The Dust of My Life

What's a girl to do on a quiet Sunday afternoon with the older kids fishing
with Daddy and the little one swinging with Grandma and Papa? Sweep, of
course. You can tell a lot about a person's life by what she sweeps up. Here
is what was in my dust pan today:

*6 dead crickets. Elsa and Ezra got a magnifying bug trapper from Grandma
Donna and have been loving stuffing it full of crickets lately.

*7 jumping spiders. Although I don't think it counts because they all jumped
away to take up residence somewhere else in my house. They always win.

*1 jumping spider carrying a small dead cricket. (I hit the jackpot today)

*1 tag sticker price that says '35 birr'. I swept it up in the bathroom and
I believe it came off of my new toilet bowl brush. A new one was needed
because before we left for the states Ezra decided to see if his blue car
would float in the toilet. It didn't. The toilet subsequently was jammed
with toilet paper, which I (ignorantly, impatiently) tried to de-jam with my
toilet bowl brush, which only served to get nasty toilet paper bits stuck
to my brush. Hence, new toilet bowl brush.

*1 baby scorpion. Thankfully I did not kick at it, like I first intended to,
but instead saw what it was and smashed it deader than dead. My policy with
undesirable creatures is to keep hitting until it's no longer clear what it
is I am hitting.

*Roughly 18 inches worth of unraveled blue thread and elastic. Ezra's new
Lightning McQueen underwear are unraveling at the waist. But, the fact that
he is WEARING Lighthing Mcqueen underwear is a small miracle. My nearly
completely potty-trained son decided to UN-potty train himself the first
week we were in the US. And then decided to RE-potty train himself the first
week we were back in Ethiopia. Good boy.

*1 JC Penney tag that says $6.99. Elsa has discovered all of her
'to-grow-into' clothing on a high shelf and commandeered two new dresses.
This is the tag off of a pink and white gingham that my mom brought when
they visited last summer.

*1 small silver screw. A more curious or careful person would have fished the screw out and set it aside for when its use may become known, but I can't really claim to be either in a significant way, so out it went.

*About one dust pan's worth full of redish-brown dust. We don't have the
really red, red dirt here found in other parts of Africa, just a fine,
powdery brown dust. Since I haven't swept since yesterday evening, this is a
good day.

Welcome to my life. It's exciting in here.