Slow day

I think I'm still recuperating from our trip. Or Something Else is going on. I felt really lousy after lunch today and went upstairs to take a nap. Then I got caught by the Cat Gravity Field on the bed and almost didn't get up again.

Nevertheless, I got through a box of books. Why are all the good books packed up in boxes? I am taking the "books" line item out of the budget and going through boxes from now on when I want to read something. There's also the pile of library books on the shelf behind me, but that's another story.

Speaking of library books, I just caught up with Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow series. If you enjoy murder mysteries that include a fair amount of humorous mayhem, these are worth checking out.

It is finally time to tackle the boxes from the storage locker that got stacked up in the garage. I am considering whether to bring them into the house and pile them up labeled with numbers like the group I just finished. (Mostly finished -- box #10 is still waiting for me.) I have some friends coming over tomorrow. Maybe they can distract me while I go through it.

But Box #10 is neither here nor there (it's in the dining room). And I'm pretty sure that I don't want to stack boxes in the front hall just yet. On Monday, my Rosh Hodesh group is coming over to bake hamantaschen. Some of them know about the boxes, but ... well, why hit them over the head with the state of our STUFF? Maybe after Monday, I'll get Sports Nut to move some boxes for me. And on Monday, I promise to post pictures of the hamantaschen. If not here, then on the other blog.

Okay, so back to the garage:

 

That red arrow is pointing to two boxes that came out of the garage today. Nothing too exciting about them -- they just contain the stuff I had put aside to Freecycle a while ago. It turns out that they didn't get buried under the stuff from the storage locker. Instead, they got placed in a position that I thought would be convenient and where I wouldn't lose sight of them. Right.

Stay tuned ... tomorrow I may actually tackle my arch-nemesis. Box #10.

The Lost Week and Decisions Made

I should never travel. I always seem to lose time when I get home again. In this case, it was about a week of what we used to call "least damage mode" -- i.e., trying not to do anything that was going to have to be redone once we woke up again.

So now I'm awake. In some ways, we have made progress on the "getting out of Dodge" front. The other day, I mentioned that the Wizard and I decided to move to the Eastern Time Zone. Most of the Wizard's consulting gigs are in Eastern or Central time, so this makes some sense. Next I made a list of states in the Eastern time zone, eliminated many of them (thanks to many years of having lived in the deep South, I have no desire to go back there again), listed commercial airports in each state and the airlines that flew out of each airport.

Friday night over dinner, we went through the list and winnowed it down. The short list was:

-- Boston/Providence
-- Pittsburgh
-- Philadelphia
-- Baltimore (mainly because it has an American League baseball team so we could see the Red Sox on the road)

On Saturday, there were more discussions. By the end of the day, we decided to return to the devil we know rather than starting all over again in a new town. So it's back to the Boston suburb from whence we came to Dodge almost 7 years ago. Probably. 99% sure.

First, we still have to decrapify and do something about carpets, not to mention many smaller tasks around the house and yard. So I hit the boxes with what I thought would be renewed fervor today. Of the 37 boxes that had been in the front hall, only 3 remained:

I thought I could get through all of these boxes today, but I guess I didn't count on falling asleep while wading through them. One was full of files that I thought would be a snap:

However, the file folders happened to be stuffed with offspring-related stuff -- school papers, reports, newspaper articles, cards and letters. I sorted the stuff out by offspring it related to, but they are each going to have to go through this stuff as well. And two of them won't be around until the end of March. I honestly don't know whether they want to keep any of this. I know I don't have anything from my early school years and I have never felt the lack, but I don't want to make assumptions about what they may or may not want to hang onto and lug around for the next 30 or 50 years.

In short, I only got through the one box and the vast majority of the contents of that box went back in for later sorting by the interested parties. Not much progress there.

The front hall, however, is now box-free:

We also ignored the Superbowl today in favor of playing Clue:

We thought the new version of the game is more confusing than the older version, but we liked being able to poison people. We think the makers of Clue should give us some blank weapon cards, however, so that we can kill people in new and inventive ways -- like stuffing them out an airlock or running them over with a car. Hmm.... kind of a bloodthirsty afternoon, all things considered.

One last thing, an updated shot of the Drama Queen's sitting room:

The trash continues to multiply.

Honey, I'm Home! -- And My 100th Post!!

To be honest, neither being home nor this being the 100th post is all that exciting. The Wizard and I went up to Boston over the weekend for a family Bat Mitzvah and we have been back since Sunday afternoon. That is, I have been back. The Wizard was back but now is gone again. Wizards are like that.

And I wouldn't have known this was the 100th blog entry if Blogger hadn't told me.

I felt the need to include some excitement because there isn't all that much to be excited about in terms of decrapifying. However, while away, we did make some progress on deciding where to go when we do finally get the hell out of Dodge. Ready? We are going to relocate to .....  somewhere in the Eastern Time Zone. That certainly narrows it down, doesn't it?

I am not going to show you the clutter that accumulated during the four days we were away. Nor am I going to admit that two boxes are still sitting in the front hall and that Box #10 still awaits. Nope. Not gonna do it.

Instead, look what I finished!

That, gentle readers, is Future Vet's enormous-size Wallaby -- i.e., a hooded sweater with a pouch for his hands. With optional cat.

Now for the filler. (From Wikipedia: In media, filler is material that is combined with material of greater relevance or quality to "fill out" a certain volume.)

Today I found the large dog in the small dog's bed:

I have no idea what that was about.

I also made cookies!

I'm not sure why I felt the need for cookies, either. It was just that kind of day.

I took a picture of the Drama Queen's sitting room. Quite a difference from the last picture, taken right after Media Guy went back to school after winter break.

I suppose I can't blame all of this on the Drama Queen. Her kitty, who can also be seen in many previous pictures of this room, is quite ill, so she has moved a space heater and his food in here in an effort to keep him more comfortable. Unfortunately, there isn't much more we can do for him. He has a mass in his chest that is definitely some form of cancer.

Someone in Boston asked about the bathroom progress and I realized that I never posted a final picture of the upstairs (master) bathroom because we didn't quite finish the work. That is, the major work is finished -- we just haven't had a chance to paint yet. At this point, it's probably going to have to wait until the weather gets warmer.

These pictures aren't great, but they should give you an idea of what was done while I was nursing broken ribs and a busted kneed last summer.

That floor had to be ripped up in spots and replaced, so it looks pretty good from where I'm sitting. And here's the inside of the shower:

 I'll post more comprehensive pictures when we finally do the painting and other finishing work.

To top off the day, I decided on the next knitting project. It's back to the Wallaby I left behind when Future Vet asked for one. This is where I left it:

Ah! Now you know my secret. I don't really do any knitting myself. The cat does it.