Sunday morning, a time for reflection. A time to stop and plan for the next week. A hot cup of coffee, birds outside the window, nobody else up...
Last week was crazy hectic. First, it was a pre-Memorial Day cookout at our "other" son's house. We call him that because he's been our sons' best friend for about 20 years. Anyway, we went over to his place on Sunday for a cookout. While we were there, he and our youngest decided they were going to spend Memorial Day cleaning out our garage. Sounded cool to me, since Rick and I are just not able to do it.
I was surprised when they showed up Monday morning with their wives. I love the girls, but my expectations of supervising the garage clean up from my couch vanished. Since they were here and we have the whole extra-bedroom/storage room issue, they decided we would clear it out while to guys were outside.
I have plans for rearranging, but I have a lot of stuff to move. I was using our sitting room as a sewing room, and it was overflowing with fabric, etc. First we cleared it by boxing and bagging up everything that was loose and then moving it to the living room for staging. Then we dug out everything that was in the "junk" room and staged it in the sitting room and living room.
Along the way, I found stuff for the kids' garage sale. They were looking for donations to the sale to raise money for nursery furniture. Although it may look like it, I am NOT a hoarder like those crazy people on TV -- I happily gave them lots of stuff. Ultimately, they wound up with a flat-bed trailer full of stuff from the attic, garage and house, along with a car full of boxes.
I'll admit there was a lot of stuff, especially in the garage, that was ready to be thrown away. They filled up a pick-up bed full of wood and stuff and several trash cans. Just to keep motivated, we had the "Hoarders" show marathon on tv all day. Thank goodness we did not find any dead animals nor have to resort to shoveling stuff out!!
However, as the day drew to a close, we realized that some things would not get completed. We wound up with a good start on the garage, and a wreck in the house. We had boxes and stuff stacked around the living room. Frankly made me stressed to look at it and know we have to deal with it now.
Every time we start on this project (and we've tried before), Rick overdoes it and winds up sick. Although he had to work all day on Monday (car dealers are open every holiday but Christmas Day), he came home and helped with the final stages of the garage. On Tuesday he went to our son's house to work on a deck they've started. Unfortunately, it was about 95 degrees. Exhaustion and heat triggered Rick's faulty immune system and he got very ill.
After 7 months working contract, the employer had finally decided to offer me a permanent position where I've been working. That started Tuesday (well, officially Monday, so I get paid for the holiday -- something that you don't get when you are working contract). After work, I went to the theatre board meeting. About half-way through it, my oldest son sent me a text to say that he had been at the house and was leaving, but was very worried about Rick. So, I ran home and, sure enough, had to take him to an urgent care center.
Rick has Rheumatoid Arthritis and takes Embrel, an injectable immuno-suppresent. Since RA is an auto-immune disease (your body's immune system attacks your own healthy tissue), the treatment is to suppress that response. However, the treatment is generalized, so that you are also unable to fight off infection. Which means, if you get strep throat, you get it bad. Even with two doctor visits, two injections of antibiotic, and the strongest oral antibiotic he could take, he still missed 4 days of work. And the house is still all packed up and sitting around.
He was able to get around on Friday enough to consolidate some of the stacks and make a path. Then he went to work on Saturday. It just makes everything take longer when you have only one day a week off together.
In the meantime, I had a busy work-week, month-end close and Payroll on the same week. Thursday night we took the oldest son and his family out to eat, since I hadn't seen the baby in a week. You know what happens with newborns -- one week makes such a difference.
Friday night we had our oldest grandson, as usual. Saturday Rick went back to work, and I started out to run some errands for the party. I wound up at my parents' house late in the afternoon. My two-year-old nephew was there. I waited for my son to come over with the grandsons, then we went out to eat after my brother and his family left. While eating, Rick called to say that our "other" son's wife needed someone to sit with her youngest who was in the hospital with an eye infection while she went home to pick up her older son. It was 9:30 by the time we got home, so nothing was finished that I had planned.
Here we are at Sunday. The plan today is to work on the empty spare room, installing hard wood flooring (that we've had in the garage for several years, waiting on installation). I got the paint yesterday, but I don't know if I'll get it painted today. And I have plans to build a shelf unit. All that must be done to setup the room as my sewing/craft room. Then I have to move the stuff into there. Then move the day bed out of the boy's room into the sitting room along with the computer desk from the dining nook in the living room. Then set up the cradle and baby bed in the boys' room and move the assorted baby things (car seat, bouncer, stroller, high chair) into that room. Ultimately, everything will have its place and we will have less stuff.
We won't finish it all today. And next weekend is getting ready for the party and having it, too. A couple of weeks to live with the boxes, but maybe by 4th of July I can relax.
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