Saturday Cares

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Dee and Scattered No idea where I'm moving to. Don't need to know for another 15 months.

Dee, friends of ours came to us and ask to buy our house. They are in a long term lease so are looking to move in the summer of 2014. We'll sell privately to them so don't have to prep the house for sale. Plus, they are a great family so leaving this house for another family to move in just feels 'right.' And she is our church musician so we are leaving my piano for her.

In the next 15 - 16 months, I need to prepare to downsize. I'm doing round-one right now, the easy stuff except dd is making it hard by not wanting me to get rid of a thing until she moves back (sometime in the next 10 months - maybe.) She hopes to sell her furniture in BC and just take my excess furniture when she arrives (they'll move back Grandma's dining table and their bed - the rest of the furniture will be sold.) This works well, in theory, but it is slowing me down as I want to make breathing space to sort through things in this place so wanted to get rid of the "obviously not worth saving" furniture right away. Apparently, dd now wants the sofa she has hated since the day we bought it (just before she left home.) Plus some trashy bookcases and some of the office chairs.

Also complicating matters, ds is moving home in less than 2 months and will be living in Australia when we do move, so we'll have to move his stuff into storage once we move out of here. On the plus side, he'll be living here for about 6 months before he leaves so 1) I'll be sick of him and 2) he's going through everything he has here before he leaves and disposing of it himself. He is doing a good job of downsizing his stuff now and his goal is to need 5' x 8' x 7' of storage space to hold all his possessions except the car. His furniture is all IKEA so this might be a manageable goal.

In an ideal world, dd will move back, take about 1/2 of my excess furniture, will rent a house with a basement, will store her brother's things for me and will take his car off his hands. So there is a chance this will all go amazingly well.

In the meantime, I prepare for the likely outcome - dd not moving back, ds gone, me having to pay $300 per month to store everything that won't fit in the new place.

As for a new place - we know we are renting. We know we are going to a luxury apartment in the center core of the city. We know we need at least two bedrooms plus a den. Aside from that, we know nothing.

BTW: this might be a new record. I'm not sick. I'm also not s2s. I'm still in the eastern time zone, so yes, it is after 2 p.m. and I'm still in my pjs. Dh will regret buying me this fluffy dressing gown!

[Lilac]

Harriet, we got 7 inches out of the snow a week and a half ago. Then they were forecasting a blizzard starting last Sunday night into Monday. We didn't get a snowflake out of it. Starting 50 miles east of us, it hit the rest of the state hard.

Dh started tiling the shower ceiling yesterday. He needed an electric tile saw to finish it and went to get one this am. I had told him to buy anything he needed but he was too tight to. Then he found out the tile cutter that he bought earlier wouldn't work to cut off 1/4". I don't know why he was so stubborn about buying the electric saw. He wants to have all the tiling done by Monday night. At this rate, I don't see it happening but I am keeping my opinion to myself. He has been a grump.

Harmony, I hope you avoid getting what your dh has been hit with.

I babysat this morning, so I need to eat a late lunch. That's alright because dgs8 has a 5:30 game and I will eat a late supper.

[CathyS]

Dh was out yesterday morning and when he came home at 4:30, he got right on the phone to his Dr's office and told them that he had a pain in his kidney. They asked if he could be there within 15 minutes. He said yes, hung up, turned around and left. When he got home 1/2 hour later he told me the Dr told him he has a kidney stone, and prescribed a medication.

I love being so close (less than a 10 minute drive) to my Dr's office.


So on top of me having fallen at work on Thursday and Mike having a kidney stone... we don't feel like doing anything but dd has a roller derby game this afternoon and we said we would be there.

[Nancy]

Sat. chores: I making great progress here. Yea! I've cleaned the out side nest boxes and the chicken run.

Am glad for this next one to be done because I was dreading it I dug up the daff. bulbs and moved them to the front of the house and they are replanted now. The hens had a blast digging for worms where these bulbs were making it fun to see the progress.

One thing I do have left to do is clean inside nest boxes; I hate to disturb the hen that's setting on eggs so trying to figure out how to do that with out bothering her to much.

Lunch is done and I've rinsed the dishes and hand washed a shirt.

[helia]

4 pm now. I have:
x finished my Hebrew for Monday
x taken dd14 to synchro
x gone over my SS lesson and written out my notes.
x emailed dfriend A

That's it -- but some of those items took many hours. The a.m. routine is only about half done. . .

Dd14 has her good friend from church over right now. Too bad they go to different high schools.

Dh very kindly did my driving duties for me today; I had about 4.5 - 5 hours of driving. So, he did the run of picking up the University students and taking them to the airport (half an hour or so down the interstate), picked up dd14 from synchro, took dd14 to the oboe repairman, stopped by the groc. store en route home so we now have fixings for simple pasta for tonight. I will likely take dd14 to a friend's house (a friend from elementary and middle school) this evening; they are meeting there and then going to a Univ. ice hockey game tonight. I think the friend's mother will bring her home, but I'm not sure.

Harriet, my girls get up quite late; dd14 is always the first one up, around 6:50/6:55. Dd17 is up around 7/7:05. They need to be out the door around 7:15/7:20. No long beauty prep for them! LOL! Showers happen at night, their choice. School starts at 7:40 and they need to be at the building around 7:30/7:35 to get to their classes on time. I think they cut it quite close, but that is dd17's specialty - and she is the driver. We do live less than 2 miles from the school. They don't use their lockers at all, so they go straight to class w/out stopping anywhere, saving some time. This school's lockers are unbelievably narrow, so narrow they're practically useless. Well, my girls have deemed them useless. . . . They could only fit a couple textbooks. I'm not sure a heavy winter coat would fit. Dd14 carries her oboe, along with all the rest of her stuff, with her from class to class. Dd17 also carries everything in her backpack from class to class. Classes are over for dd14 at 3:30, and at 2:30 for dd17, though she often stays after to tutor or study or go to a meeting of some sort or other.

Dh goes to bed when he needs to; for a while, he was regularly going to bed around 1 or 2 a.m. b/c of an overwhelming amount of work. He gets up later than the rest of us, around 8, unless he has an early meeting. He often works some at home in the mornings; he says his office is very distracting. He is on the same schedule as his grad students and the other profs; he can send an email to a colleague at 12:30 a.m. and get a reply within minutes. I try very hard (often unsuccessfully) to be in bed by 11 pm. THe girls are often not in bed until close to 11 pm, depending on studies and activities that afternoon; occasionally, I'll go to bed before them. I'm curious, was I talking about schedules here at some point?

OK, I'm going to clean up the kitchen and take care of a lol. I'll start dinner at 5 so we can eat together at 6. I'll need to leave at 6:45 to get dd14 to her friend's house.

[Nancy]

I got interrupted ~ and had forgotten to post that I removed some leaves from the other corner of the yard.
I need to load dishes in the dishwasher.
Counting the yd. work for my exercise today.

Found a wooden shaped duck and h. put it on a stake so I can put it in the garden dgd wanted to paint some thing the other day so we can do that when she's feeling better.

[ellyphant]

Having a nice, slow day here. I was in pj's until about 1:30. Read for a while, dealt with the mail, unloaded dw, started one lol.

DH did 5 little chores that I can now take off the list! The biggest of these was hanging a new light fixture that has been sitting here for about 2 months. I have learned to wait patiently. He has to be in the mood for his handyman chores.

Made up the bed, but now DH is taking a nap in it. We both feel a little down about the new reality of DMIL's situation. DD had potentially bad news about her job this week. Change is a certainty in life. It will all work out, I'm sure.

[scattered]

Well, haven't gotten a whole lot done except DS20's and my taxes, Federal are e-filed and States saved to be printed and mailed. Now I think I am going to go take a nap... will try to get something done when I get up.

To-Do List
Coffee
answer Emails
make To-Do list
s2s
load Tax software
finish taxes
E-file both DS20's & My Taxes
nap
collect laundry
feed Bert & Ernie w() d() f/h() p/a()
Make coconut milk/oil
cut up pork roast
make dinner

BBL

[Harriet]

helia, I had just been sorta complaining about having such an early alarm for high school here, and wondered if your household also had to be that early, and how you and dh handled it. I'm certainly happy for you that you don't have to be so early and are close to the school. Here the guitars all have to be placed in the guitar teacher's room in the orchestra area and locked down before school time. It would actually work out okay for dd to carry it around, however cumbersome, but I can see why the administration wants them under lock and key. Unfortunately, the orchestra side entrance is not open in the mornings and the only entry is across the school. There is just no reason for HRH to get up as early as dd and I, and basically he keeps his night-owl hours and just tries to tune us out in the mornings.

Review - Dd14 gives a big thumbs up to The Croods movie, and all three who went to the preview (the mom and the 2 girls) think it would have beaten Brave had it come out in 2012. High praise.

I got her to her meeting on time and spent my waiting time trying to be efficient. I got my hair trimmed and went to Kohl's.

At Kohl's I found a necklace for dstepgd's bday and printed out the registry info for dnephew's upcoming bridal shower. I picked out a bridal gift - their everyday flatware - but the store didn't have it in stock. So they ordered it for me there in the store, to be delivered free to my home. Helpful, but since they aren't a store that carries it, saleslady couldn't figure out how to take the item off the registry info. Sigh. The saleslady, an asst manager, said for me just to do it when I got home, on my own computer. Double Sigh. You can't DO that. I should have seen the red flag when she said that - of course a dept store can't allow that kind of changes on the screens a customer sees at their home. Anybody could go in and make all kinds of mistakes or mischief.

So I've spent a lot MORE time frustrated here and on the phone with them. A manager is going to try to do it tonight, after the fact, from the computer in his office. I hope it works. HRH says he doesn't see the problem, but I know it is a disappointment for a bride/bridgegroom to get two of the same gift rather than filling out their needs well, and immediately have to start taking things back. Also it's frustrating for a shower attendee to see she's brought exactly the same thing someone else did.

Update - hmmm... ... The manager handled it, but perhaps not well. He just deleted their flatware from their registry info. The only thing wrong with that is that their registry then doesn't show that gifts are being purchased for them, which isn't very optimistic! Note to self - don't purchase this way in the future. When you do the transaction at a store that doesn't stock the gift registry item, it's just not satisfactory. Now the flatware had better arrive in time. Shower is Sunday. Saleslady said it would be here in plenty of time but when I get home and see my email about the purchase, it looks iffy, and I'll have to have time to wrap.

[BookSaver]

Trip to neighboring Tiny Town was a pretty drive through the country on dry roads. Did not find anything useful at their hardware store, but had a nice conversation with the man who owns the fabric store. I will be reimbursed for the gift card that we'll give away at sewing group Tuesday night, and other than that I bought 2 small spools of thread -- such a big spender!

Kathryn ~ What would be the possibility of you & Ken (and maybe DSIL's parents) buying your DD a new sofa as a housewarming gift when she moves back instead of storing the one she hates? Maybe you could get a good deal on sofa with bookshelves at Ikea or a Habitat for Humanity store? That would free up some of your space since she won't need them for almost a year. Plus they would deliver right to her door instead of you having to move big furniture ...

I'm so impressed that you are jumping right into downsizing this early.