Thursday Strength development

[DeeClutter]

Glad you're feeling a bit better, scattered.

TA-DA!! I finished typing the minutes for our September 10th, church council meeting (actually I've finished all my 5x5's). This is probably the first time I've done those minutes more than a day or so BEFORE the next meeting.

DH brought me several coupon sections from papers he was throwing out on Monday. Think will be my next up to do. I'm sure they'll be cutting back on the number of papers delivered here in the near future. Hoping there's some good coupons in there.

Off to do a bit more computer work and take a short rest. Will have lunch as soon as dh comes back. Have 1/2 of the steak bomber we had yesterday left -so will have that. Not sure about dinner yet. Plenty of things in our freezer to be used up. Think I'll pick up chili fixins' soon to have on hand for the next cool evening.

[Harriet]

4 is a little young to handle jean snaps. LO needs Land's End's Boy's Climber style but the only one they have left in the jeans fabric is the 8 slim. For some reason they were discontinued after many years, and there's quite an outcry over that right now in the online site's comments. Not cheap, the point of them is a full elastic waist with faux zipper flap, and an attached easy-open belt.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Just finished lunch. Since my last post I talked with my friend on the phone, dusted the main floor, washed off some sticky plant residue from a glass top table, sorted my water bottle collection and made sure I still had all the matching lids and moved a pile of stuff to the basement to be put away and brought a pile of stuff that belongs at the church up to the back door.

I'm going to watch one more episode of Monk and then head off to bed.

[Twins' Mom]

Waving to Mystery!

[Ivy]

Good Morning, Ladies!

DH is at Costco. Later today he goes to a retirees luncheon and can be gone 3 more hours.

Ta Da so far:

- Wrote in my journal
- Dress, fed, and ready for my day
- Emptied the dishwasher
- Stripped the bed and have sheets bleaching (am surprising DH)

My PODA:
1- To read ALL of my to do lists
2- To help DH make the bed up fresh
3- To finish laundry
4- To do gift crochet
5- Sort & do snail mail

Scattered, I'm glad you're feeling better.

Kathryn, The sticky plant residue from the glass table sounds like quite the job.

Harriet, Those sound like a nice style to have.

I had a reaction to the flu shot yesterday, but am 100% today. I called around to local pharmacies giving the shingles shot and prices vary from $210 - $219, so at Costco today, DH will ask them what their prices are.

Oh, learning how to button buttons and tie shoes is such a hard job when you're little. My Uncle taught me how to tie my shoes at age 4. Nobody else had the patience he had. I just couldn't "get" it and DMom gave up. Thank God for favorite Uncles.

Also, I'm way behind on my reading. I have magazines to read for work, books to ying yang and DH saves Reminiscence for me. Magazines are tidy in a magazine rack and basket in the master bedroom. Also, have magazines in a basket and decorative box in the great room. I don't know how to catch up except maybe to set a timer for 30 min., read, and then go do something on the house. Like maybe dedicate a week to doing something like that. I have a trilogy of books to read, I'm on chapter 9 and there are 26 chapters in the first book. Where does time evaporate to?

[MysteryWoman]

I can't believe it's been two years since I posted here regularly! Have missed you all and peeked in occasionally. The girls are getting big -- DD is 12-1/2 now and in 7th grade; dd is 10 and in 5th grade. (For those of you -- probably many -- who have arrived here during my "hiatus," if I can call it that, I use DD for my "big daughter" and dd for my "little daughter.") I can't imagine how everyone else's kids must have grown! I suppose the twins have graduated from HS by now -- or are they seniors? Are helia's all in HS? Can't remember if Harriet's DD is one grade or 2 ahead of my DD -- is she in 8th grade, or has she started HS? I gather from my peekings-in that lucylee's DS got married, and the world didn't end.

The girls started at a new school this year. It's a charter specifically aimed at gifted kids (not to go braggin' on my girls). We finally got a new principal at the parochial school last year, but things weren't changing fast enough for me; if the girls had been going into 2nd and 4th grades instead of 5th and 7th, we'd have probably stayed, but with high school looming ever closer, I didn't think we could wait -- and both girls loved the charter when they shadowed there; they were ready to enroll the next day if they could have. However, it's clear across town, so the car pool run eats up a good hour and a half of my afternoon between the drive and waiting in line. (Anyone want to recommend any good audio books?)

As for my absence, I've thought often of JusSue and wondered if she had a similar experience. (You may remember that she was having computer woes just before she disappeared -- though she had a fair share (or perhaps an unfair share) of other woes as well.) At any rate, in retrospect, it seems that maybe a virus infected my DSL modem and my computer as well. I ended up first having to do a complete wipe of the hard drive & reinstall the system, which meant backing up the system first (which I hadn't done in forever). Stupid, stupid, stupid me decided to back up onto the stack of unused CDs I had kicking around, which took forever. If I'd had a clue, I would have realized I could get a flash drive that would have done the trick all at once. Doing all that worked for a while, but meanwhile the power cord was getting more and more troublesome, and the battery, too, so I couldn't be sure on any given day that the blasted thing would even run. Then it got to the point where my OS was so old that I couldn't upgrade my Flash, while more and more websites were using Flash, so I had to get a new OS. Got a new power cord. Got a new DSL modem, too, and then the whole thing gave up the ghost. (Due to our budget, in the end, I spent over a year nursing the thing along before it forced us to bite the bullet & get a new machine.) When we got the new computer, the SHEs Organized site was one of the first I put on the bookmarks bar. But between the dodginess of the computer and that of the internet connection, I'd gotten out of the habit of using the computer for anything social. If everything was working, and I could actually get online, my first priority was to catch up on e-mail. Otherwise, the machine became mainly a word processor and, sometimes, something to play games on. Without regular access online, I was no longer reading blogs, keeping my own, going to FB -- or going to this site, and it continued with the new computer. I kept meaning to get back here, but it was no longer part of my routine.

When Harriet found me in the spring, I was in the throes of stress due to volunteering at school. There was the candy sale and the spring book fair, and I had agreed to be the person to handle the day when the traveling hands-on science exhibit came to our school. I was having a heck of a time getting volunteers; many of our previous stalwarts had left the school, whether because their kids had migrated to the school we're in now, or they'd graduated, or they'd moved, and a couple of others just couldn't get off work that particular day. We did eventually wind up with enough -- and a couple to spare in the afternoon -- but I was so stressed out that the nerve pain I sometimes get (that typically runs from my head down to my shoulder, and occasionally down my arm) was running halfway across my face, and I couldn't sleep for the panic attacks. I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

And once summer came, I ended up being entirely loosey-goosey. I tell you, if I had to write an essay on "What I Did on My Summer Vacation," I don't know what I'd write. We did the usual trip to Cape Cod for DH's family reunion, though we took the Southern Tier rather than visiting our friends in Dee's neck of the woods, because my friend was at a youth ministry conference. But besides that, I really didn't do much of anything. I guess after that spring, I really needed a rest -- but I still don't feel rested. I could really use a week without my children (and maybe without DH, for that matter), is what it comes to. I don't know if it's the first stirrings of adolescence or what, but the bickering/sibling rivalry has been increasing steadily, and it's really getting on my nerves.

At any rate, I'm glad to be back, even if it took a sad event like Indiana's passing to bring me back.

[MysteryWoman]

Waving back to Twins!

We are going through the shoe-tying thing here right now. Clearly I let dd go too long with Velcro shoes -- though I seriously wonder if tying shoes is going to end up being like driving standard shift, a skill that's nice, but not often necessary, to have. At any rate, this was the first day she tied a proper bow successfully all by herself. (Though she didn't quite think it was a proper bow -- she's such a perfectionist she'd put any one of us to shame -- and I know we have some serious perfectionists here!) And it was only one shoe; she got frustrated tying the other, and DD ended up tying it for her.

I've got a half hour to :45 before I have to leave to pick the kids up. In that time, I'd like to:
• flip the wash
• clean up my lunch & get the dishwasher started
• clean off the dining table

BB, I hope, when I'm back from the car pool run!

[Harriet]

I gather from my peekings-in that lucylee's DS got married, and the world didn't end.

Yes, that would be the truly amazing news, Mystery. How quickly you picked up on that! (Oh, I love it!)

That signature line of yours, again may I say... ... just pinpoint accurate, is what it is.

Dd14 (sigh) is always one of the youngest in her class - I think you and I have mentioned that. She is in 9th grade, yes first yr high school. A very large high school, but one that recently won high honors. So we see the good in it. So far, so good.

Thanks for the news about the girls, hi to Mystery Man. Ah, sibling rivalry. I think they are around the age I used to make my 2 oldest listen to my long philosophizing about "only one sibling in the whole wide world, only one person to someday remember with you how it was as you grew up, to remember your dear old mother and father with, and you'll need the other all your life, and your poor mother never had a sibling did she, and how would that be, what if you lost each other, how sad would you be, you need to THINK about that for a while, young (lady, man)" etc, etc. Eventually, they gravitate toward each other to get you to shut up.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

I have housework to do. I'll probably mop the foyer floor but I might use the scrubber on it too. The kitchen floor is due for a scrub so I have to decide how I'll expend my energy. Stay tuned for an exciting update!

Time for the great reveal (as they say on the home makeover shows!)

I used the scrubber on both the foyer and kitchen floors (it is by B-mop and has a scrubbing surface on one side so I scrub with soapy water and then use my Vileda mop to rinse.)

The floors are drying now so I haven't dumped the rinse water (I finish mopping away from the laundry room) but it looks awfully dirty and the kitchen floor looks much, much, better.

I'm off to nap now.

[OKay]

Mystery - your posts are such a joy to read! I suspect, you would be a best selling author if you ever wrote a book.

I tracked down the optic fiber easement issue for MPB (dead line is tomorrow) and got that taken care of. I tried to make myself work on paperwork. I took a huge stack and spread it out on the dining room table in preparation of attacking one stack at a time......but I just didn't have the mental capability to do it. After spending 2 days working on those dratted court documents, my brain is fried.

Sooooo......I decided to give myself a pass and spend my time working on next weeks focus (inventory/storage). I decided to inventory the big chess freezer .....which means it had to be defrosted first. That took forever because the ice was built up about as bad as I've ever seen it. I gathered several laundry baskets, large tubs, and cardboard boxes so as I took food out of the freezer (is full to the tip top) I could put into categories (beef, chicken, cheese, pork, bread, fruit, vegetables, etc). As i put things back into the freezer in an organized way, I wrote down everything and how many of each. I'm glad to have that little project done!

It is sprinkling here today so I'm not doing my normal MPB chores before picking up LO from school. I'm going to put my feet up and practice being a slug for the next 22 minutes.