MORE ACCOMPLISHED!

Every month since Sister Susannah the New Age Nun turned me on to it I've been making a monthly "To Do" list on www.tadalist.com. Sometimes I do weekly or daily sub-lists and I've even done a couple of special project lists - just a really cool way to keep track. Anyway, there has been this nagging issue for years - literally - and it's been on my monthly list for a few months now. Tonight I got around to it.

Widdi and I talk all the time about how we have these things that need to be done and they get bigger and bigger in our brains until we just avoid them for all the time they could take. In reality I think it's the unknown. I have had this 2 foot piece of board trim in my mudroom for years now with horrible (and thankfully very old) termite damage. I've measures it about 20 times. About a month ago I went to Lowe's and got a piece of replacement trim. I even cut it to size the same weekend. And then it sat. Tonight for some reason I was getting things done and decided to remove the old piece. I took a blade to the caulking around the old piece - it just crumbled. So I decided to just remove the darned thing. It came off easily. I pulled the recently used shop vac in from the porch, plugged it in, and cleaned up the debris. OK, between the measuring, buying, cutting, and removing and cleaning up the old piece I have now invested about 20 minutes in this project which has been put off for years. I decide to go the distance! I get my hammer and a few finishing nails and in 3 minutes the new trim is in place. So I spent 23 minutes doing a project I avoided for so long just because it seemed like something that might be beyond me. Widdi and I are Mutt and Jeff twins when it comes to things like this.

Granted it's a piece of bare wood now but the mudroom, like 4 out of the five rooms in my house, needs some work and a bit of painting and upkeep anyway. This is HUGE progress! Eventually the textured ceiling (totally inappropriate) will be removed and the woodwork sanded and the room painted and the flooring replaced with new sheet vinyl.

This might seem strange to most of you out there with "real" houses - mine is between 100 and 130 years old - four rooms plus a bonus - no hallways, and so small I have taken off all interior doors. They seem somehow ridiculous to me and also I am a bit claustrophobic. So when I do work on a room like sanding, etc., I have to get as much as possible out of that room into the rest of the house and then seal it up with duct tape and plastic sheets and work as fast as possible because I do use every bit of space I have. Every undertaking requires logistics planning.

Someday I will live in a house that requires no work. I think I will not be happy when that happens. I hate my projects. I love my projects!

TABLE!!!

Finally today the table project is officially finished. The final coat of poly is drying and it looks so great. I can't wait to get it in the house. I talked with Widdi today and she asked me if I could do her a huge favor and come by her house sometime this week to help her move a table that she can't lift by herself and I told her I could do that if she would come over here and help me get mine into the house! So it will be a table-moving week. Here are a couple of shots. It looks very shiny because the poly is still wet.

It has been a long couple of weeks.

Every year late in the year Delta does their annual audit of the physical inventory the Atlanta office has managed all year. This is that time of year. This past wekeend, after working all week, I was assigned to "count" during the pre-count, which is for the purpose of making sure we have it all together before Delta comes to count in November. So Saturday and Sunday we were counting from 7 am until 5 pm. It was good. It turned out great and we are in great shape - much better shape than I understand they were last year at this time. Chou tanoshi!

So now it's 2 weeks since I have done any decent cleaning in the house which is problematic if one has four cats. I managed to get my laundry done and this morning woke up and put my sheets and duvet cover in the wash and just pulled them out of the dryer and back on the bed. I must get another set.

I have four distinctly different cats. Sonny, 16 going on 17 is the grumpy old man. He has his special places he likes to sleep and no matter how much I pet and love on him and beg he will not sleep with me - he has his own personal spaces. He will come and sleep in my arms when I am sitting but sleep time is personal for him. I respect this.

Dylan (9 going on 10) is my neurotic purebred Maine Coon Cat. He is very underweight and despite my sneaking canned food to him he just doesn't gain. He also has bad hairballs despite all the laxatone I can get him to eat. Today when I stripped the bed at 7 am and put the sheets in the wash and left the down comforter folded neatly at the end of the bed he got up on it and coughed up a hairball. Fun stuff to deal with after a day at the office. Thank goodness for Oxi Clean and a good dryer.

Camillle is the boss of the family and also the tattletale. She keeps tabs on everyone. She is the Drill Sargeant.

Phoebe is the spoiled rotten baby who cries and whines when things don't go her way. I am starting to ignore it so I don't have a crying, whining spoiled cat.

Mom told me about something called Feliway - a synthetic feline pheremone in a diffuser like a Glade plug in (although a bit more expensive). Supposed to even out territorial behavior like scratching and all. I ordered 2 diffusers last Thursday and they arrived today. They are plugged in and I am hoping at least the scratching Dylan does will be helped. Maybe also Camille will chill out.

More later . . .

I just hating posting things like this, but if you don't watch Dancing with the Stars you are losing out on a couple of hours of wide grins every week.

Such a complete wonder to watch people dance, especially when 50% of them have no experience and give their all and train all week to do it to their fullest. It really is something to watch.

Jerry (God help us all) Springer is a contestent this time. And he should have been gone right away. He has no talent for dancing but is loveable because of his self-deprecating nature - a total surprise to me. He kept putting himself out on a limb and somehow he has made it this far. Last night he had to do the Samba, something entirely beyond him, and he just decided "Fuck it. Just do it." And in his dance I thought only of my own father, who gives everything at every moment whether he is capable of the feat or not. If you can't do it wing it with everything in your soul. Jerry was willing to go out on a limb and be a ham and make a joke of himself and he came out entertaining the audience so completely. Same as Dad. My Dad is so very talented - an actor and director and he knows how to use a shovel. And when the rest of us are unwilling to take a risk he is alway there to do so first. A contestent I so despised at first has come to own my heart. Sometimes, even when there are strict rules for entertaining an audience, one must do so within their own abilities and talents. This I promise will be the only time I ever compare my Dad to Jerry Springer. But if you have been watching surely you must love my Dad as much as I do.

I hope this made sense and I hope Dad that you aren't offended by this comparison.

XOXOXOXOK

I Have Nothing On My Mind

Yes I do. The Amish school shooting? Far too awful to have anything to say that has not already been said more eloquently by real journalists. The Republican page sex scandal? Family values at it's Republican best. Nothing more to say. Somehow tonight I am just very tired.

OH! The Grey's Anatomy thing - yeah - you GO Mer! Date those boys and make them date you! You GO GIRL!

Blah blah blah - sometimes it's best just to check in and go to sleep. This is why I truly love being single.

On Religion

Found this very funny and uncomfortably true thing on the Best of Craigslist:

TOP TEN SIGNS YOU'RE A FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN

10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."

3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.

2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.

Sight

There is only one thing that bothers me about the aging process. I'm OK with the wrinkles. I'm OK with things starting to sag. I'm even OK with the changes in my metobolism that now makes it such a struggle to lose weight. What really bothers me is losing my ability to read things without holding them as far away as my arms will reach.

I went to the eye doctor this past week. I have a bad recent history with eye doctors. About 3 years ago I had my eyes checked and ordered the glasses in the prescription written for me and when I got them I was sure the lenses had gotten mixed up. When I took them back the doctor told me she figured I would need reading glasses soon so she went ahead and wrote my prescription based on that! I was not amused but got my money back for the glasses. Six or eight months after that I went to another eye doctor because I still needed a new prescription. He spent a lot of time with me and I feel that I got a good prescription.

In the past 2 1/2 years since my reading ability has simply gone. I'm OK when I wear my glasses but with my contacts I always have to wear reading glasses - to work at my laptop, to read a menu, to sign anything . . . it's just a pain and I refuse to wear one of those strings around my neck with the reading glasses attached.

When I went this week I explained my situation, and I was given a couple of options. One, I could wear one contact for distance and one for up close. Not good enough. I think it would drive me crazy. OR I could wear bi-focal contacts but evidently they are not perfected yet so nope to that one. Finally, she gave me a weaker prescription, the logic being that my distance sight would be a little fuzzier but I wouldn't need my readers as much. She told me to give this a chance for 10 days and then come back.

I've been giving it a chance and I'm not real thrilled. While it isn't nearly as disorienting to try to read close up I still have to hold things away from me unless the writing is very small (like labels in the grocery store and credit card receipts) in which case I still need to haul out the readers. And my distance is far fuzzier than I am comfortable with (for instance, I have to be right up on an intersection to read a street sign and I can't even read billboards until I am practically past them).

I still have some time until I go back Thursday to make up my mind but it seems to me I'm going to ask for the stronger prescription. If I'm going to have to be tied to the readers anyway I might as well have crisp distance vision.