July 25, 2004

20040725

Sunday...
Yesterday we hauled the camping stuff out of the attic. What we could find, anyway. Most of it is here, what little isn't is probably at Mom and Pa's. I also took a bunch of stuff to Goodwill. I'd cleaned it up ages ago and boxed it all up to go, just never took it. The garage doesn't look any less messy, though. We still have to put the Christmas boxes away. I am working on taking Leslie's stuff out of the office closet and replacing it with my stuff. All of her OTHER stuff is packed in the trailer and everything needs to be in one place to make it easier to move to her when she is ready to take it. My house is becoming very empty of THINGS. I kind of like it. I didn't realize the sheer volume of the girls' belongings! Except for camping and Christmas, everything in the attic is THEIRS! They have plastic trunks full of their stuffed animals and toys, keepsake clothing and special school papers! Richard had fun continuing his Myst game, but at one point in the evening, he had to call for my help. I don't even PLAY video games or computer games. However, in the middle of the game there is a piano that must be played in a certain tonal sequence to be able to launch the magic book or something. He figured out the tones and their order...but he's tone-deaf (and rhythm-challenged, although I know that's hard to believe). I came in and listened to the piano then adjusted the levers to the proper sequence. Took me about 3 minutes or so, I'm rusty on tuning. The magic book appeared and all was well in Myst Land (grin). Today, we kind of did some housekeeping, a quick vacuum, flicking a dust cloth around, mopping the worst parts of the kitchen floor and gathering up dog hair. Yesterday I brushed Echo outside and just got handful after handful of hair. I also discovered her rash. She periodically gets these rashes and chews a bit before they heal. They heal faster when I use her lotion, so today I have to bathe her and get the lotion on. Its not to bad, thank God. Both Flint and Echo had a lot of fun outside yesterday. I let them run around on our back lawn that we share with the neighbor. They sniffed every corner a dozen times, rolled in the grass and then sniffed some more. Both obeyed well, only running in the alleyway a few times and coming right back when I ordered them to. Big brownie points for them for that. Both were off-leash so that is good progress. We were out for about an hour and they got to explore every inch of the yard. I hate not finishing cleaning the garage...I'm so detail-oriented and I like to do one job all at once. I tend to be a machine when I want to do something...doing it until it is totally done so I can go on to the next thing. There is so much to be done to this house.We need to really get rid of some things and start a major maintenance schedule so that if we decide to move when Jenny leaves in December, we can. A four bedroom house with two fully empty rooms is really too much house for 2 people, even if we do have two big dogs. I'm thinking a nice place more towards the country around here. That way the dogs can run and I can have a garden. Wonder if there's a place like that with a pool, too? Anyway, next up on my maintenance schedule is working on getting Maggie and Scott's stuff all done - her notebook of her military buddies and getting Scott's first book edited. He's written 3 police thrillers featuring a woman homicide detective. I'm not really editing so much as typing it in. His computer crashed and all he had was the hard copy...sigh. So I am laboriously typing in the whole thing because I type something like 90 words a minute and he's a 2-fingered typer. Anyway, off to get to work on it!