So many thoughts, so little time
You know, this blogging stuff is HARD! Oh....it isn't hard for me to rattle on about stuff, but it is hard to find time to sit down and DO IT....and I especially have trouble getting the pictures inserted. It isn't that I can't do it, it is that it takes TIME and I am not patient lately. I assure you that I am CONSTANTLY taking pictures with either my camera or my iPhone of things to blog about....so I THINK about blogging all the time, but life does get in the way!
I have been reading, I have been cleaning, I have been doing aftercare for Emmie and now am (for another week) doing her before care....which just involves her sitting here for about 45 minutes before I drive her over to school and drop her in the carpool line.
AND, Ron and I took officer positions with the retirement club we belong to (The Big R). I am the secretary and Ron is the treasurer. The beginning of the year has several things that both of us must do that are time-consuming: collecting annual dues, writing receipts, printing membership cards, and typing up a new directory. We copy the directories to deliver to the membership and especially the calling committee....and also do four newsletters a year...the first being due out in early January! Now that we have most of those chores behind us, it is time for me to get the boxes of stuff which was passed on to us all organized and find a place in my house for this stuff to live!!!!
Add to that the fact that my recent deeper housecleaning (my "spring" cleaning always happens when I take down the tree and put away the decorations....but more about that later) found me standing in my guest room staring into the largest closet in my house and wondering how to get rid of some of the stuff. Half of the closet...possibly 3/4 of the closet...is full of sewing. My machine, a serger, a cabinet on wheels, a plastic drawer unit full of patterns and miscellaneous, stacking bins full of fabric...and several shelves with an assortment of stuff. I'm not fibbing....some of that fabric has been around since my kids were little.
So...I have decided that I am going to get involved in some service project that will use upsome most of my fabric. After all....I can always go to the store and buy fabric if I want/need to sew something. Right? WRONG!!! Do any of you sew? If you do, have you noticed how the fabric departments are disappearing from the big box stores? Here in Baton Rouge, even the fabric CHAIN store closed its branch closest to me....and that was probably 12-15 miles away ANYWAY!!!!
In the first paragraph I mentioned that taking the time to blog is hard. I have to tell you that I was SO excited when I got this new laptop....it has the slot for the memory card right straight from the camera. Ok...I have a cord that connects the camera to the computer, but somehow I lost it and actually am on cord number 2 but that is another story. Anyway...thought the slot would make things easier. Here's my problem:
The picture on the left shows a normal SD card and it is the size of the slot in my computer. The tiny little chip on the right in the same picture.....THAT is the card in my camera! Ok....in fairness to the camera....it came with an adapter. The picture on the right shows the little chip/memory card (mini-SD card) being inserted into the adapter, which then fits into the slot in my computer. Aaargh! And I have noticed that pictures taken from my iPhone are always sideways! I download them to my computer, then I rotate them, then I browse for them from this blog post, and download them into the blog. Even after rotating them, they are coming in sideways! Another Aaaarrrgggghhh! Now I have figured out that even though I have rotated them and they are appearing the way I WANT them in my picture file, I have to rotate them BACK to wrong, and then BACK AGAIN to how I want them. I just hate all these extra steps and that is PART if why I am not blogging more frequently!
I'm trying.
* * *
I mentioned that I was "spring cleaning". Actually....for years it has been my habit to clean the storage area where I keep my holiday decorations at the time I put away my Christmas things. We have lived here 5 years now and keep the holiday decor in the top of the shed on the end of our RV parking cover. It was a very tall room when we moved here, but my dad helped Ron build a loft with stairs and I had purchased plastic shelving and tubs. Before we moved here, we had a walk-in attic in our 'big house' and had insulated the area and put up "blue board" walls and decked the floors. Ron built shelves there and one end was dedicated to Christmas. Regardless of where, when Christmas is over it is time to clean. I sweep and sort and re-lable everything.
But last November, when I was carrying tub after tub down the stairs of the loft and into the house by myself (because I seem to always decorate when Ron is at the camp for opening deer hunting weekend) I decided that I should consider moving my holiday decor to the BOTTOM part of the room and no longer carry boxes up and down those stairs. So, on the first nice weekend after Christmas I started. First I emptied most of the bottom of the room we call the RV Shed. This area is about 10' by 20' and has a small garage-type door. There is also a stairway that takes up some space but it is open underneath. I describe it only to give you an idea of size. You have NO idea how full of junk it was! This is some of the stuff that I had pulled out which was going back in after I was done!!!
Anyway....after it was mostly emptied, I used the shop-vac to get one end clean.
\I was watching carefully for this type of stuff...especially after finding the egg sacs of the brown widow spider in that storage shed earlier this summer. (Yes...BROWN widow....and after identifying the egg sac, research online revealed: "A University of Florida arachnologist claims brown widow venom is twice as potent as black widow venom" )
So I got one end pretty well cleaned the first day. On the second day I spent a lot of time trudging up and down the steps and removing all of the tubs from the plastic shelving. I dismantled the shelves, moved them down and reassembled them. The end of the second day looked like this:
Over the next couple of days I got a lot of the boxes that were already packed moved onto these shelves. During that week following, I spent time each day wrapping (or re-wrapping) and labling and packing up figurines and other decorations. Since I was putting things in tubs, I am thinking it would be so much easier to know WHAT was in the tubs. I don't use all of my Christmas stuff every year...but I also do not remember WHAT is WHERE from one year to the next. I plan to create a directory of sorts to help me with this.
All of the above took place a couple of weeks ago. It currently (and finally) looks like this:
Also inside, there was the added chore of taking my four snowflake lights out of my front windows. I might have mentioned in an earlier post that this house has something called "magnatite" windows, which are plexiglass panes that are affixed to the inside of our aluminum single pane windows by magnets which are glued to strips of wood. There is air space between the aluminum window pane and the plexiglass pane and it works pretty well. But my blinds are (and must be) mounted right up against the plexiglass, leaving no place to hang my snowflakes EXCEPT for between the panes. This is fine but for the fact that the blinds being so tight up against the plexiglass makes it very difficult and time-consuming to get the panes up and down. Ron helped me put the snowflakes IN the space BEFORE Christmas. That wasn't fun. I decided it was safer for our marriage if I took them OUT by myself. Sometime in the spring we might remove all of the blinds in the windows and position them a little farther away from the plexiglass panes so this process will be easier. Anyway...this project took me most of one afternoon just to take down the snowflakes and put the windows back together.
I have been reading, I have been cleaning, I have been doing aftercare for Emmie and now am (for another week) doing her before care....which just involves her sitting here for about 45 minutes before I drive her over to school and drop her in the carpool line.
AND, Ron and I took officer positions with the retirement club we belong to (The Big R). I am the secretary and Ron is the treasurer. The beginning of the year has several things that both of us must do that are time-consuming: collecting annual dues, writing receipts, printing membership cards, and typing up a new directory. We copy the directories to deliver to the membership and especially the calling committee....and also do four newsletters a year...the first being due out in early January! Now that we have most of those chores behind us, it is time for me to get the boxes of stuff which was passed on to us all organized and find a place in my house for this stuff to live!!!!
Add to that the fact that my recent deeper housecleaning (my "spring" cleaning always happens when I take down the tree and put away the decorations....but more about that later) found me standing in my guest room staring into the largest closet in my house and wondering how to get rid of some of the stuff. Half of the closet...possibly 3/4 of the closet...is full of sewing. My machine, a serger, a cabinet on wheels, a plastic drawer unit full of patterns and miscellaneous, stacking bins full of fabric...and several shelves with an assortment of stuff. I'm not fibbing....some of that fabric has been around since my kids were little.
So...I have decided that I am going to get involved in some service project that will use up
In the first paragraph I mentioned that taking the time to blog is hard. I have to tell you that I was SO excited when I got this new laptop....it has the slot for the memory card right straight from the camera. Ok...I have a cord that connects the camera to the computer, but somehow I lost it and actually am on cord number 2 but that is another story. Anyway...thought the slot would make things easier. Here's my problem:
The picture on the left shows a normal SD card and it is the size of the slot in my computer. The tiny little chip on the right in the same picture.....THAT is the card in my camera! Ok....in fairness to the camera....it came with an adapter. The picture on the right shows the little chip/memory card (mini-SD card) being inserted into the adapter, which then fits into the slot in my computer. Aaargh! And I have noticed that pictures taken from my iPhone are always sideways! I download them to my computer, then I rotate them, then I browse for them from this blog post, and download them into the blog. Even after rotating them, they are coming in sideways! Another Aaaarrrgggghhh! Now I have figured out that even though I have rotated them and they are appearing the way I WANT them in my picture file, I have to rotate them BACK to wrong, and then BACK AGAIN to how I want them. I just hate all these extra steps and that is PART if why I am not blogging more frequently!
I'm trying.
* * *
I mentioned that I was "spring cleaning". Actually....for years it has been my habit to clean the storage area where I keep my holiday decorations at the time I put away my Christmas things. We have lived here 5 years now and keep the holiday decor in the top of the shed on the end of our RV parking cover. It was a very tall room when we moved here, but my dad helped Ron build a loft with stairs and I had purchased plastic shelving and tubs. Before we moved here, we had a walk-in attic in our 'big house' and had insulated the area and put up "blue board" walls and decked the floors. Ron built shelves there and one end was dedicated to Christmas. Regardless of where, when Christmas is over it is time to clean. I sweep and sort and re-lable everything.
But last November, when I was carrying tub after tub down the stairs of the loft and into the house by myself (because I seem to always decorate when Ron is at the camp for opening deer hunting weekend) I decided that I should consider moving my holiday decor to the BOTTOM part of the room and no longer carry boxes up and down those stairs. So, on the first nice weekend after Christmas I started. First I emptied most of the bottom of the room we call the RV Shed. This area is about 10' by 20' and has a small garage-type door. There is also a stairway that takes up some space but it is open underneath. I describe it only to give you an idea of size. You have NO idea how full of junk it was! This is some of the stuff that I had pulled out which was going back in after I was done!!!
Anyway....after it was mostly emptied, I used the shop-vac to get one end clean.
\
So I got one end pretty well cleaned the first day. On the second day I spent a lot of time trudging up and down the steps and removing all of the tubs from the plastic shelving. I dismantled the shelves, moved them down and reassembled them. The end of the second day looked like this:
Over the next couple of days I got a lot of the boxes that were already packed moved onto these shelves. During that week following, I spent time each day wrapping (or re-wrapping) and labling and packing up figurines and other decorations. Since I was putting things in tubs, I am thinking it would be so much easier to know WHAT was in the tubs. I don't use all of my Christmas stuff every year...but I also do not remember WHAT is WHERE from one year to the next. I plan to create a directory of sorts to help me with this.
All of the above took place a couple of weeks ago. It currently (and finally) looks like this:
Also inside, there was the added chore of taking my four snowflake lights out of my front windows. I might have mentioned in an earlier post that this house has something called "magnatite" windows, which are plexiglass panes that are affixed to the inside of our aluminum single pane windows by magnets which are glued to strips of wood. There is air space between the aluminum window pane and the plexiglass pane and it works pretty well. But my blinds are (and must be) mounted right up against the plexiglass, leaving no place to hang my snowflakes EXCEPT for between the panes. This is fine but for the fact that the blinds being so tight up against the plexiglass makes it very difficult and time-consuming to get the panes up and down. Ron helped me put the snowflakes IN the space BEFORE Christmas. That wasn't fun. I decided it was safer for our marriage if I took them OUT by myself. Sometime in the spring we might remove all of the blinds in the windows and position them a little farther away from the plexiglass panes so this process will be easier. Anyway...this project took me most of one afternoon just to take down the snowflakes and put the windows back together.
...and I hadn't even scratched the surface in regard to cleaning inside the house, with the exception of those windows! The same weekend I took down those snowflakes, I got the entire house vacuumed, dusted and mopped...and I include moving some of the furnishings in order to do this well.
By the way....how often do you have to do THIS......
Oh my!
Well...I haven't mentioned what I am reading. And I also wanted to tell you about investigating a "service project' to use up some of my fabric, but this blog post has taken me all day to complete as I have had to work on it "a little bit here and a little bit there"! I guess I'll tell you more about those things on another occasion.
Seeya later!
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