Virtually Home

Last night I dreamed that my parents were looking for kittens, but could never find one suitable. So they decided to clone our old cat, Tatertot, which, for some reason, made me really angry. I kept insisting that it wasn't fair to get the same cat as before, but then he was too cute to stand against and I went with it. There hasn't been a lot going on lately, in the way of school, and then suddenly I have tests and presentations and a lot of Italian to study this week. My history test will be one question on "a character" from any time in the reign of Louis XV, which I think is a kind of ridiculous topic, considering we're talking about a 60ish year time period, with multiple wars on two continents and a constant stream of changing financial ministers and foreign allies, not to mention mistresses, legitimate and illegitimate children, etc. We'll see how it goes. Apparently the French kids are also being tested over five random dates from the time period, bu...

There were a lot of topics I was thinking about blogging about, and I realized they all had to do with cleanliness, mostly. So there's your theme. THEMED! Today, I waged war on the apartment, which, for some reason (either my particular landlady or the European custom) was not cleaned before I moved in. Until now I'd been sort of cleaning things as I could with whatever products and materials were available to me. Today, I went to Monoprix and went sort of crazy on the cleaning supplies. I got back and vacuumed with our strangely-shaped and relatively inefficient vacuum cleaner. Then I Swiffered. And then I Swiffered again. I cleaned the bathroom(s) and the kitchen, and every available surface, really. It made me feel a lot better about my life, but the apartment is still not up to my usual cleanliness standards. I'll continue the campaign tomorrow, maybe. Maria cooked some delicious risotto with sundried tomatoes and mushrooms and chicken, and made a salad with blueber...