llcoolvad | Entries tagged with chores

Trying to get my life back into order after my unproductive vacation. Didn't really feel motivated until this week.

Monday night I decided I needed to put away the new beads I got at the bead show (I went to a bead show on Saturday, for whoever isn't on Facebook and doesn't already know that). Which then prompted me to make a couple of bracelets and some earrings. So that was fun. One of the bracelets was for Mother. The beads that I bought for her were decoupage pictures of kitties, and she was very excited. Trying to be creative at the mess that is my desk was obnoxious, so it prompted me to start to tidy it up.

Tuesday I worked from home after getting my crown put on in the morning. Went out midday to run some errands — city yard with recycling, couple stores for mother, bank. Then when I came back I did some work, then just sort of lit up for the night. It happens sometimes. I emptied and refilled the DW, took out the trash, did two loads of laundry and hung up and put away, fixed a drawer in my bureau, sorted the other drawers, tidied my desk, sorted my mail, fixed mom's printer and laptop, printed out some return labels for Amazon, boxed up those returns, cleaned out my work bag, reorganized some work notes into a new notebook, changed my bedding, refilled soda into my minifridge. Crawled into bed at 2, slept kind of poorly.

Today woke up early to a leg cramp (which sucked), went to and did a bunch of things at work, took a midday break and went to UPS with my returns, cleaned out some work email, picked up dinner, came home, sorted receipts and tossed most of 'em and put the rest into my tax file, paid some bills. Now I am just going to finish this show I'm watching and try to sleep early.

Tomorrow night hopefully I'll still have some momentum and will get some more laundry done. I have a lot of mother's laundry stacked up (she barely leaves the house, so I never prioritize it) that I'd like to get through, and I should move her files from her old computer to her new one. This weekend I have no social plans, so I'm hoping I can keep the momentum going at least through Saturday. I'm willing to slack on Sunday. I love slacking on Sundays.

So that's it. A wee bit productive. Need to continue.

This one's probably too dull to read, so feel free to move along!

So this weekend, to distract myself from waiting, I did some deep cleaning — a lot of the stuff I've been procrastinating. My closet was a mess, and so I'd been putting closet stuff (bags, mostly) on the comfy chair next to the closet. Which means I've been sitting at my desk and not sitting in the comfy chair. It all needed to come out before I could sort it out, so the other night I just started by pulling everything out of the closet and piling it on the bed. Once I do that, I know I'll keep going, because otherwise I can't go to bed.

I decided I was keeping a few things that I didn't need to keep, so I kept those out. Also I took some clothes out that are (temporarily) too small, and put them away. Always good to let the closet breathe a little. Took the giant IKEA bag filled with mother's shoes into her closet in her room. I hate bringing stuff into her room (since so much really should come out), but really, why should I live with them? And hooray, suddenly the chair and the closet were mine again.

I had also been thinking about a few other problem areas, and I was determined to implement the solutions I'd devised. One is the linen "closet" — a series of shelves we have that hold all the sheets, towels, facecloths, pillowcases. The main problem is that mother has difficulty getting across the room to get to the towels, which we kept on the left of the unit. I keep my scale and my laundry basket usually right there, so she'd have to go around them. There's also the comfy chair and ottoman, making it slightly more obstacle course-y and she's not very spry. The rightmost column, which is closest to the door, had linens for the spare bed, the middle columns had linens for her bed, and the far left was all the towels and facecloths. I often leave a clean stack of towels and facecloths in the bathroom, but the cat is very good at knocking things down so that had to stop. How to solve the problem?

So suddenly I had a DUH moment and realized if I just rearranged the stuff in the linen cabinet I could make her life a tiny bit easier. Move the sheets over to the far left, voila, room for the towels in the area closest to the door. Clean mother, no falling. Why didn't it occur to me to change it sooner?

Another "think different" moment: a coworker bought herself a three-drawer filing cabinet recently. Not one with one file-sized drawer and two smaller drawers, but two full-sized filing drawers and one small drawer on top. She said it changed her life: she was so excited because 1. it locks, and she lives with busybody relatives, and 2. she has somewhere she can just dump receipts and mail until she's ready with it, and it's not all in the way. I suffer from a lack of surface space in my room, so I was instantly jealous and spent a couple of hours over the next few nights researching the filing cabinet options out there. I couldn't find one that I like, however, as to a unit they are all too shallow for my needs. I already have a stuffed full 2 drawer cabinet that is 28" deep. Most of these were 15" or 18". Nope, can't do it. Plus mine is nice, and these all seemed too cheap. I couldn't find an equivalent one, so I gather there is no market for this item. Most people either want four drawer tall filing cabinets, or ones that will fit under a desk. Anything in between is no go.

All of that is the long way 'round, I'm afraid. So I was sad that I couldn't change my life, too. I was convinced that the only solution to my desk drifts was the three drawer filing cabinet. But again, a couple days ago, I had another aha! moment.

*Hey, self, you ALREADY HAVE A DESK!*

Um, yeah?

*THE DESK HAS SIX DRAWERS!*

Right, but each drawer has a task.

*BUT YOU COULD COMBINE TASKS, and make one into a receipt/mail/deal with later drawer.*

But...

But...

Wait, I really could, couldn't I!

*DUH!*

So I did that, too. And now I don't have to move things off the desk on work from home day! Genius. Except not, since it took me months to think of it. Christ. At least I didn't think of it AFTER I tried to buy something to solve a problem, rather than just repurposing something that was already fine.

Back to waiting.

Tuesday was Mom's cataract surgery. I have to say that production-line surgery is fascinatingly efficient. The place we went does NOTHING other than eye surgeries, and there were at least five other people in at the same time as Mom. She walked in to the surgical unit at 12:30; walked out at 3:00 with a bandage on her eye, a new tote bag, and a plant (it's a thing they do, I guess); we then went to her doctor's office at 5:00, and by 6:00 she was back home with the bandage off and looking out of her new lens. So speedy! And she said there was no pain, and aside from reaching up occasionally to try to rub it (and catching herself just in time) there's no issue at all. They have her sleep in a plastic eye protector that she puts on with medical tape. And that's it. She's a complete anxiety-ridden hypochondriac, but even she admitted she'd do the other eye when she needed to.

So basically I spent all day doing that stuff with her (which meant I mostly sat around reading and being vaguely anxious all day). Tuesday night I sorted through a few weeks' worth of mail and paperwork and bills and such, wrote checks, clipped coupons, and recycled crap. Wednesday morning I filed it all away. I also brought Mom some lunch, did her grocery shopping, mailed off some stuff, did all my laundry, cleaned the bathroom top to bottom, and did the dishes. AND I made some more progress on my music weeding and organizing. Sigh. I really want one of my projects over with! I watched some tv at night and kept trying to get motivated, but I guess I have a maximum per day I will let myself do.

Today was almost a total wash. I woke up and it was so humid I felt disgusting. Every joint was sore, especially my knees. Hit the 'profen hard, hung around reading the internet until it kicked in. Put away my final load of laundry, then went out for some lunch. Had a free lunch on a loyalty card, so I used that. Came home and slouched around doing nothing much, then Patrick came home and we chatted for a while. Met Brian at the train and we did a quick grocery shopping, stopped at REI, then stopped at Home Depot. Home again, he made dinner and I started digging into PART TWO of my book weeding project from last summer. I had a sudden urge, so hey, strike while the iron is hot, right?

It's now the spring, see, which is when the Friends of the Library lady said she'd accept more donations. And oh yes, have I got stuff for her! I moved all the furniture around in the living room (both so I could easily get to the bookcases, AND so I could have a lot of flat surfaces to put everything on). Last summer I really only weeded the fiction, so now I'm working on the non-fiction. Also when I emptied out my storage unit last year I was focused on regaining floor space and losing boxes, so while I was obsessive about alphabetizing and spreadsheet-ing my fiction, I did nothing at all to the non-fiction. It's basically on the shelves with no order whatsoever, so I'm organizing and weeding at the same time. I have some amusingly ancient high school texts on things like Biology and Astronomy and Oceanography, and while they give me warm fuzzy feelings of nostalgia, they are about as much use as my ancient computer texts (goodbye Pascal!). I am tempted to keep my history texts from yore, because I fear the Texas Board of Education and what they're doing to history and social studies, but I can't be the keeper of knowledge for all of mankind, so I think those will have to go, too.

I try not give useless out of date stuff to the Friends of the Library. I use the "Got Books" bins for anything I don't think the library book sale will find a home for. They are pledged to at least recycle anything they can't use. And since they bug me with their veneer of non-profit when in fact they're for-profit, let 'em deal with the rubbish. I dumped a load of elderly computer books and travel guides on them last year.

Ideally I want to have only good books, and books that will fit on the shelves that I already have, and not another line of books in front of each shelf. Additionally, I'd like a couple of empty shelves so Brian can put his stuff on them, too. And I'd like to have somewhere for my puzzles. So I really need to weed this stuff HARD. And I am ready. I dunno if I'll be able to part with the Latin textbooks, but I think I can lose enough other junk to make up for them.

Hopefully I'll get that done tomorrow, leaving me the weekend to find some fun. I'm just not that good at fun. I'm better at this.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Current Location: home

Spent Sunday mostly napping, watching baseball, eating, and ... that's about it. Nice!

Today I did some chores (recycling, can returns, grocery shopping, a few dishes, etc.), and I also did two of the things I wanted to get done this week: I renewed both my BPL and Cambridge public library cards (have to drive to a branch to do so, so I did), and I did a project for a friend involving collecting some files.

Yay! Chatted with

zanzjan on the phone about life, and she pointed me to some local free shredding events. I am excited. Maybe it will motivate me to go through the boxes in my room? At any rate, I have several boxes all ready to go, so even if I do no more I have a goal.

I haven't done any shoe shopping yet. Carrie Bradshaw would be appalled at my slackitude. Tomorrow is Mom's cataract surgery, so I need to be up and alert for that. Maybe shoe shop on Thursday. I want to front-load the misery for chores and unpleasantness so I can relax at the end of the week.

Anyway, so far so good. Not thinking about work, and trying to keep the drama to a minimum.

( updated completed books list inside )

Tuesday: Worked. Was ok. Stayed a little late. Came home. Dinner with Patrick. Watched tv.
Wednesday: Worked. Was at home, so better than ok. Logged off on time. Dinner with Brian. Watched tv.

There you go, an entry.

OK, fine, I left out a few details.

Friends/Family: Patrick's driver's side car window exploded on him Tuesday on his way home from work, for no discernible reason. Scary! Just thinking about how I might have reacted if the same thing happened to me (I visualize a bit of a shriek, and probably driving right off the road and into a parked car) makes me nervous. I eyed my window driving home last night, gave it encouraging "do not explode" warm thoughts. It seemed un-fazed.

Today while I was chained to my desk on a deadline, Brian ventured out ahead of the storm to turn in our huge pile of returnables and to pick up lunch and a couple of snack-type things at the grocery store. I am occasionally reminded of how nice it is to have someone else around to get things done. I didn't really have that, living with Mom. If I didn't do it, it mostly didn't happen. So hooray for boyfriends! A year and a half into living together, and I am still being pleasantly surprised by things.

Mom is still crazy.

Entertainment: I've been all discombobulated by changing cable providers and by it being the new spring season. Everything's on a different night and at a different time, and I can't get used to the new channel numbers. I've had Comcast for 14 years? Something like that. So I am finding RCN's lineup disorienting even with the Tivo. Where do I go? What channel? Sigh. I feel like I'm 90, sometimes.

Watched the SOTU last night, the second half anyway, and I found the president to be as reasonable and intelligent as always, and every bit as middle-of-the-road as I've sadly realized he is. I do wish the administration was a little better at trumpeting their wins to the wide world, but I guess I just need to work a little harder to hear them.

Also spent the last two days sneaking bits of the book I'm currently reading, pretty much every free second I get (still love my kindle, still love ebooks). I really get more reading done than I would if I were depending on dead-tree media. Although right now Brian and I are both in the middle of books on the kindle, so I have to keep handing it to him and then waiting to get it back (I haven't figured out yet how to sync a non-Amazon file to my iPhone kindle reader, and since I'm almost done with the book I haven't bothered to kludge something up. My guess is that I just need to use a different reader and not have the nice page-tracking that the kindle app does, but I am not sure of that yet).

Chores/Organizing: I've been making some progress on sorting out my digital life. In the last couple of weeks I've: cleaned out my gmail account and put in unsubscribe requests to regular merchant-type email; cleaned out 40,000 unread messages on my yahoo email account; cleaned out my work laptop (I anticipate a soonish upgrade); put a bunch of files in Dropbox; tweaked some sync settings for Chrome so all my computers get the same bookmarks and setting and so forth; and deleted a bunch of duplicate stuff. I still need to unsubscribe on my yahoo account (my main account, alas) and I need to do more Dropbox tweaking. I don't think I have gushed about it over here, but MAN, do I love Dropbox! Two gigs of free storage for files, great security, ability to share with others, and best of all it will sync itself across all the computers you want it to. I now have four computers in regular rotation, and having my core subset of files wherever I am (even on my iPhone!) is totally key. I plan to keep just about everything in it (except photos and music, of course); I think it's big enough. I have most of the stuff I use regularly already in it and I'm at 10% capacity. Nice. I love cloud dwelling.

Money: still being frugal. I chipped a few more bucks per month out of the budget yesterday by downgrading my Netflix account. I don't really ever get to watching DVDs, so I dropped it from 2 at a time to one, a savings of $5. Whoo! I might need to try a little harder in the next couple of days. Always chipping away!

Tomorrow I can sleep in and not have to deal with commuting in the snow. Took the day off, so I can maybe get some sleep and maybe get some more stuff (productive stuff) done. Or maybe I'll just read all day!

Made some progress on my short-term list from the other day. Yesterday was a mild version of chores day, which mostly involved wandering around. Brian had a dentist's appointment around 2:30, so we went out before to get some things done. Picked up soda and a few groceries. Had lunch. After the appointment we decided to go out again and pick up a couple things. Got replacement wiper blades, couple used books for Brian, KVM switch for me.

Didn't do much for the rest of the night. Patrick got home, so I hung out over there for a while hearing about his trip and sharing all my exciting news. Got up today and didn't do much in the AM. Felt like a snow day, but the snow was mostly nothing. Cleaned off car, shoveled a little, brought mom some lunch and milk. Stupid weather. Everything's turning to ice out there. Came home and didn't do much. Watched some TV, Brian made some homemade cheese steak sandwiches (mmm!) for dinner, watched some TV, set up the KVM switch. It's awesome. I can now easily share my one of my monitors, my wireless mouse, and my keyboard between my desktop and my laptop with one button. Nice!

Tomorrow is work from home day, so I don't have to drive in the newly created ice. Mom has an appointment at 3 with an eye doctor that I need to take her to, but I anticipate that she might cancel. If not, I'll manage. I'll get my laundry done while I'm working, and once I put stuff away I hope to get the closet sorted out.

I can't believe anyone is reading all the way down to here. I bore myself. Seeya!

So it snowed. Did you hear? There was a lot of it.

Worked on Tuesday, came home to a house stocked with food courtesy of my honey, and then settled in for the big event. It was pretty much spot on, forecast-wise. Started around midnight, hammered down overnight, continued into the late part of the next day, and then got very cold for the next 2 days. I'm sure the weather-people were relieved to have finally gotten something right.

Worked from home on Wednesday, as did all my coworkers. Was surprisingly busy. Brian did a couple rounds of shoveling (as did Patrick later — he was working from home, too), and then I pitched in and cleaned off my car. As there was something like 20" on top of everything out there, that wasn't as pathetic as it sounds. Worked pretty late, then had some dinner and both of us sat around vaguely whiny about sore muscles and such. I actually hit my percocet stash (still left over from my sciatica in 2009) and slept through the night for a change.

The drive in to work on Thursday was pretty decent. As I got closer to the city the snowfall totals were smaller, so the drive was basically easy the whole way. There's a new Dunkin' Donuts on my way, and it's a drive-thru, so I hit it up. I think it was opening day. Very exciting. It was very beautiful out, sunny and BRIGHT. I need to get sunglasses of some kind, whether it's a clip on device onto my regular glasses, or full-on prescription shades. Gotta do it! Took some photos on the way, as it was too pretty to not.

( photos behind the cut )

Back to work today. Well, not TO work, just back working. I work from home on Wednesdays, and since I took yesterday off I get to ease out of my spiffy long vacation and into the work week by rolling out of bed at 9:50 for my 10:00am start. Delightful! It's my favorite thing. I went to bed really late again last night, however, so my sleep was not that rejuvenating.

My workday was filled with work, alas, but I still managed to get all my laundry done. Also the landlord came over and fixed the stove and the dishwasher, so we're back to 100% on major appliances. A relief! What this means, however, is that I am out of procrastinatey things to keep me busy. Soon I will have to dive into projects I've been avoiding, and that's just misery!

I guess I feel a list coming on. In the next few weeks I would like to:

~~Empty bags in bedroom, put all stuff away~~
Clean out closet again. Probably should open up winter clothes box, since it's winter. See if there's anything to wear in there that would make me happy
Order glasses from Zenni Optical. Several pairs?
Hang up the two pictures I got framed a couple weeks ago. Be nice to see them properly!
Sort thru towels, find defectives/worn ones, donate to pet shelter
Same with clothes, again, but either trash or donate if ok
SOLVE THE PILLOW PROBLEM! (it doesn't seem like pillows would really cause problems, you know? But I have way too many. We are dying here. And they're not those girly decorative pointless pillows, no. I have eight bed pillows on my bed. Eight. Plus at least four spares. And a body pillow. And a "husband"-style pillow. Aieeee. I use? Probably three. And Brian uses two.) (sort of solved. moved two to basement, switched some around, put large ones in closet)
Start weeding the non-fiction. I'd really like my end table back as an end table. Must remove about 200 books from collection STAT.
Solve the monitor problem. Not the same as the pillow problem, but still problematic. When I work from home I'd like to be able to use my work laptop and an external monitor, but that would involve climbing behind my desktop every week and unplugging something, etc. I guess I need a KVM switch, but I don't know which one. Must research. (KVM purchased and installed, and is awesome!)
~~Along those lines, I need a couple more wireless mice. Broke one this week. Now have need for at least 2 more, since I have the new laptop.~~ (purchased)
~~In general I need to clean off my desk again. It really is the dumping ground for random papers, and I need to solve that. I'll still need a dumping ground, but it shouldn't be the desk.~~ (cleaned off, not totally solved, long-term)
AND I really need to get the CPAP action going again. I haven't even taken it out of the bag since my last office visit. Ooops. And hey! The next one is scheduled for Monday. Guess I need to reschedule that. "So, Laurie, how's the machine working for you?" "..."

That's the short-term. Long-term list hasn't changed much in a while. Mostly involves organizing files, either electronic or paper. Doing some research. Improving skills. Maybe I'll write about those tomorrow.

Today I had to use up my Labor Day holiday, so since I was kicking around anyway, I went over to the nifty Comically Speaking store in Reading and sold all my comics. Or most of 'em, anyway. All the ones I didn't want to keep. I didn't get much for them, but I didn't really expect to. I collected when everyone did, the late 80s/early 90s, and I collected indie comics and not much DC or Marvel; of course that stuff is everywhere, so my collection wasn't worth much.

It was much more about removing items from my life, and much less about getting top dollar. So there! Another four boxes of stuff, gone! And not dumped into the trash. Yay!

I opened three boxes of papers today, too, two big and one small, and managed to consolidate down into one big and one small, plus a big one for recycling. It is not HUGE progress, there, but a lot of it is stuff from high school and the early days of college so that's going to take a little more thought and a little more, I dunno, bravery?

Anyway, progress!

__________

I also had sleep study #2 on Sunday. I had the first one back a couple months ago. I have severe apnea, apparently, with 48 "events" per hour. Anyone who has shared a bedroom with me lately could have diagnosed me. I snore — a LOT — and I am ridiculously loud.

Anyway, this sleep study was not to diagnose, but to figure out at which pressure the CPAP machine needs to be set to to stop my "events". It wasn't as bad for me as the first study, which made me hugely anxious and during which I couldn't sleep for the first four hours. At all. I guess this time I was ok since I knew what was coming. At any rate, they managed to get some good data and can now issue me my very own sexy, sexy CPAP machine. I go in September 20th to start my sleep life in my iron lung. Can't. Wait.

My goals for this year included trimming down STUFF, and starting to feel better. I have been doing the former for the first time pretty much ever. Now I hopefully will do the latter. It will probably be amazing, this sleeping thing. I hear so much about it! Maybe I will be able to get my formerly sharp brain back up to speed? That'd be good.

When I moved into my apartment last summer I emptied out most of my storage unit and unpacked and everything, but there were still many many boxes of books, papers, obsolete media, and so forth left over; it all needed weeding out and organizing, and I just didn't feel up to dealing with it all. But it irked me. My cost was pretty low -- I changed to a a much smaller unit -- but it was still a monthly charge that I seriously didn't need to be paying, ESPECIALLY for stuff that I probably was going to part with anyway.

A couple of months ago I decided that I'd had it. Paying some place to house my stuff for me, some place that I wasn't actually living, was getting old. So Brian and I rented a van for a couple of hours and went and emptied it out. Into my kitchen. Because where else do you put 60 or so boxes of junk?

I set a mental goal for myself. I would try to get it all either put away neatly on shelves, thrown away, or sold before my birthday-week vacation. I didn't want to waste more time off on dumb things. And I didn't want to have the "Hoarders" film crew show up at my door, either.

I started with the books, which is always the easiest thing (but also took up the majority of the boxes). Of course I needed to make it complicated, so I updated the spreadsheet I'd created when I moved into storage five years ago with the ISBNs of all the books I now had. While I was doing that I was also weeding out obvious stuff -- authors I now hated, books that aren't worth keeping, etc. On my first pass (I haven't done a second, yet, but I plan to) I managed to get rid of 343 fiction titles. Then I went looking for a way to sell them.

Did you know that hardcover fiction is basically worthless? It is. We don't have Half Priced Books stores in the Northeast, and every used book store I found would only take them as trade and mostly not even then. Several places had policies that if there was a paperback edition available of a title they wouldn't take the hardcover edition at all. Nice! And I could have tried to do the Amazon marketplace thing, but I'd need to keep the book until it sold, and after Amazon's cut comes out there isn't much left anyway (serious highway robbery, there). I went on the Powell's Books site, where they have a nice interface that lets you paste in ISBNs and then gives you a quote, but they only offered me about $40 for 60 paperbacks (and that's out of all of my 343 books). So I called my local Friends of the Library and donated the lot. All gone! And maybe in the spring when they are closer to their sale (June), I'll do my second pass and donate even more. The sale organizer let us unload all the boxes directly into her basement, and as I drove away I was deliriously happy. This is fun!

I then went through my obsolete media. Records, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, etc. A lot of my records got wet in the Great Storage Flood of Aught-7, so the covers were stuck together and rank with mildew. Toss! The ones that didn't get wet I weeded (I confess, I kept about 100, but I bought nice new crates for them at Target, and they are on top of a book case in my living room and they look fine — and I even still have a turntable should I wish to play them), and I now have about 30 in a container in my trunk, waiting to go to a used record store. VHS tapes I went through and pretty much threw out all of them. Cassette tapes same thing (I kept five; a couple from a band I loved in college that are completely defunct, a couple others — I do not, however, have a cassette player). Out to the trash. Felt both awful in the "I am contributing to the trash piles of the planet" way, and awesome in the "The trash piles of the planet are no longer in my apartment" way.

Next up, CDs. I had already done a huge weeding last fall, but hadn't managed to remove them from my apartment. Off to Newbury Comics to see what they'd give me. Only took about 45 minutes to go through several hundred CDs. They bought probably 80 of them, and I walked out with $85. Nice. But I still had a few hundred left. So they recommended a couple of other stores that buy promotional stuff (which was a lot of what was left) and I went to one in Gloucester, and managed to unload another 30-40 or so and came out with about $80. Better payday! I came home and split the remaining into "try the third store" and "toss". The toss stuff went out to the curb on the same night as the VHS and cassette tapes, and by morning, BEFORE the trash truck came, they were all miraculously gone. Something like five boxes! That felt really good. Someone in my neighborhood is happy.

I made a list of all my comics and emailed it to a local comics shop. The owner does the buying, and he only is in on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so I'll have to take a day off to get over there and see if he's interested. But I'm ready. I kept one half-sized box, mostly graphic novels, and I'll be getting rid of the rest. I probably have some other options for those, like craigslist or yard sales or whatever if the comics guy isn't interested.

I have 10 boxes of papers. That's my next big task. I've moved them upstairs into the bedroom, and while they're a little unsightly, they're neat and not taking up any particularly useful space, so I can do them gradually.

And that's all of it! I did it. I took a giant horrible messy project and broke it down into parts and did it, and I got it done in the timeframe I set. I am very proud of myself.

I have more to do. Ideally I'd like to cut my book collection down a LOT more. I still have over 2000 books in my apartment. They currently all fit on shelves, and the shelves all fit in my place, but that's still way too many. I don't buy a lot of new books anymore, thanks to my kindle, and I really don't re-read many titles ever. I think a collection of a thousand or less is much more reasonable, so that will be a long-term goal.

And I have a lot more CDs to go through, too. There are three boxes under my desk in my office that probably are filled with tons more stuff to remove; but I haven't dragged them out yet.

But still, I am so encouraged! I fit entirely into my apartment and it's not filled with boxes. I have almost nothing stored in the basement beyond X-mas stuff, tools, and a few kitchen things. It's very freeing. One of my goals for this year was to lighten the load. Yay, me!

A jumble of things:

I am going back to work on Friday. My short-term disability covers 2 weeks at 100%, so two weeks I shall take. I have been feeling pretty much back to normal, although I do like being able to lie down whenever I want to so having the extra couple of days off is pretty keen.

My incision has closed up nicely. I can't really tell what it looks like yet, as it's still got a pocket of swelling all around it, and because the dermabond is still all over it. There's purple marker (or whatever surgeons use) all under the dermabond, too, so it looks angrier than it really is. I can see pink down under it, though, so I know it's pretty much closed up. I don't see my surgeon until the 15th, so I am not going to bother with any pictures until after the dermabond either flakes off or is removed on the 15th. Everyone at work can just wince every time they see me until then.

Had my first comment on it today, from the guy at my local pizza place: "Did you have surgery?" I was tempted to say "No, I was mugged!" but I refrained. So many wiseass answers spring to mind! But I like the pizza guy, so ...

I finally got out of the house a tiny bit this weekend: lunch with Patrick on Friday, then dinner and a movie (Bolt — very cute) with Patrick on Saturday. Today I did some grocery shopping. Not a lot of time out of the apartment for a week and a half. A little stir crazy!

Still feeling pretty enraged and sad about the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Our main Mumbai office is right near the Taj Hotel; in fact, my boss and a coworker stayed at the Taj when they visited the office last year. From what I can tell everyone from our office is fine, though, thankfully. This Big Picture entry is quite fascinating for images of the aftermath.

We got the unhappy word today via voicemail that there will be no "compensation discussions" until February at the earliest, meaning no raises or bonuses until further notice. I sort of expected it, but I always hold out hope for the best so I am still pretty disappointed. It mystifies me why they wait so long to tell us these things. They laid people off back in September. Why are we hearing two weeks before we'd have our meetings? I guess they wanted all of our non-disillusioned hard work between then and now. Sigh.

I'm planning on spending the rest of the week before I go back to work getting a little bit done every day. I've spent a week+ basically doing nothing but recuperating, but now I have some energy so I'd like to get stuff done. I have to do a lot of laundry, so that's first up. I'd really like to get through a huge stack of magazines and catalogs and get them out to recycling, too. I have to have a blood test on Thursday to see if my calcium levels are normal. And, finally, Friday is date night, which I've been looking forward to for (what feels like) weeks already! The best way to end the week.

What's on your upcoming agenda? Anything fun?

I spent my week off accomplishing little other than cleaning out my car, seeing a few movies, watching some television, reading some books. Mostly slackage. Some laundry for mom, but little else.

Now that I'm back to work and need to get up at 9am I've entered my dreaded hyper-efficient stage. Stayed up til 3am last night doing little dumb things that have been pending for a while: Ripped some CDs, updated my librarything and book lists, organized some other lists, finished a few projects, did some cleaning, got caught up on a few shows, edited some photos, finally installed both of my cameras' software on my new laptop. Other stuff I'm forgetting.

I really need to strive for balance. A moderate level of activity. A moderate level of slack. Because today I am sleepy (duh) and regret staying up late!

Last night I cleaned out a bureau in which I have all of my drug store-type stuff. Soap, razors, toothbrushes, toothpaste, cosmetics, pain relievers, vitamins, bandages, etc. I pulled out all the expired meds as well as anything I never use or anything, well, sticky! I threw out all the non-toxic stuff, but now I have a pile of expired Rx meds, expired vitamins, and expired pain relievers. And I'm stumped. I don't want to flush all of it and have it enter the groundwater/sewage system. And I don't want it sitting in a landfill being all druggy-toxic.

I have some pretty old stuff in there that I've been just ignoring — I don't know the proper method for disposal of drugs. So today I did a little research. There's a lot of information directed at pharmacists out there, but a lot of them have instructions like "return to the manufacturer per their takeback program". Not helpful. So I called my pharmacy. I was told that they don't have any kind of recycling/disposal option there, and was instructed to just "throw them out". Not helpful. So I called my town DPW. I was transferred to the health department, who perkily advised me that I should speak to the substance abuse counselor, who was out today but I could leave a message and she'd get back to me. Yeah, I'm leaving my name and number on the local substance abuse hotline. Uh-huh.

I read my town's elaborate information on recycling, and of course there's nothing about drug disposal. Mixing them in with kitty litter is certainly an option, but that seems to be merely to ensure that willful drug-seeking teenagers won't be picking through my trash to get high off of expired Vitamin C. So now I think my only option is to peel off the identifying information from the bottles and chuck them in the trash. That seems bad. Any suggestions, anyone?

I have decided that doing laundry is the best chore in the world, because not only is it fairly non-labor-intensive, it also takes a really long time. While the machines are busily churning away you can sit comfortably reading a book or watching the game and still feel as if you are having a productive day.

Win-win!

For the last few weeks I have been helping out with a serious staffing shortage at work by working nights. I've been pretty unhappy with it, really. I always think of myself as a night person, but I like being a night person at home doing stuff I like, not at work doing stuff for The Man, you know?

( Ow. I don't know how people do this stuff all the time )

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Page generated Jul. 7th, 2025 04:24 pm

then she appeared

apple venus on a half open shell

Entries tagged with chores

starting to catch up

cleaning and repurposing

mid-vac

vacay update

more days

so exciting i can't believe it's my life

snowmageddon and beyond!

back to the grind

more out the door

De-stored

update: my apartment.

i tired

Drug disposal

Productivity

Cascades