SHEs Organized

What is your motivation today?

I am motivated this morning to get back into school schedule. I have some tweaking to do that takes trial and error to get the timing right. Before I work with LO's on tweaking his morning cards, I want to get mine tweaked. One of my morning goals I'm tweaking is to be back in the house by 7am with several key areas completed - S2S, Quiet time, Bible study, garden and exercise. I have hit the ground running and keep focus to fit it all in by my goal time. There are only 2 school days this week (Thu & Fri) so I have a few days to work on the timing.

Busy day here, I'm at dr office now w dd as follow up for her stress fracture. At one p.m. both kids have appts w dr who prescribes ds' add meds at 1 p.m. And then at three dd is getting a haircut. This morning in between I am going to try to get to CVS minute clinic as I believe I have a UTI. I was up and down all night and had a low grade fever and blood in urine (sorry if tmi) I am feeling a lot better now but I suspect that I need an antibiotic.

Very nice dinner last night w dfriend. Different story from him, the truth is probably somewhere in between. We reassured him that he should come sit w us at the HHD services. She is so well known and highly thought of that he's afraid of ill feelings toward him. Food was wonderful, steaks, squash casserole and caprese salad; peach cobbler and ice cream for dessert.

I'm motivated to do decluttering/dejunking. The exercise room is an inspiration right now and our bedroom is close behind (although I know that drawers and closets need thinning, whereas the exercise room is all done.)

I *need* to do paperwork. That isn't really dejunking, that's just trying to get my table back.

While emptying the dish rack this morning, I did clean out one of my utensil drawers. I have a huge kitchen with 11 drawers, 2 of which are home to utensils (plus I have a jar on the counter with the frequently used items.) So I went through one of the drawers and emptied out all the items I think I can do without. I'll save a couple of the wooden utensils for grandchildren to play with but the rest will be sold/donated.

I also polished the silver pieces that are out on counters, etc. One of my grandmothers had what seemed to me to be a grand house (although size-wise it was probably only 3000 square feet.) As a member of their small city's society, she had all the trappings (and servants to handle it) and so I have a lot of her silver pieces from fancy candelabras, to tiny pill bottles with a silver lid and I use as many of them as I can on a daily basis. So today I put on the Hagerty silver polishing gloves and walked around giving a quick polish to the pieces I can see.

I used to polish all my silver 3x per year but now it just gets done before Christmas or when there will be a major dinner at the house. Actually, there may be one of those on September 8 so I must start thinking about polishing - I bring all the silver to the kitchen, put on a great movie (or 2) and work away.

Good morning, villagers ~
I'm seeing a reminder that I supposedly have 2 PMs, but when I check my Inbox there are no new messages. Not sure if that means they were cancelled or what.

Poor DH has had a rocky start to a vacation day. He has been trying to care for some kittens that were born in our yard a month or so ago. Their mother disappeared over a week ago and I'm afraid she was killed by a car on our busy street. She left behind 4 kittens and they were old enough to eat canned food and kitten chow, so that's what DH was trying to feed them. Unfortunately I guess they were just too young to survive without their mother. DH found 2 of them dead on our front porch Saturday morning. The remaining 2 looked and acted fine yesterday, but this morning DH found 1 in bad shape. We took both to the veterinarian as soon as they opened, and neither kitten could be saved.

I asked DH once what he would do if he won a million dollars in the lottery. He didn't even hesitate, he said he'd open a cat spay & neuter clinic here in town. He loves cats and it bothers him a lot that so many are abandoned here and they have such hard lives. There is a group that DH feeds every day, several that he tamed enough that we were able to catch them to be fixed. There are always a couple of females hanging around that we can't catch to have spayed, so every year there are new kittens in our garage or under the front porch. Very few survive and I'm not sure if DH gets more upset when he finds them dead or when they just disappear.

I try not to be too involved in the outdoor cat care in part because I'm the one who does all care for the 3 indoor cats. I had to learn a long time ago not to get too attached to the outdoor ones, it's just too heartbreaking. Plus DH is the one who started feeding them many years ago against my wishes. I only help when he needs an extra hand or times like this morning when he needs support.

(((Bookie & DH))))

Test run to school went okay. At first LO's anxiety was through the roof even though he knew this was only practice. By the time we finished, he was back to his normal self. His counselor thinks (hopes) next week will bring a great improvement in LO's anxiety level. We will continue to do practice school runs the next two days in hopes it will enable him to have a great first day of school.

next up - focus on CFO cards

Now I have a reminder at the top of the page of 3 PMs, but they are not showing up in my Inbox. I have logged out and back in, and also logged out and changed to a different browser. Not sure what else to try so I hope they are not urgent.

Follow up to a post from Harriet yesterday:

BookSaver, the way I've been able to tell you were discombobulated was that we heard so little about the trip! Your posts concentrated on everything that happened right on its heels. I think you ended up really busy afterward, and that's probably what's left you feeling this way.

True, the whole month of July was extra busy with family stuff, volunteer work and the sewing day camp, and preparations for the big trip. Then last week after the trip was even more running around -- and a bunch of negative stuff in both the sewing and library groups that I've been trying not to rant about here.

The trip itself ... hmm ...
The business meetings were informative, but it feels like we spent a lot of time airing problems rather than celebrating successes. It didn't help that, although the hotel was lovely and very clean, the food was awful and even the coffee was bad. That tended to keep a lot of people in a bad mood -- and it's hard enough for me to spend that long surrounded by strangers in the first place, let along strangers who are constantly complaining.

It was disappointing since I had looked forward to being surrounded by people who love sewing and needle arts, and being inspired by our shared creative hobby. The proportion of joy to complaining was off balance.

Trying to get back home last Monday was a struggle, all day waiting in airports or on runways. Again surrounded by too many unhappy people and way too much noise. Then finally back home to jump right into trying to resolve "situations" -- ugh.

On the positive side, I had several good classes and a couple of excellent teachers. I was right to disbelieve claims that "you'll leave class with finished projects" but each project is far enough along that I can easily finish them.

In fact, I did finish the Tshirt jacket that I talked about before the trip. It turned out to be quick, easy, and cute so I'm planning to make more. I'll describe it more over in AC&N.

I took 5 hands-on sewing classes and 3 lectures. The lectures were all excellent.

And the "situations" will be resolved soon as long as I keep my own focus on looking for the best possible results for the survival of both groups. I can only work on my own attitude, not anyone else's.

I have very little motivation these days, just thinking if I can keep going a bit and not sit and veg all day that will be a plus.

I'm still kicking myself that I was not able to get myself going enough to go to church yesterday. I got up but I was so groggy I curled up on the couch and was unable to rouse myself enough to get ready. Somehow this has got to end.

These days I am ecstatic when I'm on top of dailies, when the kitchen isn't stacked up, when the laundry is not piled up. I did get some cleaning done in the kitchen yesterday. When I told DH what I'd accomplished he remarked that I must be feeling better. Ha! that was a drop in the bucket of what I usually accomplish - so I guess he has no idea what gets done on a daily basis around here!

Desk chores are done and I got my spreadsheets up to date.
I'd like to get a little mending/sewing done and then I'll just do what I can the rest of the day.

Booksaver, from living in country area, where we had lots of cats around, many of them got diseases because they didn't get vaccinations. We took care of them as we could, but many did not survive.

Booksaver, is your PM's box full? If so, you'll need to check some boxes and eliminate them. Then at the top there should be a line (clickable) that says "release new messages?" Click on that and see.

We're back from cardiac rehab. DGS8 and I waited in the car. Should have gone in today I guess. Dh had a time on the treadmill. About passed out. And they detected an irregular heartbeat So they have a call into the cardiologist. He's been having quite a few episodes of shortness of breath and absolutely has to stop and lean on something. Just hoping they get to the bottom of this. Of course the nurses at rehab said the same thing his visiting nurse has been saying -chest x-ray.

DD went back to school today -students start next Monday. Dsonil is heading to Palm Coast for a job interview on Friday. Have very mixed emotions about it -shouldn't but I do. If he should get this job it would mean selling their house and moving. Means a big change for us and for dd.