I could be on TV! But who aspires to be on Hoarders?

If you've been reading here for more than a couple months, I'm sure you'll be unsurprised to learn that I usually find it difficult to step out of my comfort zone(s).

I don't like surprises.
I don't like them from work.
From family. From friends. From medical people.

This means don't drop in on me.
Don't jump out at me from around a corner.
Don't startle me.
Don't suddenly change my work location.
I don't even like good surprises.
I prefer to know what's coming, when it will arrive, how long it will last.
Just don't surprise me.
I'll be happier that way. Believe me, so will you.

I'm a creature of habit in so many ways.
Repetition brings me calm/comfort.
I will read new things and watch new movies, but I love my read-100-times-so-what-I'll-be-happy-to-read-them-again-over-and-over-don't-you-dare-judge-me books.
Movies I've viewed 20 times or more are like old friends, too.

I like putting a movie or TV show that I've seen over and over on the TV in the momcave and having it keep me company while I fold laundry or putter around. I clean here and there, sort through crap that needs to go OUT the door, flip the laundry from the washer to the dryer, get a snack, whatever. I can walk in and out and not miss anything, but can pick up the story again as soon as I sit down. No need to pause.

Take now for example.
I'm sitting in a chair with my laptop. Watching (for the 10th time or so) the Netflix series Stranger Things on the big TV across the room. I transferred my orthotics to my new shoes. Made a mental note to get some shoelaces dyed, as I'm out of new pairs to use. Dammit. I could order some from Amazon, but I really don't need more Amazon shit this week.

Kinda pisses me off to have to change one pair of new shoes for another, it's my last stockpiled pair. It's hard for me to find shoes that fit. I have to have a deep footbed to accommodate the orthotics and the shoe needs to be wide, too.

I wear men's size 9 in a 4E width. Which are big and clunky if you were curious. They're big and clunky even if you're not curious, actually. I usually shop at Big 5 for shoes, they almost always have something I can use. When I luck out and find something I really like, I will go to three or four of their stores to get as many as I can and stockpile them.

Ha, another habit. But this one's by necessity. Gotta have shoes that work for me. I have enough trouble with pain issues. No need to add to it.The other new shoes I had been wearing (just swapped them out recently) were making my ankle hurt. Which is of course exactly what I need, more pain in my ankle.Apparently I don't have enough discomfort in my knees, my ankles, my lower back. 

So now I'm out of stockpiled shoes and I need to start looking for more.

Ha. I've been hanging out in the momcave this afternoon. I've done some laundry, transferred the photo of my timesheet for work to an email so I could get paid this week, found the ink refills I'd been searching for, did more laundry... zipped in and out and in and out of the room. On occasion I hit pause, some stuff I don't want to miss even if I've seen it several times, but mostly I just let it play.

I know everything that's going to happen. No surprises.

To go along with the strong dislike I have for surprises, I also have a rather large helping of social anxiety. When I think back and try to pinpoint when it started, I can't. I can't think of a time I didn't have it, although it has gotten worse with age.

I can remember more than one occasion where it was nearly paralyzing. Sometimes it's a lot worse than it is now, sometimes it's not too bad. It seems to go in cycles, and they're unpredictable for me.

Emotionally traumatic events make it worse (of course) and recovering from what I consider major occurrences takes me a great deal of time. I think and overthink and over-overthink.

I would change it if I could, it isn't fun, but at my age, it doesn't seem likely that will happen.

I can smile and nod in awkward situations. But I prefer to be on the fringes, observing rather than participating. It's rare for me to go to a social event of any kind. It's just... out of my zone.

I figure out a place to sit where I can escape when I have to go to meetings at work, too. Close to the door so I can go to the bathroom or whatever when I start to feel overwhelmed.

This anxiety made changing jobs, a thing that people do (and I have done) many times, into an ordeal that made me sick with worry and had me on the edge of panic for months. Months and months. It was April of last year before I started feeling any sort of what passes for normal.

So I said all that to say this. Despite all my strange and anxious qualities, I surprisingly still have friends. There are actually people who like me. I mean real people who live near me.

I know. Amazing. For the most part, they can't come over. I'm up for a lunch or shopping trip with a couple of them, but I've become a hermit. I really just don't like people at my house. Even when it's clean. Which it most certainly is not as I write this.

Last month I asked for nice, weighted chess sets if anyone had them. I was trying to teach my kids how to play chess and it was difficult with only one set.
My friend Stephanie saw either my blog post or my Facebook post (not sure which one) and offered me a chess tutor set. The pieces have the moves diagrammed on their bases, so there are no questions about how they move, and the kids loved it.She lives about a half hour away from me, and I was going to go get it at her house, but she dropped it off at my house.

I feel like a jerk, but I don't invite anyone in right now.
Thank you, Stephanie. You're always so generous.
But the house really is a disaster. I'm working on it a little at a time. I'm having a lot of trouble physically, so taking on a cleaning job that's going to take two hours ends up taking me four or five hours because I have to stop and sit down for a bit. I can't do some things at all... can't clean the oven, can't scrub the bathtub. Anything that requires me to get up and down from the floor just isn't going to happen.

And during the school year I am so busy that I'm really only home long enough to mess things up. Getting up at 5 is just too early for me. So I take a nap every day, or almost every day. I manage lunch. Sometimes toss in a load of laundry or run the dishwasher.

But now I'm on a different schedule. Not working as early in the morning or staying as late in the afternoons. I can actually cook dinner most days.

And I'm able to do a little cleaning.
It's... improving. Slowly.

My biggest mess is the kitchen table. I can't seem to keep it cleaned off. I clean it off and I hate myself for how piled up it gets, and I tell myself that I'll never let it get that way again. For someone who doesn't like dishonesty, you'd think I would manage to be more honest with myself.

But I've started either throwing away or putting away or otherwise redistributing five things every time I walk past. It has made a difference over the last few days. By mid-October, I may be able to actually use the table. Slight exaggeration. Very slight.

So is your house clean and neat? And if it is, how the hell do you manage that?

It's growing on me...

Eric made this in 2009. He said it would have cost a buttload of money if we'd had to pay the company he works for to do it. But he saved all the plants from jobs for years (they tear out the old landscape before installing the new one) and we didn't have to pay for very many plants.

Things have gotten much bigger. I love the way it looks.
The man is an artist.

2009

2009

2010

2010

2017

2017

2017

2017

More 'O the Same

Have you heard of these guys? Link leads to a YouTube video. They're adorable. Very talented. Here's another one worth watching. And one more.

There's no way I'm going to be more entertaining than these guys.
Especially when all we've been doing around here is more cleaning and dehoarding and tossing of ballast. I can't see a light at the end of the tunnel yet, but it sure didn't get this way overnight.

We did go to Goodwill this morning, found a couple things we had to bring home.
Considering that we took about eight full bags of stuff to Goodwill yesterday and dropped them off, bringing in a couple sleep shirts and two polyester shirts for Eric to wear under his clothes when it's cold won't make a lot of difference.

I have been drawing a little. Practicing some stuff that's difficult for me to draw. I don't know how to put it into words, but it feels the same way to try to get through the steps for a drawing as it did to get through steps of a dance when I was still singing/dancing/performing in community theater a thousand years ago.

I have to do it over and over and over and over to get it right. And even then it's not perfect. Frustrating. Some patterns come to me easily. Some.

So I go back to work on Monday. I am looking forward to my kids and my site and my stuff... but it's sort of scary how fast summer is rushing up on me. Last summer wasn't my favorite one ever. I am hoping for better this year. And NOT 'more of the same'.

So back to the tossing of stuff. We have cleaned out four cupboards and various drawers and pencil containers and assorted little things that are crammed here and there.

It's boring but needs to happen.

While I was cleaning off the kitchen table this morning, I found a note/candy cane from one of my kids. I had forgotten to unroll and read the note. I'd give you a photograph, but her name is on it.

It says, in part, 'You are an artist, loving, creative, fun, sweet, nice, funny and silly. Thanks for all the things you do for me.'
She signed it, 'Love' with her name.

And on the days when I wonder if I am making a difference, I will add her note to my YES list.

:::tap tap tap::: is this thing on??

I have a bunch of stuff to tell you, but not enough time to tell it all in one sitting.

I can see myself being back to daily blogging in a week or so, though.

The last two weeks have been just nuts. I took the week of August 18th-22nd off work to do some cleaning/dehoarding of the domicile. We rented a drop box so we could dispose of a ton of things that have been sitting out back... old furniture etc.

I never really thought about it, we've never had furniture to dispose of before. But last fall about this time, my cousin Kathy moved out of her great big house and into an RV full time. She sold or gave away a great deal of what she had. We were the recipients of a sofa, two end tables, a big comfortable recliner and a rolling TV stand thing. That's currently in the spare bedroom with the printer inside and the modem etc on top.

So anyway, we had this big-assed sectional. Totally worn out, dirty with dog grease up the back (Maggie rubbed on it constantly and left a big black streak.)
You can't very well cram the sofa and various parts into the garbage can to haul away. We don't own a truck to haul it to the dump, either.

So it sat. A bunch of other things sat, too. When Matt moved out, he left things that also needed to be thrown away.

So the dumpster was a necessary thing. I ordered it on a Thursday, it showed up on Friday morning at 7:25 AM because why the hell should I be allowed to sleep in? And the guy picked it up the following Friday, also a little after 7... because again, why the hell should I be allowed to sleep in? Gahhh. Beeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep while he backed up. Then SLAM and CRASH and SLAM and beeeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep... I guess if I'd gone out in my t shirt and gummy hair and yelled at him I'd be the one who looked bad, which strikes me as unfair because HE was the noisy asshole... but whatever.

So we had a ton of stuff hauled away.

Then on Friday the 22nd we picked Bob up at the airport. Matt called me at a little after 9 as we were on the way there to ask me to make Amy's bouquet.

She specified 'predominantly yellow and white with some blue'. Okay. Any idea how many colors of blue there are in the ribbon section of Michael's? Holy crap. I just chose one and hoped for the best. Since you've seen the wedding photos already, you know I picked the right stuff.

And because I felt like I couldn't just leave it at a bouquet, I sat here at the table and spent nine hours on Saturday the 23rd doing flowers for the wedding. I spent about a hundred dollars on flowers, wires, floral tape, ribbons etc... Amy said that they'd priced flowers and just one corsage was 40 dollars. I was glad that Matt asked me to do something I understood. :)

I did the bouquet, a boutonniere for Matt and for the best man (who was a girl) and for the officiant who is Matt's best male friend. Three months ago, Matt was his best man, actually. I did corsages for the matron of honor, Amy's mom, my mom and my daughter. Then, when Matt and Amy were over for dinner I asked Amy if there was anyone else she wanted me to make a corsage for. I ended up making one for her grandmother, too.

Here's a box of flowers for you to see...

tools of the trade... I haven't forgotten how to do this even though it's been a long time

The ribbon for the bridal bouquet and behind that, the little newsletter thing from my cousin's daughter's wedding on July 5th. THEY did the whole schmear. Little newsletters, can cozies, formal wear...

For the matron of honor

I want to tell you about the wedding, too. It was really sweet and designed by them FOR them. I am pretty sure the lack of religious ceremony bothered a few people, but I think the ceremony and the little extras were just perfect. They seem so happy and make such a sweet couple.

Saturday morning (two days ago) Matt and Amy came over at 5:30 AM and I drove them to the airport to catch a plane. They're currently honeymooning in Orlando. I hope they're having a wonderful time.

It's pretty crowded in our driveway. My car, Matt's car, the car we rented for Eric, Bob and Lyssa to visit Eric's sister (that's a whole 'nother story.. one that will take ages to write down) and Eric's work truck.

Busy busy.

I got my site set up for Tuesday morning's school opening.
I managed to get out there last week and meet our new principal. He seems like a nice guy. He has a child in a before/after school program. He asked me something I've never been asked by a principal before... "What can I do to help you grow your program?" Which bodes well for the future, I think.

Anyway, I am done rambling for tonight. Shower, bed. Ikea in the morning, Eric and Bob are going out hot dog roasting tomorrow. BORRRRRING but I will probably go, too.

Careful what you wish for...

I woke up on Labor Day morning in time to listen to the death throes of our old dishwasher. It finished its cycle, actually cleaned the dishes, and wheezed. It's been going downhill awhile, and its time came 'round at last.

 ("Scrubby" 1996-2011, RIP faithful friend...)

::sigh::

I CAN do without one. I did without one for a long time. Then, we moved into an apartment that had one. And I decided that I would do without just about anything else, but NOT my dishwasher, and haven't been without one for any length of time since 1986.

Which is why that same Monday afternoon about 2 PM, we wandered over to the local Appliance Emporium Galorium and purchased a new dishwasher.

Scrubby is dead, long live Scrubby!

Now the thing is, a couple weeks ago, I was considering some sort of divided container for markers for the art table at work. I wanted something divided into sections so that colors would be easier to find and so we wouldn't end up with so many lids being left off. One could see at a glance which color was which.. not have to dig, be able to tell if the lids were on, etc.

So I went Goodwill hunting, and ended up finding a silverware basket from an old dishwasher. Perfect! $1.99. So I bought it.

And I brought it home, and thought, wow, I'd really like to have another one of these, I'll have to remember to keep my eyes open when I go Goodwill Hunting. And here I am, a couple weeks later with another silverware basket. Now I have to tell you I paid big bucks for that basket, looked at one way... but I could also say I got it free looked at from a different perspective.

So I got my wish. And I'm going to be awfully careful about what I wish for in the future!

I married a dirty guy.

What else can I say?

My laundry soap experiment has worked wonderfully on all kinds of stuff. I especially like the smell of the laundry when it's clean. I haven't been using fabric softener, either.

Everything gets clean. That is, everything but Eric's work clothes. I added more soap to the load when his things didn't get clean the first time, but when they didn't get clean the next time, I decided that when I have a load of Eric's stuff, I will need to stick with the Tide detergent.

I really don't mind, will still be using a lot less of it, because the home made soap mix works wonderfully on all the other clothing in the house as well as the towels and dishrags.

I tried adding some of this and that to the Eric clothes load (Oxyclean, Borax...) and it just... didn't happen. So Tide wins the war of the dirty Eric clothes, but having the stuff work on everything else feels like a victory of sorts. Things are pretty damn expensive. Have you noticed?

Digging through the trash...

The kitchen table was starting to get away from me again.

Taking on a life of its own. There were stealthy rustling noises coming from under a pile of papers, and the thought that I was harboring wildlife that was evolving into something ugly and frightening crossed my mind more than once.

So after sleeping until noon again, I started cleaning it on Sunday.

It's scary to admit that there are uncashed checks in the mess, receipts for groceries bought two months ago, grocery lists for those same groceries, gum wrappers and toothpicks and cell phone chargers and medications and reading glasses and advertising circulars and credit card offers and vitamins and supply catalogs from work...

Well yeah.

And every time I get it cleaned off, it looks so nice and is so nice to come home to that I promise myself I am NOT going to let it get that way again.

But then I do.

I know that if I got an extra large shredder, one of those that will shred CDs and slice bacon... and parked it at my end of the table underneath, that would help.

It pisses me off when a credit card company sends me an offer to shred and I have to open the envelope and take the fake credit card out and pull off the adhesive off and fuck with it for five minutes just to shred it.

If I didn't even have to open the envelope and could just shred it as it comes in the door, I think I'd have fewer things piled up.

I've gone to online billing/payment for most things. That helps cut down on the amount of crap that comes in the mail, too.

But it still piles up. And I lose stuff underneath it all, end up having to shuffle through stuff, mixing it up even worse.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, then count yourself lucky. Smartass. However, those of you who are even a tiny bit like me... what's your best suggestion?

Nesting?

So you ever get a wild hair and just sort of do something out of character? I've been decluttering and cleaning around here... and pondering rearranging the furniture.

This is not like me. I don't want to do housework much.
And rearrange the furniture??? We have a big assed sectional that I loved when I bought it.

The enchantment wore off a long time ago.

There is only one logical arrangement to put everything in. The room is large, but due to the placement of windows and doors... well,  we really need to replace the furniture.

With smaller stuff. That has more possibilities.

I keep saying, "Won't happen until my dog dies or I get a lot of money."

People who are laid off from their jobs don't generally have money just falling out of their asses, now do they?
The dog will probably die before we get a lot more money....

I don't mind buying used furniture as long as it's in good condition, but I don't need anything else in the house getting dog grease on it.

Maggie rubs up against stuff. She always has. There's a long streak of dog grease along the back of the sofa all the way to the door.

I took my mom and Miss Lyssa to Goodwill on Monday morning. And back in the corner of the store, I found a computer armoire. It wasn't a big huge monstrosity (almost smaller than what I wanted) but it was in good shape and only 40 bucks. I looked at it  opened it up, checked the shelves and decided it would be a good addition to the living room... after subtracting a few things that are taking up more than their fair share of space in there.   :)

So I brought it home, and Matt and I emptied the desk, moved boxes of this and that and took the old desk out. Moved the cabinet in. It looks nice, we can close the doors on it, which helps, and we have a bit more room in the living room now.

I'm in a nesting frenzy... the good start we got in getting cleaned up for the visit from the ancestors sorta lit a fire under me.

Since I got sick during the 1st week of break program, and I told Sunshine that I can work but would prefer the time off for this week, no one has called to ask me if I can work.

I'm certainly not going to call them!

So I have been looking around at all that needs done, and realizing that I already have a really good start.

And writing several posts so that I can't slack off and pretend like I need to blog, taking a break, will get back to it soon.....

Then and Now

For some reason (am I the only person this happens to?) I cannot arrange photos on a blogger page to save my life. It's very frustrating, and I have now officially given up.

So look at the pictures. Guess which ones were taken last summer and which ones were taken this week.

I bet you can figure it out.

Stuff grows like crazy out there!!

And still more stuff rattling around in my head

Automatic sprinklers.

Eric is a landscaper. Remember the yard work he did last year? (note to self, get out there and get some photos so people can see how things have grown!)

About a month ago, he added two zones to the sprinkler system. Now, every morning about six, the sprinklers come on. And everything gets watered in the front AND back yards. All the sunflowers and tomatoes and hydrangeas and boxwoods and little shrubs and bee balm and echinacea...

Until this summer, all the stuff in the back yard had to be watered by moving a sprinkler from here to there and all over the place. Took hours. Now, by 7:15, everything is watered. The man's a genius.

While they were gone, I'd have had to go out there in my leg brace with crutches and try to avoid dog sausage bombs and drag a big sprinkler around and take all damn day to water.

But because my man knows what to do and how to do it, I was spared from all that.

:)
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Laptop computers.

I love my little, cheap, not powerful or fancy laptop. I saved up for it for quite some time, didn't want to take money from the household budget for self indulgence.

I've had it for about a year now.

I know this because Best Buy sent me an email wishing my computer a happy birthday and suggesting it might be time for me to spend fifty bucks to bring it in and let them mess with it.

They don't know I have Matt. Matt, if he can't fix or figure out what needs doing, has a friend who used to do tech support. So I won't be taking my little computer friend to Best Buy, although I take it lots of other places.

It is so nice to have it while I'm sitting around recuperating this summer. I can read, surf the internet, watch stuff on Netflix, chat with my friends (chatting with my friends should actually have come first on the list because it's my favorite thing ON the list but I'm too lazy to go back and change it), blog and email snarky comments to the newspaper.

I can do this from anywhere in the house as far as I know, but have not tried any of it from the bathroom.

Picture me sitting on the tall toilet seat, trying to balance the machine on my knees while, er, going. I think not. And now that I've said it, perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to ask you to picture it.

Sorry.

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Sort of going back to the whole yard thing... I love how things are obviously planned, but overgrown a little bit and allowed to expand and exist without a lot of manicuring. The plants and flowers are looking a little shaggy. But they're healthy and green and exuberant.

Lyssa loves birds and butterflies. She researched what kinds of plants she'd need to plant to attract them, and we have some really cool stuff out there because of it.

She makes nectar for the hummingbird feeder, and we get quite a few of the little guys now. I wish I could sit out there with my camera and not scare them off. They're so cute.

We also feed finches and other birds. Feeders all over the place. Eric keeps buying special suet cakes at the store to attract specific birds. It's an expense, but not a huge one, and the happiness it brings to Eric and Lyssa is worth much more than the small investment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Barbecue grills.
We need a new one. Ours is wearing out. We've replaced burners and parts etc, but it's just time for a new one. We got a lot of use out of the very inexpensive one we bought at Target five years ago.

But here's the problem. I have enough money stashed that we can go get one, but Eric won't do it. He looks at grills, says he likes this one or that one, and I say, "Let's get it." And then he gets all nervous about the money and says, "Well, let's wait."

Why don't I go buy one and just bring it home? Because he's the one who does the grilling. And no matter which one I'd pick, it wouldn't be the right one. Even if it were one he said he liked. Because I'd get it, and he'd use it and wish for the one that had the double burner or the one that had the little hooks on the front or the one that had the lid that opened the other way. And he'd say so. Not in a grumpy way, but in a wistful, gosh I should have way. And then I'll feel like I screwed up, even though he wouldn't mean it that way and then every time he cooked and complained that it wasn't heating right or needed this or needed that I'd take it personally.

I need to make that man get a grill now that it's near the end of summer and they're lots cheaper.

Temporary happiness for him and less angst for me.

We grill year round, really. Well, he does. I'm gonna start bugging him about it. In a nice, non-naggy, non-threatening, subtle way, of course.

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Cars. We're going to need to get another one, whether it's for us to drive or for Lyssa to drive. Not only is ours getting older and wearing out, the idea of us just having one car and a teenage driver... well, yeah. And I would like a vehicle that gets a little better gas mileage.
My commute is about 35 miles per day after you add it up. That split shift back and forth thing I do? It accumulates the mileage.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So that's more of the stuff in my head.
Are you bored yet?

There's always more.
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Cobwebs. Mentioned those yesterday. But why are they called cobwebs? They're not made by cobs, they're made by spiders. I am going to make an effort to call them spiderwebs from now on. Spiders should be getting the credit for all their hard work.

I should start a club and try to get everyone to call them spiderwebs.

We could have t shirts.
Carry signs and/or business cards and try to recruit people.
Wanna join me?
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I went to summer program on Monday and taught 30 kids to tie dye. I sat a lot. I did not haul anything to my car. I did not haul things out of my car. I didn't carry anything heavy. Actually, I didn't carry anything at all. Except me.

My leg hurts a bit, but it's not horrible. However, it is quite a bit more swollen tonight than it has been.

And the 3.5 hours I spent hanging out with the kids in the heat kicked my ass. We were in the shade, but it was damned hot all the same. Not sure if it was the heat or being on my feet a bit. (I mostly sat.) I'm guessing it's a combination of both. I'm really hoping that the three weeks remaining before school starts will be enough for me to finish recuperating.

Dig me out!!

It's almost noon (oops, just looked at the clock... it's past noon) and I'm still in my pajamas at the kitchen table, pondering the meaning of life.

Well, not really. What I'm doing is procrastinating. I have laundry in the washer and in the dryer. I'm guessing that most of the people reading this have the same affliction, so at least I'm not alone. I have dishes to do.

There are 20 pansies in the back of my car that need to be unloaded. I have some stuff to take to work with me this week that needs to go into the back of my car. Gotta keep kids amused, ya know. I need to make a new limbo CD (just like the OLD one, but that's out at my school).

I have a lot to do. There's so much of it that I'm not sure where to start, really.

I must confess here.

Do you have a place in your home that's always covered in clutter?
If you're like me, you have more than one place like that.

My big one is the kitchen table.

It's like an archeological dig. Layers upon layers. Papers to shred. Papers to file. Papers to recycle. Tax information. Prescription receipts that need to go to the comp insurer for reimbursement. Egg cartons. I've been saving them for a project at work. Other things that need to go to work with me. Hangers and jackets and books and paper and fun foam and a game and some playing cards and my cell phone and my camera and a box of tissues and pens and pencils and computer USB cords for this and that and a jar of aquarium gravel...

Earrings. Sharpies. My wallet. Napkin holder with salt and pepper shakers. A dish towel that I occasionally use as a bib. I have to, because if I am in a hurry, I drop food on myshelf.*

A vase. I bought it at Goodwill, it was full of pony beads. Now it sits here empty, ready to be re-donated. I have a squishy ball that I was using for physical therapy for awhile. It needs to go back to work. My laptop. An empty water bottle. A zippered bag that came in the mail with some makeup I ordered.

*Not a typo.

Under all of this... my Christmas tablecloth.
Yep, I am serious.

Now please cut me a little slack. From November to mid-February, while I was trying to recover from surgery, I didn't feel much like dealing with any of it.

After I went back to work January 4th, I needed a lot more rest than I was getting. And stuff got piled on top of stuff.

It's got to stop. I just know that within another week or so it'll be harboring wildlife.

I also know that I will feel better when it's done. I always do.

So why am I still sitting here?

I'm not.

See you later.

More yard pictures

Are you bored with this yet? Sorry if you are.














Click on any shot for the larger version.









































The camera does take good close ups, but it's just not the same as using a macro lens.
I've been saving money for a laptop computer and I really want a macro lens, too.
That will take awhile but I have nothing but time.
If you didn't click on any of the other pictures, do click on this one.














The lilies are pretty this year.

More barking.

Eric and Matt did the rest of the bark dusting yesterday.















The yard is beautiful and very fragrant. I know the fragrance will become less over time.















Although no one else in my family finds my joke humorous, I thought it was funny that both Eric and Matt were barking... and the dog was not. ::snicker::

She just hung out on the sidewalk, enjoying the warmth of the concrete on her old bones.















Hopefully, I can get a couple pictures of the place today, and maybe tonight take one with the lights on.

When Eric decided to do the yard, I had not expected nightscaping, and really, when you consider the fact that we have some plastic and duct tape on a portion of the siding near the roof (it's not that visible from most places... and that's our next little repair project) it seems sort of pretentious to have the place all lit up at night. :)

If you're like me, though, you appreciate the contrast.

This is one of two posts for today, too.
2nd post... scroll down.

Barking

This is one of two posts again today. Scroll on by if you want to read more of my rant that's contiuing every day until the 13th.

I woke up at 4:20 Saturday morning. I'm not sure why. Well, I know part of it was my knee... and part of it was the urge to pee.

I saw Dr. Dirtball on Friday. She is sending me for an MRI (OPEN MRI) on Wednesday. I'm torn between hoping there's something wrong so I can justify the enormous cost and hoping there's nothing wrong because I don't want to have to get it fixed.

Let's not even discuss the discrepancy between the cost of the scan and the amount my insurance company will pay.

I have been crutching off and on this week, and trying to stay off the leg as much as I can. I can't take the pain meds anymore, evidently they are raising my BP. Not good. So no more floaty pills that make my knee go to sleep awhile. Just aspirin.

::sigh:::


My hubby and my son were both outside barking on Saturday afternoon. ;)
They will be out there barking again today.

Remember me talking about going to Tami's house for a party two weeks ago, and talking about the little guy who ran around with a sharp stick, driving his parents nuts?

Well, evidently he wanted to play with Alyssa's video game.

She said no.

And drew this picture to commemorate the occasion.

It's entitled, "I don't share."

Yard work.

I am sitting in front of the computer in a pair of dark plaid pajama pants, a HUGE pink tie-dyed shirt, (two of me could wear this shirt... I'm not kidding) a gray zippered sweatshirt and a pair of light blue slippers. No bra.

That is why I don't have any pictures to go with this post. I would DIE if someone saw me.

I plan to go out and take some pictures later. You'll just have to wait.

Eric spent the last three days planting things, hooking up lights, and changing sprinkler heads.
The yard looks amazing.
A work of art.
It lights up for two hours in the evening, and the sprinklers come on for 10 minutes at 5:30 AM and 7:30 PM. No more watering. No grass to mow. Almost no maintenance. He says he'll have to blow leaves off in the fall and trim here and there occasionally, but that it's mostly a no work landscape.

For 25 years or so I've known Eric was a landscaper without actually knowing what that meant. I never watched a landscape happen, ya know?

There were occasions I saw one that he had put in, but I never saw the effort and the down on the knees/hands in the dirt work. So it's been a revelation to me.

I was considering the amount of time it took for this yard to happen.
Back in September, he had four guys here for 10 hours. He worked alongside. So that's 50 hours. That happened again a few weeks ago.
100.

Add in another 30 hours for the guy we gave money to. (I wrote about it but I'm too lazy to look it up. He and his family were about to be evicted, so Eric gave him the money he needed to stay in their rental and they agreed on how many hours of work his guy would do in return. That way he earned it. He was adamant about not taking a handout.)

Now add in the time Eric spent working alone. Just this weekend was about 20 hours. So we're at about 200 man-hours, give or take.

I can't wait until all the plants mature.

There are lots of things to do.

Many of them can be done while sitting down.
The computer desk is gradually becoming buried under papers and Cd's and assorted camera paraphernalia. I can sit here with a paper bag, recycle paper and dust everything and not have to get out of my seat.

Then, I can sit at the kitchen table and do the same thing. It needs it.

Do you have a place or two in your house that collects debris? And no matter how much you might wish to keep it clean, does it get messy anyway?

What really sucks is that I can't even blame the mess on the kitchen table on anyone but myself.

The corner of my bedroom is gradually becoming buried under a drift of laundry. DIRTY laundry. What usually happens is that when I'm getting ready to go to bed at night, I take off my clothes, throw them in that pile, put on the t-shirt I'm sleeping in and jump into bed. Too cold or too lazy to haul the dirty clothes to the laundry room.

Clutter here and there, although it's much less clutter than there was when I started the cleaning. Still digging out.

I plan to take advantage of the three day weekend and reduce the piles further.

Haven't checked on Lyssa yet this morning. She was pretty sore yesterday, could not open her jaw very wide. I am so glad that 99% of her dental stuff is over. It's been a long road. She will need one more oral surgery to implant a permanent tooth, but that's a few years down the road.

Matt was scheduled to get his braces off this month, but when he went in, the dentist had to revise his estimate. We're looking at July now. The lower braces came off in April, and his permanent retainer is cemented in.

Now I don't have to make any more payments on their braces, but a month and a half ago, Eric was eating a snack and felt something crunchy. It was one of his teeth. It just... broke. No apparent reason.
So he had to go in for a crown. Our insurance covered some of it. The rest will be paid off at about $100.00 a month. We're looking at six months here.

::sigh::

It's always something, isn't it?

Genius at Work

In looking through my blog archives, I found this photo I took almost two years ago when our front yard (and the whole damn street) was dug up for the great sidewalk project.














Here's a shot from the same general area Saturday afternoon.














For years and years, every time Eric's company takes out an existing landscape to put in a new one, he's been bringing plants home. (they go to the dump or the burn pile if he does not salvage them.)

We've had all kinds of mystery bulbs (well, they're mysterious until they bloom for the first time, but it's still fun) as well as trees and shrubs of all sorts. He plants them in pots or in the huge raised planter he built in the back yard several years ago.

I never asked why he was saving all those plants, I just figured it was his thing, ya know?

He's been working on the front yard off and on, and today he transplanted a bunch of stuff from the back into the front yard. We didn't have to buy ANY plants for this project, thanks to the genius who saved them!

We're still a couple years away from fully done, because it takes time for the plants to fill in the available space and mature a bit and he still has more to plant.

Also, he needs to add the bark dust.

I took a few pictures this afternoon to show you what he's done so far. There was a vehicle parked in my way, so I didn't get a full frontal shot, but eventually I will.














I especially like the dry streambed. Never heard of one until he put it in the front yard, but I can't wait until the ground cover actually goes down to the edges of it. Probably next spring or the one after. If you're still reading here, and I'm still blogging, remind me to post some more pictures.

I think it's so cool that he can do stuff like this. He said that with the sprinkler system, the boulders, rocks, and soil he's added (we paid for all that, but got a discount through his work) as well as the free plants he stuck out there today that it would be about a 25 to 30 thousand dollar bid from his company to put it in. He said the cost of the mature Lace Leaf Maples and the Forsythia and Dogwood trees alone would have been about three grand.

Our total cost, including paying some of his guys to come help? About $2500.00.

Ahhh-CHOOOO

So it's a little dusty in my bedroom.

Curtains, tops of this and that... and wow, was it yucky along the edges of the waterbed!

I have quite a lot of it left to dust/vacuum, which I'll do in the next hour or so before we go to sleep. It's only 10 p.m. but since we have to get up early tomorrow morning, (or THIS morning, since this won't post until Sunday at 6 a.m.) we're going to need some sleep.

Why do we have to get up so early?

The bed delivery guys called tonight to say they'd be here between 8:30 and 10:30 on Sunday morning.

As I sit here on Saturday night, it's yet to be seen if they're going to show on time. My guess is that they'll show up at 8:30 on the dot.
Wahoo.

I like sleeping in. Weekends are my time to do so. So I'm not thrilled about getting up early AT ALL. This totally better be worth it, because so far it's been a major pain in the ass.

Grrr.

Time to change the bed.

::Sigh::

We're emptying the waterbed and it's going out the door.

I looove my waterbed. I've loved it ever since we bought it from a lady I used to work with. It took up the entire bedroom in the tiny house we first had it set up in.

It had a waveless mattress, so no one flew up into the air when someone else turned over.

There was only a tiny sliver of floor space between our dresser and the side of the bed, and it was wedged into the corner. Didn't matter, I loved it anyway. Always warm and comfy in winter, and still comfy in summer. I didn't have it during my 1st pregnancy, but I did when I was expecting Lyssa... and throughout most of the pregnancy, I was able to sleep on my stomach!

About 10 years ago, we bought a fiberfilled waterbed mattress with a big lumbar support. It was lovely. Still is. But Eric's back is still bothering him, and we're hoping that by getting a new bed of the conventional sort, his back will improve.

So tomorrow our new king sized bed is being delivered. We'll hook up the electric pump and empty it today, and sleep on camping pads on the bedroom floor tonight.

We're changing the bed.

We cleaned!

So my brother Jim and his wife came to visit last night.
They're currently living in Michigan. As you can imagine, I don't see them much.

We had the usual sibling rivalries when we were kids, and I left home when he was about 12, so we were never really all that close as kids. I was closer to my younger brother Steve, mostly because by the time he was born, I was almost eight years old, so having him was like having my own living doll. I changed diapers (only the wet ones... saved the specials for mom) and often got to hold him while he sucked a bottle.

(In 1968, doctors told moms of preemies that breast milk was not sufficient nutrition and Steve got formula instead.)

Oops. Digression.

ANYWAY.

Now Jim is the brother I'm closer to. I have more in common with him than with Steve. Doesn't mean I don't love 'em both, you understand, just means I appreciate the opportunity to know Jim as an adult... years and years away from the casual indifference of youth.

He's a good man.

I like my sister in law, too. She's been a good wife for him, and I know he's happy with her.

I managed to get done with the things I wanted to do yesterday afternoon before they arrived. Lyssa asked, quite reasonably, if we were going to all this trouble just because Uncle Jim was coming over.

And really, the answer would have to be yes and no. I'm awfully tired of living in mess and clutter, and I had planned to utilize my time off over Spring break to clean and toss, but I had incentive to do it sooner because I knew they'd be visiting.

(Lyssa doesn't like cleaning or helping me with the cleaning. I don't like it either, just so you know.)

I had help from both kids anyway. Matt cleaned the bathroom and took some stuff to Goodwill, and Lyssa cleaned the kitchen floor and shook all the rugs. She also folded laundry and put it away for me.

We're not neat freaks here, so sometimes things pile up awhile before getting taken care of.

I have two large white cabinets in the kitchen. I use them to store homeschool materials, science and art supplies, videos and books. They have doors. This means that whenever I want to put some stuff away and don't have time to do it neatly, things get piled in there and the doors get closed on it. Viola! Instant neat!

Not the most efficient way to do things. Eventually I'm reduced to a cartoon version of myself, trying to hold things in long enough to slam the doors on them. Amusing but frustrating at the same time.

Well, now those cabinets are very clean. I got rid of a bunch of educational materials we used when the kids were younger, and started a box of stuff to take to work. I put all the old National Geograpic books and magazines and some textbooks into the back of my car for Tami. She likes having lots of research materials around. That's good, because she's about to get a bunch more.

It's really nice to have it cleaned up, but I know from my past record that it won't stay that way forever. It always feels good to have it done, however temporary it is, though.

Next... the bedroom. Ack.
But it has to get done so we can get our new bed. I hope to have time to finish it this week. I worked Monday and will work Thursday and Friday afternoons, but that still leaves me lots of time to finish if I just use that time to clean instead of fart around.

No headache this morning, but I was so trashed when I woke up that I actually took a caffiene tablet. Now I feel pretty decent.

I'm going to pick Tami up about 10, and at 10:45, after we've unloaded the back of my car (books, magazines, and more magazines) into her living room, we're going out Goodwill hunting.