"Putzen" and pancakes

Didn't today just fly by? I feel like I just got up a few hrs ago and now it's time to go to bed again?! I didn't even get half of the things on my to-do list done. In fact, I never even made it to start work until 10pm. What a fail. At least now I know that I can't get any seminar-paper-related work accomplished in one hour. 

In the spirit of the quickly passing hours today, I am writing a quick (short) blog post, with only a couple of pictures.

Tomorrow evening, my brother and his girlfriend are coming to stay for the weekend. To say that I'm excited would be an understatement. The two of them are such great people and I can't wait to spend time with them!!! In addition to their general awesomeness, it is always very special if my family (or a division of my family) is coming to visit. For the past five years, this would always imply someone gettin on a plane, flying across the ocean and into a different time zone, and spending thousands of Dollars. In a few months, we will be back to having that situation and I am just loving it each time we still get to enjoy living in driving-distance. 

To make them feel the special love and excitement, I am cleaning the house. I truly believed that this 1br apartment could be easily cleaned within 2hrs. 

However, upon closer inspection, I noticed that this place was a complete and utter shithole. Excuse my French, but seriously. As if someone had picked it up, shaken it, dumped 18lbs of dog hair in it, and left it sitting upside down.

So cleaning (German: putzen) was on top of the list. 

After four hours of misery: including washing Lucy in our bathtub (because, clearly, she is the only one to blame for the house looking like this and we had to get to the source of things immediately),  lots of dishes, lots of sorting through mail and papers (is anyone else as happy to find documents you had to take care of months ago, but lost them in a big pile of paper and forgot about them?) ... I had the glorious idea to make pancakes. 

They were everything I could have hoped for. I haven't had pancakes in forever and I'm telling you, if you have a rough cleaning day, they will help you. Not with the cleaning. Actually you will make a mess making them and have extra work afterwards. You might even curse them when you have to wipe half-dried drips of batter all over your counter, like me. 

But there is nothing like proper fueling for a round of tub scrubbing! 

While eating I noticed that my syrup expired 2 months ago. I know. This may be a new low, so look away if you can't take it - but I kept eating after thinking about it for 2 seconds (one for each month). The bottle had never been opened before, it tasted fine, I was really, really hungry. It was the only option I had. 

Tomorrow morning, there will be another 3miler through the park. I ran today, too, and either my endurance is slowly building, or the colder weather helped me not to die on the way, but I finished without walking. Yay! 

Oh, and I'm posting from my phone, because "putzen" also makes you lazy (the phone was sitting closer to me than the laptop. By about 3feet.). In case the pictures are weird (in size, the content is probably always is), I'll fix it tomorrow.

Good night everyone!