I'm Gonna Have a Good Day

I'm feeling anxious this morning.  Beautiful day, but too warm.  That's weird.  Last day of my weekend, and I want togeteverything done today . . . but I know that ain't gonna happen.  I need to find the balance . . . the happy medium . . . so my day feels solidly GOOD by the end.


I tried to achieve that yesterday by writing myself a reasonable list.  As I said, there were only 9 things on it, but I did get 5 1/2 of them crossed off.  Plus, I kept note of the items I did that weren't on the list.  So, following, are yesterday's accomplishments.  Items in red are those on the list, items in blue were the extras (but accomplishments, nonetheless).


(Yes, having just gone through the list and color-coded the tasks, it DOES help to list those things done that weren't on the list . . . shows me that even tho I didn't get everything done, I DID get a lot done.  Now I'll go back through and put in comments where required.)

1. Vacuumed flies upstairs.  Gawd, the flies!  Made some progress downstairs, but once I hauled the vacuum down and left the master bedroom for the day, it seemed like they tripled up there.  Yuck!
2. Vacuumed flies & cobwebs in kitchen.  I never would have gotten around to vacuuming the cobwebs that were taunting me from the high ceilings if I hadn't had to vacuum flies, so that's a bonus!
3. Dishes.
4. Vacuumed flies in utility / entry room.
5. Seed to wild birds.  'Tis the season!  It's so nice to see the bossy Blue Jays return to the feeder outside my kitchen window.  Chickadees and Juncos, too.
6. Tisdale.  I included this just as a reminder to tell you about this great, unbelievably CHEAP wine I've discovered!  Here, it sells for only $3.79 a bottle - in the big city, it's just $2.79 a bottle.  And, it's GOOD!  So, yeah, the vineyard is Tisdale.  It's a Californian winery.  So far, I've tried the Pinot Noir (not bad but nothing special) and the Pinot Grigio.  The Pinot Grigio is WONDERFUL!!!  I just love it!  I have a bottle of Chardonnay in the refrig but haven't gotten into it yet.  One of the clerks at the liquor store told me that the Chardonnay was entered in a blind taste test alongside some very high-end Chardonnays . . . and came in second!  So, see:  a bonus to being financially destitute . . . discovering fantastic wine that I never would have purchased before (being a bit snobbish when it comes to alcohol)!  But, desperate times call for desperate measures . . . and all that rot.  I've been missing my favorite cocktail (Whiskey-7) as I can't afford that anymore, but I figure saving up my change (NOT kidding!) for a good, cheap bottle of wine to treat myself is okay.  The happiness it brings me in relation to the expense is exponential.  ;)
7. Hanging baskets, houseplants.  The summer's hanging baskets are looking pathetic and need some TLC before coming in for the winter.  I started taking care of that process yesterday and then got some of the houseplants watered and fertilized while I was at it.
8. Vacuumed flies in kitchen.
9. Scrub kitchen sink.  Once the dishes were out of it, the now-visible sad state of the sink REQUIRED this!
10. Put together eBay post for canoe I'm selling for friends (which took WAY longer than anticipated).  Dunno why this always takes longer than you expect.  BUT, I've had 43 views, and 4 people are watching it . . . which is surprisingly wonderful!
11. Vacuumed flies in utility / entry room.
12. Tripped on a rug and damn near killed myself.  Just thought I'd share that for comic relief.  Just call me 'Grace'.
13. Cleaned litter box.  Had to be done.  1 down, 2 to go.
14. Scrubbed downstairs toilet.  Ditto.  Had to be done.  Needs a 2nd go-round for hard water stains, tho.
15. Cleaned up kitchen a bit.  But there's more to do.
16. Wrestled 853 pound ping-pong table out of pickup and into garage.  Last week, a ping-pong table was advertised for "free if you haul".  I LOVE playing ping-pong, and I've always wanted a table.  So, I brought the truck into town and met the gal getting rid of it.  It was in good shape, just older . . . and weighed, I kid you not, probably about 200-300 pounds!  They'd moved it into their walk-out basement before they'd finished the rest of the house and landscaping.  Now, 2nd story on the house and landscaping complete, there was NO easy way to get it out of the lower story and up one full story of landscaping to the pickup.  I'd asked Papa Pea if he'd assist me with the job, and I was heading back out to my truck to go get him (having seen that I DID want the table) when I spied . . . two contractors in the right place at the WRONG time (for them)!  It was PURE coincidence that they were there . . . working on the adjacent property.  I'd graduated high school with one of them, and the other had come out to look at some work that needed doing when the ex and I were building Swamp River Ridge.  Desperation over-coming shyness (I'd hefted a corner of the table and knew that Dad and I would have a HARD time moving the thing), I called out, "Hey, I need some muscle!  You guys wouldn't want to move a ping-pong table for me, would you?"  How could they say no?  ;)  Seeing how much THEY struggled, I'm actually not sure Dad and I could have done it on our own.  At one point, while trying to dead-lift it up the full story from the lawn below to the driveway above (over, as I said, lovely landscaping), the younger guy said to the older, "How's your knee?"  Oh, great . . . .  But, soon it was in the back of my truck, and I'd offered my gracious thanks and set to strapping it in.  Back at the office and really realizing what a chore that had been . . . and how I'd have been stuck had they not been there . . . I set to the task of thank-yous (see image at the end of this list).  I put together a set of my newest cards for Main Contractor Guy (well, more for his wife, I suspect) and a couple of - ha! - beers (a partial case of which Papa Pea had just gifted me with) for the guy I graduated with.  Handmade notes went into both of them, and then I carried the bag down to the floral shop where I sell so many of my cards.  The woman who owns it is the wife of Guy I Went to School With.  Done - appreciation expressed!  Now that I think about it, though, I should do the same for the woman getting rid of the ping-pong table (cards, that is, not beer) since the guys DID have to step on a ground-crawling planting of cedar (?) in order to get the behemoth to my truck.  Finally getting same OUT of my truck and into the garage before the forecast rain yesterday (which didn't happen) went much better than I expected, though.  Granted, the frame is a bit (okay, LOT) more bent than it was a couple of days ago, but I think that would have been a given before the table found its permanent placement, anyway.  But, aside from cracking my sore knee from that fall earlier in the summer, the job was done without personal injury.  That said, it ain't gonna MOVE from its current position until I have LOTS of muscle around again!  (My gawd, that was a long explanation!  Are you still with me?????) 
17. Extra poultry chores, hauled feed, etc.
18. Temporary fix for garage door.  I think I purposefully avoided mentioning this earlier, but I bashed in one of the carriage doors of the garage last winter while plowing.  I blame it on fog.  For those many months now, I've been looking at the gaping space at the top and knowing that I need to winch it in before snow (or more rain) falls . . . and before I can hire a proper fix done.  Anyway, I did that yesterday.  It's not completely winter-protected yet, but it IS better than it was 24 hours ago.
19. Cut, stacked wood.   Thanks to me letting the chain get over-dull and despite Papa Pea's much-appreciated attempt at sharpening it, I think that chain is done for.  Chainsawing is such a dangerous job that when it just "doesn't feel right", you need to STOP.  Such was the case yesterday.  So, I didn't get much cut up, but what I did cut got hauled and stacked.  And, that's one of my new woodcutting rules:  no matter how much or how little I cut in a single go, it must be hauled under cover and stacked.  Not much sense allowing freshly cut logs to soak up any new rainfall!
20. Searched, searched, searched for missing audio book tape.   I got through ALL the boxes of Paperwork To Sort with no sign of the cassette (NOR my cellphone cord, I might mention) plus looked underneath each piece of furniture on the lower level of the house (did find a LOT of Maisy's tennis balls, though, and TONS of dirt & dust)!  Nothin'.  Today I'll pull the cushions off all the chairs & couches and go through the stuff I've Hauled In & Dropped in the utility room.  Then, it's upstairs to continue the search.

Geez, what a long post!  Who knew I could talk so much about my chores!  ;)  Just think what I could have gotten done had I set to the next project at hand instead of taking the time to write it all down!  Ha!