How to finish all of your home improvement projects:

1. Send the mobile half of your family away for a few days.
2. Have your baby be just sick enough to need to be home, but not so sick that he needs constant undivided attention.
3. Make sure it's cloudy and rainy all weekend.
4. Send the family car on the trip; you keep the other car, the one that doesn't have air conditioning and smells like a boy (and RAN OUT OF GAS the one time I used it all weekend. Of course you can call that operator error, but I'm pretty sure the one who normally drives it shouldn't leave the thing to sputter until I noticed).
5. Ask almost everyone you know to leave town at the same time.

You won't believe how productive you'll be.

I've painted cabinets, addressed birth announcements (I KNOW), finished thank you's, dealt with the enormous stack of paperwork that had accumulated to such a degree that I could barely even see the table beneath it, rearranged and re-organized the kitchen, framed new pictures, filled out forms for church, posted stuff on freecycle, and bought new cannisters. I also have held and rocked and talked to little Silas all weekend. I can't get over how he is morphing from infant to baby, basically getting rounder by the minute. Watching a baby grow never becomes ordinary.

It was a good weekend.