Husband gave up on his weaving project this past Monday - someday he will try to do this type of weaving again, but not now.
I have been working on catching up and getting the house and chores back up to date.
I have stored away the several pairs of boots each of us had out for snow this past winter. We have a sort of charm that we believe in (which did not work this winter) - once a pair of boots comes out for the snow, it is bad luck to put them away before the winter is over and will result in even more snow. Yeah, it is stupid and certainly did not work this winter, but we leave them out anyway. Since my teeth are in their seasonal ache period (spring and fall) and I have my seasonal stiff neck (ditto) I am pretty sure the weather will actually stay warm now. So I put the boots away. Our setup for the boots is 2 good sized plastic boxes with lids at the bottom of the front closet. The bottom box holds the boots for more severe weather - the actual snow boots, a pair each of rubber (plastic?) covered shoe boots and such. The upper box holds the boots that might also be worn in rainy weather - the leather ones - and a pair of my old sneakers which slip on. The latter has nothing to do with boots or bad weather. If I have to run out of the house - take out the garbage, recycling, forgot something in the car - they are easy and quick to slip on instead of stopping to put on shoes with laces to go out. They sit at the front and top of the top box so they can be quickly and easily reached. The lid of the upper box becomes a boot tray when we have the boots out - it is placed next to the front door and wet boots are left on it to dry and await their next wearing. I washed and dried the top of it well before putting it back on the box in the closet.
While I managed to fit in the bank reconciliations for our main bank accounts and those of the clubs of which I am treasurer, I did not get to the other accounts - personal savings accounts and a couple of small checking accounts that are used for money transfers, as well as since it was the quarterly statements, the statements for our IRAs. At this point the new statements will be here next week - so I will do the two months of statements together as that is quicker than doing one set now and one set next week. I did find time today to go back and post the purchases and credits on our main credit card statement from last month. I had matched the slips to the statement and paid the bill - in full of course - but had not had a chance to post it to my computer records - so today I did so. Providence must have been helping me as the items for this statement rarely comes out even (posts done with what was billed and paid) on the first try - sometimes it takes lots of tries - but this was one of the time that it worked out on the first try.
Right now I am doing my Wednesday night laundry. Forgot that I had done a load of jeans last week and it was left in the dryer to dry - so I had to bring them upstairs to be able to use the dryer. I also have 2 extra loads I need to do this week. I change the bed’s “underwear” once a month. While I bought new pillow undercovers during the month (as the ones I had were really icky when I saw them - stained and such) I need to wash the mattress pad I took off. We sleep in winter with two blankets. Since it is now in the 70s during the days husband suggested that we only need one blanket now for the warmer weather. I only made the bed with the green blanket and the blue one is waiting to be washed and put on the bed next week. Why do we have two different color blankets? When we needed a new blanket after we had the bed bugs we bought the blue one. Later when it got colder we decided we needed a second one and the store only had the green ones in the correct size. Since I like blue, I wash the blue one first when we are switching to one blanket and leave the green one on the bed to use while the blue one is washed. Then I will put the clean blue blanket on the bed and wash the green blanket. The green blanket will be put in a clear plastic bag when it is clean and after squeezing as much air as I can, the bag will be sealed. The green blanket will then be store in the bedroom in a piece of furniture (a plastic end table with a shelf under it and a closed cabinet area below that - it used to be in our living room in our apartment). In the fall I will put the green blanket on the bed and again wash and dry the blue one.
Today was my embroidery chapter meeting. Due to illnesses somehow not only was I the treasurer, but the secretary asked me during the week to take minutes for her and then this morning the membership chair called and said she was ill and asked me to take care of the renewals (our national group sets the membership year as June through the following May, so everyone has to renew right now), getting a sign in list of members, etc. for her. Plus the VP is out of state and she asked me to get the list of who will bring what to her house for our annual party next month.
After the meeting - which was the first one I went to since January (February and March meetings were canceled for weather and husband’s birthday meant that I could not go to the April meeting). I ran errands which have been waiting since late January to be done.
I had packed some items to donate. Many of them were old computer disk storage items, some were household serving pieces and others were clothes. The bags have been sitting in front of the office closet door since they were packed in late January - each time I thought it would only be a month before they were taken to Goodwill. So if I needed our business checkbook, new paper for the printer, my other laptop bag (I have one for travel and one for work - they hold different things) or the box of 2017 paid bills that I temporarily stuck in the top of the office closet until I clear out the 2008 box from the top of the closet and pack the 2017 papers (bills, statements and anything else) in it and put it in the top of the closet I had to move all the bags, open the closet door, take out what I need (or put away what I no longer needed) and then put all the bags back. So nice to be able to just open the closet.
Similarly I had not been able to bring back our recyclable plastic (soda) bottles for refund of their deposit since early January. I managed to get rid of one small bag (10 bottles, 50 cents) when I suggested to husband that we get rid of a small bag of bottles easily and quickly in the interim, but I kept forgetting to bring another small bag and get rid of them. There still is about half a month’s bottles in the porch - if all goes as it should, they will be returned next month along with any bottles between now and then.
I even managed to fit in a quick trip to the bank branch where we have a safe deposit box and switch an updated offsite data stick drive for the one in the box - also not done since January and intended as a monthly thing to do. I also ordered new checks as I am down to one book while I was there.
So catching up is progressing. I even fit in one of our VERY long telephone conversations with mom.
I mentioned late last year that we had accumulated and submitted a variety of paperwork to our local township for us to receive a senior real estate tax exemption, which is income based. I am happy to say that I received the paperwork saying that we have been given the exemption. This will cut our property taxes for the school year 2018-2019 and our other real estate taxes for 2019. We have to reapply later this year for the following year - at least now we know what to do and what we will need. I have already started collecting the papers as some of them come in without us having to request them. I start contacting the places I will need additional paperwork from either late this month or the beginning of next month - it is all due by the end of the year, so there is time to get it done easily and they will not send out the forms until late August.
For a bit of extra fun, we need to put a new carbon monoxide monitor alarm and a new propane monitor alarm in our RV. We have actually replaced the carbon monoxide monitor before and did not anticipate any problems with it. We have not needed to replace the propane monitor before, but the instructions seemed pretty straight forward. We had to order both monitors. The propane monitor had to be ordered from Canada. Husband found the carbon monoxide monitor listed for sale online, but the one he found said “marine” across it and is intended for a boat. He emailed the company selling it and was assured that it was it the same one - same model number and all.
The carbon monoxide monitor arrived first at our PO Box. When opened it did say “marine” across it. It also has not only different specifications than the one we have, but also they are different than those in the listing it was purchased from. Husband emailed the company about this on Friday. On Tuesday he telephoned as he had not heard back. The employee had him leave a message for the person he needed to talk to and he was assured he would be called back later in the day - today (Wednesday) he called again, spoke to the same employee and was told the same thing and he was a bit less pleasant and she told him that he had written to the wrong email address (the one in their listings) and gave him her email to send the info to - hopefully this will get resolved.
Husband went to take out the old propane monitor - should be easy - push two pieces of plastic on the front together and pull. Apparently the wire was too short for it to pull out. While we need the wire to attach the new one, we had to squeeze in a small wire cutter and cut the wires to get the old one off. We have attempted to remove the piece of floor in this section to get to where the wire connects - but it won’t lift out even after the screws were removed.
Hopefully both of these will soon work out and be installed or we cannot travel in the RV. Next we will progress to dewinterizing the RV - a messy job over 2 days to drain the antifreeze in the pipes and tanks out, add a vinegar and water mixture, run it through the pipes and shake it around the tanks by driving forward and backwards (I mean backwards or forwards or there will be a hole in the garage door) and stopping quickly. Then the vinegar and water mixture is drained out and plain water put in the tanks - then run out through the pipes and taps (3 pairs of taps and toilet) and then the plain water put in again and run out.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK - If the work that needs to be done seems immense, do it little by little.
Figure out what is most important to be done and do that work.
Take what can be set aside “for now” and do so - but put all of the items set aside as same together.
Then do the next the thing which needs to be done and so on.
It is amazing what will get done this way and you will get closer to catching up, if not caught up completely.
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