Progress is Being Made

The end of last week, my husband and I had an email from a friend who was going down to New York City and wondered if we'd like to come along.   My first thought was to wonder if I could sleep all the way there.  My second was that I had too much to do  at home to go anywhere.  My third was that if I stayed home I'd probably just goof off anyway.  My fourth was that going away would at least give me an excuse for getting nothing done.  Which was the point where I kicked myself in the behind and told myself firmly that I was going to get some serious movement on projects around the house this weekend or else.

Or else what, I had no idea.  And I didn't want to find out.  So:
1.  I started off on Friday evening by getting the routine stuff like laundry, dishes, and ironing out of the way.

2.  Then, as I started to feel the siren lure of sitting down with a book and some knitting, I took myself down to the garage (also known as the wood shop).  I have a lot of projects on the list, but I decided to start by knocking off a quick easy one.  A few years ago, my sister made me a candle-tree- it has three little dishes that hold tea lights and a swirl of sculptured wire, glass and stones.   If left alone, it stands up perfectly well.  Unfortunately, with cats and klutzy humans in the mix, it tended to get knocked over a lot.  I'd been meaning for ages to make a wooden base for it, something to protect it from stray tails and elbows.

And it was about as easy as I expected.  I drew an irregular shape freehand on a piece of scrap wood, cut it out with the jig saw, sanded it smooth and rounded all the edges and slapped a quick coat of polyurethane on it.    In the morning, it was all ready to attach to the base. 

3.  Then, being down in the garage anyway, I took some cardboard and cut a template for the patch for the garage ceiling (a project which I've only been procrastinating on for two years now).  

4.  The next step in the garage ceiling patching project was to stuff some insulation back up in the hole... and when I'd done that, I bagged up the rest of the stray insulation in the garage (mostly left from when the pipes froze and they ripped out the ceiling the first time) and sorted out all the stray empty cans of paint thinner and stain to be disposed of on Saturday.   And after the fits of sneezing subsided, I congratulated myself on a good start and went to bed.

5.  Saturday I got up early (with the able assistance of hungry cats), finished the candle-base,  toted bags of debris variously to the hazardous waste collection site and the landfill, and then headed home to continue my assault on the pool hardware.  (There was a fourth visit to the pool store earlier in the week to get a right-angle-fitting because there wasn't room to fit one of the new valves to the pool water inlet, but by Saturday, I at least had all the parts needed.)   I'm happy to report this was successful- the new pool filter is up and running like a champ.   The water looks better now than it did most of last summer.

6.  Celebratory chocolate was consumed.

7.  Sunday dawned warm and sunny.  Okay, I'm not actually sure how it dawned because I slept late.  It was warm and sunny when I got up at ten.   I did various useful things like add chemicals to the pool, and obsessively check that none of the joints were leaking, the pressure hadn't risen too much and the water level was still high enough to feed the pump.

8.  In the afternoon, I trekked out to our local farm stand and Supported Local Agriculture by restocking the fruit supply, picking up salad ingredients and acquiring a collection of reputedly shade-loving perennials for my perennially weed-choked and barren side garden. 

9.  On my return home, I planted things, hauled compost and water,  raked debris out of the flowerbeds that do have living plants and transplanted a few violets to fill in the gaps between new perennials in the barren wasteland side flowerbed.

On the one hand, I'm sure going to New York City would have been fun (we go several times a year and always have a good time).  But in between chores I slept, read a couple of books, watched some nature videos with my delightful spouse and watched the cats skid off the furniture.  (Furniture polish.  It makes for outstanding feline entertainment.)  Add to the that, the satisfaction of getting some projects moving- and the weekend was definitely a winner.   And NYC will be there another time.