Thanksgiving Weekend To-Do List

Updated Saturday, 11/26/16

1.   Be thankful.  Doing that all day, for my family, my friends, my dog, my job, that there are books and food and music in my life.

2.   Take out compost.  Once, plus washed out the sink-side container and have started a box for floor sweepings and plant trimmings.  

3.   Take out recyclables.  I made two trips out on Thursday and one on Friday, and then took the container out.  After the pickup I realized I still had a bagful of stuff from work, so I went out and got the bin and re-filled it halfway.

4.   Load dishwasher, run dishwasher, unload, load.  I'll probably run it once more tomorrow night.

5.   Scan and e-mail stuff to Mom.  Done, despite an elderly and cranky printer

6.   Make my bed. Every single day, yay me!

7.   Make the dog's bed.  Also every single day, so another yay!

8.   Fold and put away clean clothes. Done, but will have to do it again tomorrow night after laundry morning at Mom's.

9.   Hang up and put away other clean clothes. Same as #8

10. Clear off flat surfaces. Didn't get done. :-(

11. Clean said flat surfaces.  Didn't get done. :-(

12. Hook up Magic Jack and call Scary Bear. Didn't get done. :-( But if I clean off the desk, maybe he can do it while he's waiting for the washing machine... }:)

13. Buy washing machine.  Got a great buy on an Electrolux from HH Gregg, and they surprised me by saying it will be delivered on Tuesday, which is too soon.  When I called to reschedule, the CSR told me my order had been cancelled and if I attempted to place it again it would be cancelled again and I should go to the store.  Ugh.

14. Get all plants in from the garage.  All 28 of them.  Ouch.

15. Get all plants arranged in house.  I've got one spider plant I don't have room for and am loath to toss onto the compost because it's healthy, damnit!

16. Go water-walking.  Gave this up in lieu of getting plants in and the breezeway semi-tidied because I am hoping Dad will be here to let the washing machine people in.

So much accomplished, so much yet to do

So far on this long weekend I have:

Gotten all the houseplants but one in from the garage, arranged and watered.
Gotten the final 40 pound bag of softener salt down to the basement and in the softener.
Done 4 loads of laundry and put clothes away.
Went to the grocery store and got my contribution to Tuesday's 'comfort food' lunch at work.
Moved my vintage trunk so it is under the antique map.
Gone out to Mom's house, watered her plants and sorted 10 days' worth of mail.
Cleaned the bathroom & kitchen sinks plus the tub & toilet.
Swept the kitchen floor.
Remembered to take the recyclables to the curb on Friday night.
Took compostables out to the pile.
Changed the sheets.
Changed to my holiday blanket and comforter (with help).

Blanket:

Comforter:

Things I still need to do:

Finish the laundry, including the fall comforter and blanket, and put it all away.
Sweep and steam the bathroom floor.
Take all the dog hair to the compost pile!
Set up my new nail polish storage system.
Vacuum.
Shower, exfoliate, all that.
Manicure.

I'm realistic enough to know that the vacuuming may not happen along with the bathroom floor, because I definitely can't skip showering and washing my hair and I've only got one back and a few spoons.  Still, when I type up my list, I can see that I wasn't lazy, I did get stuff done, and if I did it with lots of breaks, then who cares?

Not my best Sunday

Oof and oww.  My day started with me spilling coffee on the counter and into an open drawer full of clean dish cloths, and then I went on to haul two 40 pound bags of softener salt into the basement and doing laundry.  Then I hauled 10 or so houseplants in from the garage and hauled raw water up the basement stairs to give them and their 10 cousins who were already in the house a drink.  I stepped on a stone in the garage and got a bruise on my heel right through my slipper.  I am sore, tired, cranky and so not ready for work tomorrow.

On the other hand, my nails look pretty and it's a short week.  So I am saying good-bye to this day and going to bed early.

...and a day without Mom

Today is Mom's birthday, and I would not ask her to spend it moving stuff and cleaning with me.  So I have done my best to stay motivated without her.

So far, I have:

Changed the sheets and made the bed.

Watered the houseplants.

Done half the laundry.

Finished emptying the bookshelves in the living room.

Filled a box for Goodwill.

Shoveled and salted the walk from the driveway to the breezeway.

Refilled both birdfeeders.

Dusted the mantel, the two built in bookshelves and two of the standalone bookshelves.

Washed much of the glassware and divvied it up between what I am keeping and what is going to Goodwill.

What I still have to do:

Finish the laundry.

Move the television and DVD player to the car.

Clean out the back seat so I can take Lil Miss Piggie Pie to day boarding tomorrow.

Dust the last two standalone bookshelves.

Vacuum the living room.

Shove the furniture I can move into the center of the living room.

Paint my nails.

What will probably not get done tonight:

Clean the bathroom.

Hey, I am less discouraged when I look at my list! :-)

It's all about the details

I don't have the budget or the spoons to do a whole steampunk room, but I've decided I want my kitchen to have some copper touches that could lend themselves to steampunkery if I ever have the funds.  I ordered light oak outlet covers for the lower outlets which are located in the wainscoting and copper switch plates and outlet covers for the higher outlets and switches.  I think they look lovely against the green walls!

And Sherri probably doesn't recognize the microwave cart any more, it was such a mess when she was here!

Spirit, spoons and shortness

The day after Christmas last year, I bought 150 plastic ornaments with the intention of decorating the two evergreens outside my breezeway.  This year, I dawdled and procrastinated until December 21, when I finally bought ornament hangers and got out in cold and damp and decorated.

I ran out of spoons before I ran out of ornaments, and I knew that climbing up on a ladder at that point was A Bad Idea, so I put everything away.  I took today off work, so this morning after a quick grocery run, I got the ladder out.

Guess what?  Even with a 7-foot ladder, I'm too short to reach the top of the taller tree.  I've got blisters because I'm allergic to evergreens, sore shoulders from reaching over my head, and the decorations aren't quite perfect, but I'm still pleased.

I decorated something for Christmas for probably the first time in seven or eight years!

My groundhog's back!

And she is driving Little Miss Piggie Pie crazy. :D

Checking to see if the coast is clear!

Ignoring the stupid dog...

still ignoring...

heading out after a hour or so of noshing.

Not bad for a chick with a migraine!

Which appeared yesterday morning when I woke, ugh.  I did absolutely nothing but sleep yesterday. :(

Today, however, I have:

Changed the sheets on the bed
Trimmed the lilacs, the butterfly bushes, the boxwoods and the evergreen bushes,
Vacuumed the hall carpet
Written and scheduled tomorrow's post for Bubbles & Baubles
Loaded the dishwasher
Made chili chicken

My arms are still quivering from wrangling the trimmer, and it's a light one!  Tomorrow will be all inside jobs, cleaning and vacuuming and laundry and, ugh, putting clothes away.  I do have some lavender plants to get in the ground, but I can do that early and then get on with staying inside where it's cool.

Hi honeys, I'm home!

There will be a ton of pictures and stories from our Disney adventure, but I'm home safe and sound.  Mouse has Vestibular Disease, so my poor old man has to be helped outside to go potty and then back inside and he's not interested in eating, but his tail still wags for me and he's still sweet as pie.  Today was a whirlwind of stopping by Mom's house to check the voice messages and print some bank statements and tomorrow I start a new job, as an auditor for the Summit County Probate Courts Accounting Department.

Despite the snow and the mess in my house left by moving 20 houseplants into the kitchen, it's good to be home!

A damp hero

Last night was mostly a typical Monday night at Casa de Jammies.  Work sucked on toast, it was cold, raining and horrendously windy, and I was glad to get home, shuck out of my work clothes and settle down to read a nice, spooky, vampire apocalypse novel.  The Twelve, by Justin Cronin, if you're curious.   The dogs were both fairly needy, thanks to the wind, and after the third time Little Miss Piggie Pie tried to climb into my lap, I gave up on reading and headed for the computer.

Around nine o'clock, I was sitting at my desk with four programs running on my desktop computer when the power went out.  I waited a minute until I was sure that the power wasn't coming back on immediately, and then I reached over and turned off the power bar for the computer and peripherals before pushing back my chair.  Because the study is at the back of the house, there was very little light coming into the room.  When my eyes adjusted, the first thing I saw was six glowing spots to my right.  After a blink or two, I realized it was my glow-in-the-dark nail polishes!

If you've never tried to navigate a pitch-black house with dogs pressed to your legs, I can't give you any advice, because once I got past the study door to the hallway, I could see the light from the streetlamps.  All the lights were on at the sub-station across the street, so I lit some candles and called my folks to request a wake-up call in the morning in case the power wasn't back on by 6.

Okay, technically, I called my mother, because the only time my dad sees 6 a.m. is from the wrong side.

Then I picked up my knitting and did four rows on The Scarf That Will Take Forever.

At about twenty to ten, Little Miss Piggie Pie started going crazy, running back and forth from the living room window to the breezeway door, barking her head off.  I tried telling her that nobody would be walking or bicycling past her turf on a night like this, but she persisted.  I finished my row, set the knitting aside and walked out to the breezeway and looked out the door.

There was in fact someone out there, a dark shape on foot, with a flashlight.  After a minute or so, I realized that it was the poor city electrical worker who was on call last night, walking between the substation building and the cage full of, um, transformers?  about a house lot away.  And he stayed out there, going back and forth between the two, for the rest of the evening.  Granted, by the time I went to bed at 11:30, he was no longer on foot but taking his truck back and forth, but he was still working to get my power back on.

I read a few more chapters in my scary book, thanks to the LED book light Sherri gave me, then set up the coffee, set the alarm on my cell phone, and went to bed.  When I woke up at 5:30, the power was on, but I thought it was only 3:30, so it's a good thing Mom called at 6.

So tonight I am raising my glass to all of the gas and electric workers, the damp heroes out there getting the power back on and keeping people warm and safe and well-lit.  Thank you all.

A great big MESS

Last Tuesday, NE Ohio was hit with big storms--hail, rain, thunder, lightning, high winds, tornado watches, etc. I was trying to get the local radio station's streaming audio to work on my computer so I'd know if I had to grab the dog and head for the basement when I heard a huge CRACK! Since nothing hit the house and I didn't hear anything else, I figured a tree had come down in the back yard and didn't worry about it.

For reference, this is how my backyard looks in the summer:



This is what I saw when I looked outside on Wednesday morning:



When I got home from work and went to take a closer look, this is what I saw:




Forty to fifty feet of tree, in my estimation. Snoopy came out, said it was 90 feet, to which I said "Men think this *thumb and forefinger about three inches apart* is nine inches, so I don't trust your estimation." He hemmed and hawed a bit, then promised me he would do the work for the wood, as long as I wasn't in a hurry. Okay, I'd like the big tree out of my back yard, but I can't afford a professional remover, so yeah, thanks.

When I got home on Friday night, my feckless young neighbor was out back, cutting the tree apart with his chainsaw. While the cynical part of me suspected that he was planning to sell the wood and not tell me about it, I went out and thanked him for the favor, and explained that the friend who mows my lawn was going to take care of it, but he was welcome to the wood he cut.

When I told Snoopy about it, he was furious. Apparently, he thought he could sell the entire tree to someone and give me half the money. After I had repeated that I didn't ask NeighborBoy to cut up the tree, Snoopy gave up being mad at me and just pouted. I did tell him that even if I'd been home, I probably wouldn't have stopped him, because Snoopy hadn't told me about his plans for the tree. He rather lamely told me that it was supposed to be a surprise and he thought he had time to get the tree buyer out to my house.

While some money would be nice, I'm not so in need of it that I'm bothered by not getting any from either NeighborBoy or Snoopy's tree guy. I am irritated by the fact that neither of them elected to consult ME in their plans.

Men. Pffft.

spring. oh yay.

Signs of spring at Casa de Jammies:

Dandelions and nettles sprouting.

Allergies sprouting.

Trash all over the front yard from selfish pigs driving by.

The juvenile idiots next door revving their crotch rockets for hours on end.

Spastic robins fighting with their reflections in the living room window.

The damn dog running through the house barking at the last two.

On the other hand, I did get to go outside and clean up last year's leaves. One-half of the flowerbed along the front sidewalk is cleaned up, and if the weather holds, I can do the other half tomorrow morning. Plus I get to have open windows in the house, and dream about having enough money to mulch everything this year.

The yard is still paying for my spring of grief over Bigfoot, but I'm trying to get things back together. I'm also trying to figure out what happened to my lemon balm, which sprouted all over in its container on the front porch last summer and did well on the breezeway this winter, but is currently dying off in great swathes right now. It's a puzzle.

Another puzzle is what the heck has happened to my skin, which is suddenly dry and lizard-y. I haven't changed anything about the amount of water I drink or the amount of baths I take or the amount of moisturizer I use, but I am suddenly a leezard.

It drives me crazy that there is so much at work I can't talk about here, but even if I have fewer than ten readers, it's still a public website, and client confidentiality has to be respected.

Ah well, scales and puzzled brain and muzzled fingers and all, I'm still alive, still finding my little pleasures, and still haven't gone completely nuts, so I'm good.

Scary stuff

Today was an awfully long day for a holiday. Hyphenated Corp. gave its peons the day off with pay, but Flannel Jammies, being self-employed, had to work most of the day. I went in to her office first thing this morning, and we balanced her IOLTA account and one guardianship annual account. Then I went to water-walking this morning because there won't be a class offered tomorrow morning.

Ordinarily, that would have been enough for one day for me, but I came home, had a quick lunch and started putting the study back together. I got the vacuum cleaner out and started with that. Little Miss went absolutely bonkers, growling, snarling and trying to bite the vacuum cleaner. The 'Foots always ran away from it, so I was trying to get her to back off while not stopping the vacuum. All of a sudden, Littlefoot charged into the room and laid into Little Miss. I'm not sure why he thought she was a threat to anything but the vacuum, but they were really going at it. There was a lot of snarling, a few yips, tons of big flashing teeth and overall just a very adrenalin-inducing 30-45 seconds.

For all that I may bitch about Littlefoot being a long-haired, double-coated dog, that coat proved incredibly handy today. I took three steps to get around behind him, grabbed two giant handfuls of fur and yanked. The minute I separated the two of them, he calmed down and she hid behind my leg, trembling. I put him outside, and it wasn't until I'd been petting her for a bit that I noticed there was blood all over my hand and my leg. Littlefoot had gone across the top of her nose and nailed her on both cheeks, and dog faces bleed just as profusely as human faces, so it took a little bit of time to get her cleaned up. When I'd done so, I put her out and let him in, and she'd gotten in a shallow slice on top of his ear, which was also bleeding like mad. I got him cleaned up and felt like collapsing, but then Mom called and said she was on her way.

Mom and Dad spent the afternoon here. Mom helped out with the cleaning and furniture moving, and Dad installed my new ceiling fan/light fixture. It's amazing to have a fan with more than one speed, and truly luxurious to have a ceiling fixture that actually provides real light. As long as the JammiesFest attendees don't bring white gloves, we should be okay.

Oh, and all future vacuuming will be done with Little Miss outside on the chain!

Grrr--parents!

Yes, I'm lucky to still have them and to have a good relationship with both of them.

However, sometimes they are, in a lovely Regency phrase, the outside of enough.

Flannel Jammies decided back in August that she and I needed to power-wash my house. Plaid Jammies agreed to let us use the little electric pressure-washer and come over long enough to show us how to use it. After thinking it over for a while, he decided that it wasn't powerful enough and would take to long, so he needed to come along and bring the big gas-powered washer. They were supposed to arrive Saturday morning at 10. At 9:30, FJ called and said there was an oil leak in the pressure-washer, and they'd be coming on Sunday. There followed a short discussion about scheduling, owing to the fact that I had to work Sunday morning at FJ's office.

I spent Saturday under the influence of large amounts of Benadrool, and didn't manage to do any laundry or cleaning because I discovered after I had taken said Benadrool that I was out of salt for the water softener (and was unable to drive to the store and get any). Sunday morning I was up at 6:30, dropped off some boxes at the house Mom & I are slowly cleaning out, went to her office and worked, hit Home Depot for softener salt, mulch and spray paint, and got home about three minutes before my folks arrived.

Pressure-washing is fun but it's work. The worst area of mold and yuck was on the west wall of the house, which gets almost no sunshine. Cleaning that wall took about an hour, after which Plaid Jammies decreed it was time for a lunch break. Over lunch, he just happened to mention that he's having hernia surgery on Thursday.

Hello? Surgery in four days? Were you PLANNING to tell me at all? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I refrained from smacking him and just ate my Sun Chips, but seriously. My parents' secrecy about medical matters drives me bonkers sometimes. Anyone who would care to send some good vibes to the curmudgeon who sired me, the surgery is Thursday morning, outpatient with a sedative and local anesthetic. They can't do it laparoscopically because they need to insert a piece of mesh, apparently, so it's going to be done via incision.

After casually dropping this bombshell, the folks were ready to go back to work. Dad actually let Mom & I do any washing that didn't involve being up on a ladder, and although it is immodest for me to say it, I was much better than Mom. She's too slow and she doesn't get up under the folds in the siding. After hearing about her insufficiences from Dad, she took my ladder and started cleaning the outside of the windows on the walls we had washed. I discovered this morning that she had also washed all the windows of my car--no more dog snot (or as Zayrina prefers to call it, puppy kisses).

We ran out of time owing to the late start, so Dad agreed to leave the little electric washer with me. I did the front of the house all by myself (yay me!) and then had a quick lesson about how to use the little washer, complete with instructions on not getting the plug wet. Right, Dad, I was gonna wash that, too. *eye roll*

Overall, the house looks great (the one wall that didn't get done was the east wall, which no one but me can see anyway), I found out about Dad's upcoming surgery, and we mostly had fun and didn't kill each other.

I will say that as miserable as I was this morning, I would not recommend that anyone with a sinus infection pressure-wash her house on a cold autumn day. I wound up leaving work slightly early to go to the doctor and get a 'script for a Z-pack.

*snork*

So this is Christmas...

That's one of the few John Lennon songs I actually like. Jimmy Buffett's version has been playing as I de-filthify Casa de Jammies in preparation for a decorating orgy tomorrow. I haven't been a Christian for a long time, in fact I haven't been anything religious for a long time. But I like the idea that once a year, it's okay to have silly, gaudy decorations all over your house, and to spend your time thinking about what you can give to others to make their faces light up, and to celebrate that yes, it's the darkest time of the year, but hey, the sun's gonna come back.

*grin* Given that I just had sausage gravy for lunch, maybe what I'm really celebrating is Hogswatch. That's okay too.

Happy holidays, my friends, whatever you may or may not celebrate, I promise that the sun will come back.

Wow

A bird post for Scott. ;)

When I went to let the dogs out late this afternoon, there was a hawk in the back yard. He took off almost immediately, but I had time to see that he was a pretty damn big bird, and that there was nothing in his talons and no yucky stuff on the grass. While I admire raptors and am appreciative of a chance to see them, I have to admit that I'm relieved that this one didn't get Rooter or what I have come to think of as Rob's bunny.

With a little research, I think it was either a red-tailed hawk or more likely a red-shouldered hawk. Either way, it was a beautiful bird, and makes me glad I live where some of the wild things are.

Of course, if it wanted to carry off a flower-eating deer, it would have my blessing. *grin*

Brass balls

This morning, I planted a pink butterfly bush, a white bleeding heart, six blue double columbines, six blue creeping phlox and thirty-six gladiolus bulbs. Then I spent the afternoon getting out trellises and shepherd's hooks and re-connecting garden hoses and turning the outside water on. Josh & Amy came over, and Josh cut the grass while Amy & I chatted.

This evening, I was sitting on the breezeway enjoying the look of the yard, the scent of new-mown grass and the sound of my fountain, when one of my neighbors stopped by. I've given up caring if anyone catches me in my grubbies--all the vital bits were covered, and if he doesn't understand what a Sunday working in the yard is like, pffft.

Anyway, turns out Dave, who lives two doors down, is on a mission to convince the next three houses down (including me) to sell our properties to a real estate agent for a strip mall.

Erm, no. Not only no but Hell NO. I love this house. I told him how I dreamed of this house for years before I was able to buy it, and I've put hours of sweat equity into it, plus money for renovations and flowers. Then he asked if he could have the chestnuts from the tree at the back of the yard.

I really don't handle that kind of cheekiness well. I said yes, providing he left some for the groundhog, when what I wanted to say was "Bite me, bite me, bite me, bite me Mr. Brass-Balled Man."

*sigh*

Not selling my house, though. Nope.

Deep in the stacks

Welcome to Casa de Jammies. Our tour today starts and ends with the recently neatened library--please note the presence of shelves and the absence of cardboard boxes!

Voilá!

Oh dear oh dear oh OOPS

Having spent the day with my books and my shelves and my catalogue*, I find that I now have 8.5 shelves left empty, which wouldn't be bad if I didn't have 10 boxes of books. I've filled the built-in shelves in the living room with hardcover books (sorry, Snick, I know you liked it with just the knick-knacks) and filled the built-in hutch over the computer with my reference books (how did I wind up with all these dictionaries?). I have a shelf in the basement which should be enough to handle the overflow (at least until the box from Amazon gets here), but I don't know where I'm going to put it. It's an old one that my dad made out of 2x4s, which I washed and painted to match my bedroom. Why not put it in the bedroom? Because all of the bedrooms in this house are dinky, and mine already has too much furniture in it. However, I may be forced to take that route when I run out of space in the library/study. The shelf certainly can't go into the guest room--I'm aiming for elegance in there, and brown 2x4s certainly aren't elegant. Not that it's all that lovely in there at the moment, with Christmas presents, boxes, wrapping paper, mailing paper, etc. strewn all over, but next weekend, I should be able to do something about that.

I'm halfway between regretting lazing away Thanksgiving Day and glad I did. On the one hand, if I had started on the books then, I'd be done by now. On the other hand, it was a good break from the chaos and craziness that so often marks my life. And my life isn't even particularly stressful--I work, I come home, I clean, yak on the phone or the internet, read, maybe rot my brain with some television, sleep. Oh, and take care of the puppymonsters, but still--I don't know how modern parents manage it. Or even people who have, you know, those "life" thingies.

I keep buying presents for people I already have presents for, and still haven't gotten anything for my middle liddle brother or my younger nephew. Ack! I know what the kidlet likes, I just don't think my brother and sister-in-law will let me live to New Year's if I buy him $25 worth of MatchBox cars. ;) He's not a stuffed-animal kind of kid, so that's out, and yes, I probably will get him some clothes and books, but since his brother is getting a toy, I want Dip to have at least one shiny cool toy too. At this point, I'm about to get my brother one of those joke sacks of coal and leave it at that, since he won't give me ANY ideas.

For all of my friends, a blessing I found today, which I send with love and hope to all of you:

"May the light always find you on a dreary day.
When you need to be home, may you always find your way.
May you always have courage to take a chance.
And may you never find frogs in your underpants."

*A friend told me cataloguing my books is "sexily geeky" and when I told her it's alphabetically by author, she swooned. *grin* Made my day.

For those using Google to find bathroom pictures

First of all, you'd be better off checking out the Kohler gallery than reading random blogs. Most of the nightmares are in the "Traditional" section--you've been warned.

Second, if you're really that curious about the bathroom of a stranger, here are before and after pictures of mine. For those of you who don't know me, my entire interior was swathed in 1970s Mylar wallpaper when I bought this house two years ago, and I'm removing it at a rate of one room per year.

Before:



During the renovation:



After:





From frou-frou to plain jane. Any questions?