashed and cried and refused to say goodbye to my mother and me at first. Finally he calmed down, we all exchanged hugs and kisses and “I love you”s (or, in his case, “I’m wuv you”), and he and his daddy drove off.

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Last week, as I noted on Facebook, I got an e-mail with the subject heading, “Know anyone who wants to organize this fall?” Do I ever! I thought, wondering why organizing tips might suddenly show up in my inbox but eager for any assistance I could get. Then I saw the sender’s address, and it included a political campaign, and I realized we were thinking of completely different types of organizing.

Yes, it finally happened: at some point last week, I got tired of being surrounded by chaos and decided to organize, sort, and clean. Besides, it looks like I will be here a year longer than I’d planned, which means going back through boxes to find the winter clothes I’d already stored. And I’m pretty meticulous about my books: I sort the ones I’ve read by sections and even, in some cases, subsections. My library has been boxed for a year and a half now, and it looks to be boxed for another year; so I’m trying to sort the books I’ve read in the meantime so that the system won’t be completely askew whenever I finally unpack. (Yes, for a messy and disorganized person I’m bizarrely anal about a very few things.) And I’m trying to read all my unread titles in certain categories to make this part of organizing easier. It’s making me a slight tad crazy but it seems to be working. I’m finishing Scandinavia and moving into the American West.

I’m also sorting thoroughly, with the help of a couple of useful books, one of which I found at Goodwill. I already have bags of stuff to get rid of, some of it for craigslist and some (including another clutter-reducing book that I didn’t find useful) destined for the nearest thrift store. Sometimes I’m a little sick to my stomach to see what I’ve spent money on. Sometimes I just want to smack myself for being a stupid spendthrift. But I’m finding a lot of stuff that I’ve kept for no better reason than that I once used it (wine rack, Chinese paper lantern with a small tear) or might someday use it (punching bag that I never in a decade figured out how to string up, window curtain tie-backs that I never wanted to use but thought were pretty), and all of that is going into the “getting a new home” bags. I also have a “maybe” pile, and I’m planning to enlist my mother’s help in sorting through that.

Per the suggestions in one of my books, I took “before” pictures. But I’m not going to humiliate myself by posting them here, unless I can follow them with successful “after” pictures.

And now I’m going to finish one of the last Scandinavian books on my stack. Reviews to come soon, I hope.