SATURDAY SUCCESS

[DeeClutter]

Didn't have to think long on a title for today -Feline Friend named it last night. Thank you!

I've been awake since 5:15 -actually slept pretty well last night, except for waking up for about an hour with some itching bites on my calf. Was going to stay in bed and stay warm (it was 62 in here this morning). Finally relented, got up and turned on the furnace for ONE round ONLY.

Had a family get-together at DS-R's last night. What a great evening we all had. DDIL's ddad & dstepmom came as did one of her daughters and her sister. Then there was our whole family -think everyone who's in the area now. Was so good to see all the dgks together. DD left about 9:30 last night for FL. Finally after all summer, dgs2 was calling Aunt J---. She loved it.

One funny ddil told us last night about dgs2 -last Sunday it was time to get ready for church and she and dgs were chatting away. She asked him if he'd like to go back to Disney World sometime & he never really answered. But then he was super good about getting ready to go and was very pleased to get in his car seat. A short time later she pulled into the parking lot at church. His response: "WHHAAATT??!!?? This place again?" Guess that he just turned 2 last month, made it funny. It was then she realized he had thought they were leaving for Disney. She was somewhat surprised he rememberd. I'm not.

[Twins' Mom]

It's hard living with a workaholic, makes me feel lazy and worthless unless I'm working full tilt all the time.

Harmony said this night before last, and Dee quoted it yesterday a.m. and I meant to comment on it also. Dh works so hard and I do feel like a slug at times. OTOH, I do remind myself that it's okay to relax and enjoy and not go at full speed all the time and that I'm happier when I'm not running around with my hair on fire like I used to be...

Another extensive line of thinking for me is how many changes the last three years have seen. I became temple president three years and 3.5 months ago. Since then:
-kids graduated HS and went away to college
-we built a new house, moved from a house we had lived in for 16 years, and sold the old house
-I quit work = "retired"
-mother's memory and cognition has declined steeply and my involvement increased
-dsis has become my responsibility as guardian and conservator

So in terms of life stress, I've had a few busy years and owe myself recovery time. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

DMacs has PT in an hour or so - I need to get busy in a minute.

[FelineFriend]

Dee, That's too funny about Ddil and your 2-year-old grand!

That's cool that you used the same opener I said I had on my display card in my office last night.

Twins, My, you do have a lot of responsibility and have had a lot of change in 3 years.

I got up early, had a nightmare in the night about Aliens among us all, and was scared to get back to sleep. DH left with Dgs at 7:25 a.m., so they left 35 minutes earlier than planned. It'll be quiet without Dgs here now. He's such a good kid, but his parents say he's a troublemaker at home. I can't believe it! He's caught in the middle between 3 teenager big bros and 2 toddler bros and 1 baby girl. I think it's more his placement in the family line than anything, which causes the problem and maybe he does act out at home more than the others do or gets blamed more. He was delightful here, polite, helpful, and so grown up. We'll be missing him a LOT.

I need to run, get breakfast, coffee, etc... I "plan" on laying back today, but will walk, do letters, read, crochet, do laundry and tidy up the house again. I might do a House Blessing or Conga, too, in baby steps on and off today.

Good Morning to all of those coming here after me. Waving to you all! Have a great Saturday!

[Emptynester]

Just found a great fiction book "Confessions ofa Decluttering Junkie" by Chautona Havig. It was on Pixel of Ink a couple days ago so it was free or cheap. Not a how-to but sfory of declutter-er.

Have a memorial service this morning and another on Wednesday. This one is easy-just cookiies and coffee. The next one is a dinner.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

My success so far is getting the spare bedroom whipped into better shape. Ds has been in there so it hasn't progressed beyond my original push to get it habitable for ds. He is at the house today so I got in and did the following:

1. made the bed, dusted and vacuumed
2. put all his stuff into one box
3. took the 5 empty bins and the 4 full bins and transferred contents. The 4 full bins are giant and won't fit easily in the storage locker so I've been moving empty ones out to the house for ds to use when he gets his barn/storage shed/cellar
4. put febreeze on the stale smelling wool blankets and have run those for 20 minutes on fluff in the dryer. They are now laid out in front of the balcony door to get rid of the febreeze smell (the musty smell is gone.)
5. restacked the now-full bins in the corner. Because they are smaller, it looks better. Not perfect but better.
6. removed the large bins from the room.
7. Unpacked a small box of knick knacks and distributed throughout the apartment.

The room isn't perfect and still needs the dust ruffle put between the bed frame and the floor (there's a ruffle between the mattress and box spring but since the bed is on risers, it needs a longer dust ruffle.) Not sure how I'll do that, still thinking about a solution, One option is to sew the second ruffle onto the first. Another option is to lay the ruffle over the boxes themselves but that will leave the risers in view (which may be a good thing to avoid toe-stubbing.)

We are going to a movie with dd this afternoon so need to head out soon. It is a repertory theatre so there are few showings and long lineups. Not sure what I'm doing about lunch. Just finished my cereal a moment ago.

[Lady Maverick]

My success for the day is that I REALLY wanted to crawl back into bed this morning, but I pushed through and am now glad I did.

Yesterday I followed hourly schedule for first half of the day then met Real estate friend for lunch to discuss selling MPB. AFter lunch we made 6 stops which were mostly doing school cloth shopping for LO & DGS17. Then we spent 2 hours at Chuck Cheese celebrating LO DFriend birthday. Followed by MPB PM chores. It was a late night (more like early morning) before our day was done.

This morning we had breakfast at home before heading out to participate in a parade. AFter walking in the parade with the temps in the mid 90's we were soaked with sweat. We made one more stop on the way home (looking for crocs for LO) and was so thankful to finally arrive at home and looking forward to cooling down and exhaling a bit.............however, it didn't work that way. We walked into our home to discover our home A/C has stopped working. Argghhhh! It is going to be above 100 degrees today so this is not only uncomfortable but also dabbling on the edge of being dangerous. I've called the HVAC repair people and they have us on their list. They estimate 9 hours until they arrive here (late tonight).

[FelineFriend]

LadyMaverick, I hope they'll be able to fix your A/C earlier than late tonight. It's a bad time of year to have A/C go out.

My successes so far have been to crochet my dcat a catnip pillow. She's crazy in love with it and is so fun to watch! I've been crocheting on Dgs-5.5's afghan.

I cleaned all 3 toilets. Dgs's toilet he used in the main bathroom was awful. I cleaned the rim, bowl, etc... but decided to spray Oust in there, before tackling the outside of the bowl, tank, and floor parts of the toilet. It stinks, so am thinking about washing the bathroom rugs and sweeping/mopping in there, too. I'm trying to do things in baby steps.

I have my journals out now. Some are in the office, some are in utility room cabinets with other books. I have 43 journals to read, which will give me some story ideas, too. It'll be a long drawn out job, but I want to do it. I'll save some of them, but will discard the journal pages to the burn bag, to burn outdoors when the burning ban is lifted.

I put some books in my walk-in closet on the shelf, found about 2 blue ink pens and 5 black in pens, all new, in my mini-bin, which houses some black journals, not written into yet. I put 3 pens around, where needed.

It's supposed to be 96* on Monday and that afternoon-evening, on into Tuesday they forecast T-storms. I hope they pass quickly. It's pretty here today, the doe and twin fawns, still with spots, have been feeding on berries, and it'll be in the 80's today.

I did some stretches and moving around to = 45 minutes now, with yoga moves. I'm starting to wear down because of getting up so early and going to bed at midnight. There's a new-to-us channel on cable called "UP" and they had a wonderful movie about a boy, his dog, his Gpa, Dmom, and her new vet boyfriend. I loved watching it. ♥ I fell to sleep quickly, but then had the nightmare about aliens being among us. Too weird.

Kathryn, You've got successes, too. WTG.

[Harriet]

We got water back shortly before my reunion. So, although I was clean for it, my hair looked pretty bad. Just one of those things. Our pump has finally started giving us trouble after 36 years. The fellow who installed it for us is the one who came to work on it yesterday. It was very enjoyable to see him and catch up. While we are delighted that this much great service was had from the pump, the potential $3,000 price tag for the fix is not good news!

(Lady M, I hope your repair job will be less costly!)

The reunion was more pleasant than I'd thought it might be. We basically started right in sharing the good, the bad and the ugly with great transparency, and gossip was minimal. I learned sadness: that a classmate had recently died, another's wife had recently died in an accident, that sort of thing. But I learned a lot of happy things, and we all gave some advice, some tips that I was glad to have been there to share. Being sandwich-generation, learning executor-ship and caregiving, changing careers midstream, experiencing heartache along with grown children - so much to chat about. Pizza was wise, since we wanted to talk, not eat, anyway, and the throw-away boxes let us continue without much clean-up. We decided on the next mini-women's-reunion theme, which will be a murder mystery night.

One story was so I must share it - ya'll will shake your heads. We all commiserated with our classmate who was named executor in the will of her very modest-living-homemaker stepmother, rather than any of the 3 natural children. She received a middle-of-the-night phone call from her step-sister, who said she had just had a dream in which the mother came to her and told her that she had actually been secretly wealthy, and classmate had stolen all her money. Caller demanded to know where this store of money was, and without an answer, then called her 2 other siblings to tell about the dream. And since then, classmate has not been spoken to by any of them, because they all believe that it is their sister's dream visit that is reliable, not any of the estate documents or bank statements, etc.

I didn't eat well - not too much pizza but then there was an assortment of cake squares and I became absentminded. Also we could bring our own wine if we liked, so I brought chilled Cheerwine (which I thought was quite clever of me) and that was what I ended up drinking, rather than ice water as I should.

[Nancy]

Having internet issues today. Deviled eggs are done. Watering now went to a yd. Sale. Bbq later on.

[Lady Maverick]

SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WE HAVE A/C!

DH took the outside unit apart and cleaned/filed the contact points. The A/C started working again! I have called HVAC company back and cancelled the weekend emergency call. I did set up an appoint for them to come next week on a regular call to replace the part that failed today.

**EXHALE relief***
***INHALE COOL AIR****