Articles

Apr 12 2024

Refreshing

Author: Jamie DeBree

It’s that time again, when the seasons are on-again, off-again, on and so on, like a child flipping a light switch for fun. Snow, hail, sleet, rain, sun, wind, cold, hot…sometimes they trade in whole days, and other times, merely hours.

Isn’t it interesting how many of us humans feel the need to clean and dust and organize and purge major areas of our lives in the spring? For some, it’s almost a fanatical turn-over, a near-desperate need to renew our surroundings and sometimes deep swaths of our everyday lives.

For others, it’s a quieter thing, more of a shaking-out of winter into the backyard, sending the snow back to Old Man Winter and dusting the ennui of dark and cold into the bin for a good six months (hopefully).

Normally I fall into the latter category, quietly pruning the plants in the yard, maybe wiping down my kitchen cabinets, and thinking about all the things I should do now, while the weather isn’t actively trying to kill me. I enjoy watching the flowers pop up, the color gradually coming back, and being able to walk my dogs late without all the bulky layers and gloves needed in the colder months.

Spring always brings a bit of dread though, too. In the midst of all the renewal going on, there are still losses, and I’ve suffered enough of them in the spring that I’m somewhat on edge until summer sets in, wondering if there will be another casualty – one of my dogs, a friend, someone in the family. I try to ignore it as much as possible, but it’s always there in the back of my mind, until the weather gets hotter and the interminable heat of summer takes over.

This year, my husband decided to “refresh” our backyard. Once upon a time when we first moved in, we had a wild idea to put a dry riverbed through one side of the yard, and plant it with flowers. There was to be a tiny bridge to cross over it with, and a fountain at the end. And for a little while, all but the bridge existed.

But, grass seeds spread, weeds took over, and neither of us had the time or energy to stay on top of the maintenance. The fountain got covered over, the rocks started falling in, and the whole thing just got way, way out of control. We don’t work well in the heat, and weeds tend to grow great in the dead of summer, which is not a great combination of things to keep a neat-ish patch of yard.

So, the job being too big to handle ourselves, we decided to hire the landscaper who tore out our front lawn for us to come back and take care of the mess we’d made in the backyard. He’s been working all week, and a third of our yard has been torn up, and is in the process of being graded to fix a drainage problem (water in our basement), and to look much less wild than it did just a week ago. It will be rock and grass, easy maintenance (just mowing, no weeding), and I’m sure the neighbor who shares that fence line will find it refreshingly clean as well.

When the landscaper asked if I wanted him to “scrap” my handmade raised bed by the patio, I declined. It, too, needs a refresh, and I fear I’ve lost the roses in there, including my favorite Peace rose, which was over 20 years old. But I want to do that work myself. I want to finish those beds, fill them up with good soil, and replant them myself. I don’t want someone to do it for me – I want the satisfaction and ownership of doing it myself.

Sometimes, you have to just admit that the job is too big, and pay someone to get you back on track. Other times, it’s not necessarily about the finish line, but rather about continuing to work at it whether you ever crawl over that line or not.

I am looking forward to seeing our completed yard. And also to getting out and trimming up the front gardens where things have already begun to grow. I’ve started doing some spring-cleanup of routines and workflows, too, which feels good, and is already bearing some productive fruit (such as creating a dictation schedule again for writing).

With any luck, everything and everyone will keep springing up, rather than the alternative.

Are you spring-cleaning? Anything noteworthy this year?

That’s it for this week! If you have a favorite thing to share, or want to recommend a book, TV show, video or podcast, comment below, email me at jamie@jamiedebree.com, or catch up with me on Facebook or Instagram.

Support your author:

Mar 01 2023

It’s All Just Stuff…Sort Of

Author: Jamie DeBree

**Yes, this should have posted yesterday. I got distracted. Sorry!

Crates of books that have been in storage for nearly 20 years now.

Last summer, I wanted to clean out our storage unit so I could reclaim the hundred plus bucks a month I’m spending on rent for that. Things happened, injuries occurred, weather intervened, and I made exactly one trip to get stuff before the project fell by the wayside.

Now the storage unit company has decided to raise prices for the second time in as many years, and I’m *so* over it. The prices go up on April 1st (ha!), and I plan to have our unit vacated before that happens. So I’ve been making weekly trips, filling up the car each time and bringing everything back to the house for sorting and either assimilation, donation or sales.

The schlepping boxes has been going pretty well (and it’s a great workout, too). The sorting and finishing? Not so much. Mostly because I have time to get a load of boxes, or I have time to sort through stuff, but not both, given everything else that needs to be done in a weekend (you know…chores). But pretty soon, I will have no more room for boxes of stuff at the house unless I get rid of some of the extra stuff, so…yeah.

I have a plan, sort of. I currently don’t have time to get all the chores done on the weekend, because…extra chores with the storage unit clean-out and new aquarium projects. So Monday nights are “finishing nights”, wherein I finish anything leftover from the weekend. This week, it was watering plants, two loads of in-progress laundry (one needed to be put away, the other dried and put away), and making dog treats.

Tuesday and Thursdays are workout nights, so nothing there. But Wednesday and Friday are open, so I’m going to spend an hour each on both of those nights sorting through boxed stuff, and deciding whether to sell, donate, or keep each item. My goal is to list at least three items for sale online every week, and to have a donation box ready and in the car by the end of Friday night to drop off each Saturday morning on my way out to do errands.

I told my husband we need to set up a “Little Free Library” out front. We live near a church and a school (so lots of traffic and off-street parking by people who don’t acknowledge the huge parking lot closer to the buildings), and also on a street that gets a lot of walking traffic, so that would be a good way to cull our library a bit, since I definitely do not have room for *all the books* (which is really, really sad). Since he probably won’t get that done anytime soon (if at all), I’ll probably be donating a good chunk of books to our local rescue mission store as well. Most of the books in the boxes will stay…it’s the newer books on the shelves that will probably need to be thinned out a bit.

I hate getting rid of books. Hate it with a passion. But…space is finite, so…it’s time to buck up and just do it. I honestly have a lot of things that could be cleaned out. I tend to be a I tend to keep a lot of things just because I like the aesthetic, and I really don’t have room for all the stuff I think I need to keep. Sometimes even things that bring us joy just take up too much space.

Who knows? Maybe all this cleaning, sorting and clearing out will extend to the stuff that’s already in our home. Bring on the spring cleaning, right?

Mar 22 2021

Flirting with Danger

Author: Jamie DeBree

You know how it feels to walk headlong into a gust of wind so strong you really have to lean into it in order to walk?

That’s kind of how I feel trying to keep Apollo from playing or doing anything that might pull on the stitches from his neuter last Thursday. The vet said 7-10 days of seriously reduced activity. We’re counting down, I tell you what. It’s like giving both these dogs a new toy (each other – they love to wrestle and play tag), and then telling them both they can’t play with it. But it’ll be over soon enough, and they can get back to the business of burning energy like they bought it at Costco.

It’s just as well I had all this extra vacation time to burn, since there would have been no way to keep them “quieter” if someone wasn’t home with them. I’ll be home another two days, and then hubby will work from home Weds, the last day before Apollo will be able to resume his normal activities.

That gives them only two days home alone this week too, which is a good thing as well. We switched our lunch break to an hour later so they’ll only be alone for 4 hours at a time, instead of 3 in the morning and 5 in the afternoon. Until Apollo matures out of puppy stage, that might help him to not be so destructive. We’ll see.

As far as the landscaping goes, our plants are in, and our lights are ordered, so things are moving along! It’s muddy out there today, due to rain this past weekend, but I’m sure our landscaper will get going as soon as things dry out a bit more.

So what am I doing with my vacation days while the dogs sleep? Puppy proofing is a main thing – clearing all flat surfaces of papers and things that would be fun for a nearly-year-old pup and a high-energy boxer girl to grab and spread all over the place. I started on the dining room table yesterday, and will finish that and move to the kitchen counter today.

Tomorrow I’d like to get started on our taxes. Super-fun. Not. But they have to be done.

And yes, I did break the rules and take the dogs for a short walk yesterday. After breaking up play sessions and trying to stop zoomies around the yard more than twice, it was either that, or they would have insisted on some potentially more damaging “energy-release” mechanism. There’s only so much I can do to keep all that energy in check…and walking is the least damaging of the activities they really want to engage in.

We’ll go again tonight for another short jaunt. I’m keeping a close eye on his stitches/incision to make sure everything looks okay and keeps healing like it should.

But pent-up energy is a dangerous weapon.

Jan 25 2021

Change and Patience

Author: Jamie DeBree

Words for the Week: Stress, exhaustion, bloom.

Changing routines is hard. I am trying rather valiantly to switch things up, with moderate success, but it’s slow going considering I have to rewrite neuro-pathways (essentially muscle-memory for the brain) and also actual muscle memory/kinetic energy. But! I was able to get back to the office at 11pm every night this past week, and after comparing the time it takes me to transcribe with the time it takes to just write, and the editing time required after each…I was able to determine that for me, writing the initial draft instead of dictating it, and then transcribing it later is definitely more efficient.

So, no more dictation, though I may use that just for capturing random thoughts to set the scene or details I want to include later. We’ll see.

It also means (given the editing component) that I have a lot of rewriting to do from last year. *sigh* But I can use my dictations as outlines of sorts, so all isn’t lost.

In other news, I’m trying to figure out how to motivate myself to keep up with daily/weekly chores so small issues don’t become big issues. Like the fact that I had to clean out my fridge yesterday and it was completely gross. Or that I routinely let non-dishwasher-safe dishes pile up in one of my sinks, and they sit there for weeks simply because I hate hand-washing dishes so I don’t do them right when they’re “generated”. And there’s the recycling that I don’t take out to the garage, so then I have empty cans and bottles piling up on my kitchen counters making it more difficult to cook.

Laziness is the only reason I don’t take care of these things right away, before that pack of celery becomes goo on a fridge shelf, or before there are so many cans on my counter I don’t have room for a cutting board. I know it needs to be done, I just choose not to take the 5 minutes to do it because I don’t feel like it, or I’m too tired, or just unmotivated.

I’m not sure how to motivate myself to do these things right away instead of waiting until they get to the point of no return (which then requires several hours of time to catch up rather than 5 minutes). I know routine is part of it, so that even when my brain doesn’t feel like it, kinetic energy and muscle memory just pull me into getting it done. I rely on that a lot for daily things, and it works well, once it’s coded into my brain. Re-coding though is…often problematic.

But I need to do something. Keeping up on these things gives me more time overall, and that is what I covet most…more time not doing housekeeping or cleaning chores. I also really hate cleaning veggie goo and moldy leftovers out of my refrigerator.

Am I trying to change up too much, too quickly, between the writing and household stuff? Possibly. I’m impatient with the fact that I can’t make quicker progress, mostly because I’m finally motivated to fix these problems, and it’s stressful going through the change. So I’m anxious to get through the transitional period and to the other side where this stuff just “happens” without so much mental effort.

Alas, “extra mental effort” seems to be the theme of the past 12 months and continues on. So I don’t know why I expect personal growth to be any different.

I did make some monthly goals for writing/publishing, and a plan for reaching those. I may have made them too late to hit this month, but it’s still a solid plan going forward. So there’s that.

I’ve been working on rehabbing my hip too, with good progress. Slow and steady with that…Friday was the first day I could do three sun salutation sets with zero pain. So this week, I start strength training for the muscles in and around my hips, in hopes of keeping any future damage to a minimum. Yet another change where patience is required (or a lot of damage could occur).

And my hair has hit another awkward point of growth…I really am going to have to find a new stylist soon, if only to even up the back and then sort of calm down the flippy-ness of the upper layers. That will be a February project, I guess.

Change and patience. Patience and change. Two things I am quite weary of at this point, but with enough patience and time, things will stabilize and get easier. It sometimes takes awhile, but they always do.

Eye on the prize, and all that. *sigh*

Aug 24 2020

The Grill Pan

Author: Jamie DeBree

I have exactly one cast iron pan.

It’s a grill pan – the kind with the little ridges in the bottom to make those cool “I grilled this but not really” marks in your hamburgers and steaks (and also to hold whatever you’re cooking up and out of the grease while it drips off, but that’s boring, since there’s no fire underneath to flare up at every drop of fat that sizzles into it). I bought it when we upgraded our range this past spring to one with an induction cooktop, which if you’re not familiar with, uses a magnetic field to excite and heat up the metal rather than heating coils (so the stovetop doesn’t actually transfer heat to the pan, it just excites the metal in the pan until the pan itself gets hot). I wanted to try something in cast iron on it, and since our patio is far too warm to use for actually grilling in the summer (never mind all the yellowjackets looking for a handout), a grill pan seemed like a good choice.

I’m not normally one to want to fuss with maintenance on anything, including pots/pans and dishes. I make very few exceptions – pretty much everything in my kitchen needs to be dishwasher safe, or it doesn’t stay long. The grill pan is one of those exceptions though, and I have a love/hate relationship with the extra care it requires.

My stainless steel all just goes in the dishwasher and gets nested back into the cupboard until I need it again. Easy peasy, no effort on my part.

The grill pan though…I have to scrub the larger bits loose with a scraper, then use a finer scrub brush to loosen the rest of the gunk, and then wipe it out with a dish cloth and rinse several times before it’s clean (yes, I know if I cleaned it shortly after using, it would probably be easier, but I’m not that person and never will be, so it’s not going to happen). Then, after it’s clean, per a web site on “easy cast iron care” I read, I rub a tiny bit of oil all over the inside, heat it back up for 10-15 minutes, and then leave it to cool overnight to keep the seasoning strong. It’s either that,or re-season it long and slow in the oven every so often, and I can guarantee you I will never remember to do that. And if I did by some chance, I’d never actually make the time. I know this about myself.

Needless to say, on nights I reach for that pan, I sometimes hesitate a few seconds, wondering if I should just use a stainless steel one instead so I don’t have to worry about the care ritual later that night. And I always find myself grudgingly placing that pan on the stove, knowing I’m going to be annoyed by having to care for it later, but still inexplicably drawn to…well, something about it.

It’s not even the cooking, really – sometimes I can finish what I start in it on the stove, but with thicker or still-somewhat-frozen steaks, I have to finish them in the oven (the grill pan is small enough to do that, but it is heavy, and then I have to move things around, etc). The grill marks and searing are nice, but that’s hardly worth the effort. And yet…I still reach for that pan several nights a week, even for things like grilled cheese that is going to seep into those grooves and make the cleaning process even longer.

I think a lot of it is the aesthetics. I like how it looks, and I like watching food cook in it. Basically the same reason I use actual bone china teacups for my late night cuppa, even though they also require washing by hand. Also, it’s the only pan that requires that kind of care. If I were using several cast iron pans for different things and had to scrub and season all of them every night, that would probably make me rethink my options. Though this one in particular is harder to clean by default solely due to all those ridges. A flat pan would take far less time to clean and care for.

And it would also be far less interesting.

I often find myself standing at the sink, scraping gunk out of the pan ridges, and trying to decide whether I’m enjoying the meditative task, or just enduring it for the joy of actually using the pan. I still haven’t decided, honestly. Maybe it’s a little of both.

I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out.

Sep 03 2019

Housekeeping?!

Author: Jamie DeBree

No, this isn’t a resolution check-in. We’ll do that next week. I’ve got housekeeping on the brain at the moment. Probably because I just cleaned the toilet for the first time in…well, I’m not going to say. Let’s just leave it at “it’s been too long”.

I’ve admitted my housekeeping shortcomings here quite often, but somehow, it never ceases to amaze me at just how lazy I am about this one thing, and also, that other people manage to keep their house far cleaner than mine on a regular basis and still have a “life”. How does one do that, exactly? Because honestly, I have no idea.

I spent time both this past weekend and the one before trying to get our bathroom cleaned up. Granted, it wasn’t a lot of time – probably a couple of hours each Sunday, but that seems like a lot of time to spend on one room just cleaning. And it’s still not “done”. The floor needs steam-mopping, the ceilings need to be cleaned, the rugs need to be washed and the curtains need to be…well, replaced, honestly. So what did I spend all that time on? The tub mostly, and trying to get soap scum and other grime off both the porcelain and plastic surfaces.

It’s still not done. It looks a lot better, and the hubby re-caulked the surround (it needs to be replaced, but we didn’t have time to go that far this weekend), but there’s still a thin layer of scum everywhere. We need to figure out a different way to deal with the soap, too, because the shower caddy over the shower head is just not working – soap drippings go through the caddy and down the wall, causing serious soap-scrum build-up and eventually mold.

We replaced the rusty shower curtain rod (it’s downstairs – I think we can clean it up and reuse it), and both the curtain liner and the curtain. Once I find a new caddy I like (I’m thinking a corner one on a tension rod, maybe), I’ll get that and some bonefide soap dishes to keep the soap drippings from going everywhere.

One more weekend and I should have it in much better shape…but then I need to figure out how to keep it that way.

And there’s also the matter of my dusty blinds (all over the house), the dining room table/storage area for misc junk, my makeup vanity in the bedroom…the laundry room…needless to say, it’s somewhat overwhelming.

I used to use Flylady’s cleaning method, but the last thing I feel like doing after work is cleaning something. I’m generally doing really well to clean the kitchen before I get ready for bed, and that’s thanks to the Lucy-dog, who needed her meals mixed up with enzymes in advance. Her special needs “trained” me to clean the kitchen last thing at night, and I still do it to this day, even though she’s been gone three and a half years now. Still, it could use a monthly cabinet wipe-down and floor mopping.

I need a plan. A new routine. A list to follow. Something that will work for me, and keep the house cleaner in spite of my best efforts to just let the dust-bunnies proliferate.

Are you a good housekeeper who keeps everything dust-and-dirt free? If so, what’s your secret/routine?

If not…solidarity! I’ll let you know when I figure out a plan/routine/magic spell that doesn’t require me to clean all weekend long.

Why don’t we have self-cleaning bathrooms by now, anyways? I mean…it is nearly 2020…

Support your author:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords | iBooks

Mar 26 2019

Alternate Reality: Preview Mode

Author: Jamie DeBree

Tomorrow, it’s back to work after 5 days and a weekend off. No major catastrophes, no major outlay of “vacation” time for work issues…I think we might be on to something with this whole “taking partial weeks off” thing. Or it could just be the time of year, too. Whatever works, I say.

I was mostly productive, though not as much as I thought I’d be. But that’s to be expected, so I guess that makes it a wash between expectations and reality. I got some extra cleaning done, I learned how to create my own print book templates properly and reformatted the book I’ve been wanting to for months now. I still need to create another template and reformat the cover again for a mass market version to distribute, but that will be much easier now that I’m not fumbling around with the formatting in general, and know how to set and use styles in Open Office. Sometimes all it takes is the proper tools.

I caught four shiny Treeckos for Pokemon Go community day, and evolved one plus a couple “normal” into Sceptiles who are supposedly the best grass-type fighters for raids (we’ll see). At the same time, I didn’t play much Pokemon Go on account of the whole “go” thing, which I didn’t do much of aside from daily dog walks and the normal weekend errands. I am, at heart, a homebody. I’m perfectly content to stay home for days on end without seeing anyone but the dogs and my husband.

I did get back to Batman: Arkham Asylum for a night. One of the battles I had to fight was *intense*, and I was actually a little sore the next morning from tensing up during the five or six (maybe more?) times I had to try before I finally got through it.

I also subscribed to Starz for awhile so we could watch American Gods and Gnomeo and Juliet. The initial episode of the former is trippy, the latter is hilarious. I never did make it through the American Gods novel…gave up – it’s a doorstopper. But the show has me intrigued enough to watch a few more episodes, at least.

Gnomeo and Juliet is just adorably cute, and now that we’ve seen that (and agree we need an army of garden gnomes to make our yard look better), Sherlock Gnomes is up next on our movie “to-watch” list.

It’s interesting how quickly I settled into a routine of sorts this time. Most of my vacations are unorganized because I have so much to do, and I plan my time so tightly that it’s overwhelming. Either that, or I have a vague idea of things I want to do, and then plan nothing, so I do nothing. This time, I had a few concrete goals/priorities, but kept them limited by design, and the rest was just “if I get to it, great, if not, great”. I settled into a nice routine of working in the mornings (on my book stuff and then cleaning when I needed a break from sitting), walking the dogs after lunch, and then errands or more work/cleaning trade-offs in the afternoon. A loose, comfortable routine that I could maintain indefinitely if I had the chance.

Someday (20 yrs down the road, *sigh*), this will be my life. And it will be good.

Alas, tomorrow it’s back to the hustle and bustle of the day job/work-week routine.

Support your author:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords | iBooks

Mar 19 2019

The Excess Vacation Hours Vacation

Author: Jamie DeBree

As of tomorrow, I’m on vacation until next Wednesday to burn the excess vacation hours that I’m not allowed to carry over into the new year. Why Weds to Weds, you might ask? Psychology, my dear Watson.

It seems like every time I take a traditional week off (Monday- Friday), I spend the better part of at least one day troubleshooting something for work via email or phone. When I only take a few days off in one week, I rarely get called on to help fix something (or if I do, it’s quick). So, I’m trying something new, and taking Weds – Fri off this week, and Mon – Tues off next week. That still gives me a full week off, but no full “work” weeks, so we’ll see if I end up troubleshooting or not (there is network maintenance going on this weekend, so the potential is there, but…). Call it an experiment.

What’s the plan for this vacation? Catch-up, mostly. I need to make dog food for the week, since I spent this past Sunday not feeling well (my own fault – too many days in a row last week of poor dietary choices…though I’ll admit, I enjoyed every last “choice” at the time). I need to take the Subaru in for some recall work if I can get it scheduled – wiper motors and airbag replacement. Murphy-dog is due for his rabies shot, which normally I wouldn’t redo in a dog his age (he’s around 9-10 now, best guess), but he’s a pitbull, and people are people, so…better law-abiding in his case (I can’t re-license him unless he gets the shot, even though they’ve been proven to be effective far past 3 yrs). Hopefully he won’t suffer any averse affects (I’ve seen more issues of the tumor-causing kind with vaccines in older dogs, unfortunately).

Aside from those things, I hope to do a lot of writing-related tasks I never seem to get to. Formatting, cover art, editing…and some new words too. My horror alter-ego has a short story in progress to add to the “Death by Veggies” line, and I’d like to get that finished, and I’d really like to make some good headway on a couple of other novels I have going. So, definitely writing, after I get the dogs walked so they’ll sleep and let me be.

The only other thing I really want to do (aside from some gaming, hopefully) is “spring cleaning”. I suck at cleaning. I find it incredibly boring, so I do the absolute minimum. Most adult women and a fair amount of adult men would run the other way at the state I keep my house in. I can’t tell you the last time my blinds have been dusted. Definitely not this year. Probably not last year either. Maybe not even the year before that…

That said, I do occasionally get the desire to “clean all the things”. It passes quickly, but I did buy a dust-mop for the kitchen floor (it’s laminate, and I hate it, and have ruined more of the finish every time I try to clean it), a new scrub brush for the bathroom, and I have plenty of microfiber cloths and rags on hand. The plan is to do one major thing in each room every day of my vacation…like cleaning all wide wooden blinds in the living/dining room. Or washing down all the kitchen cabinets/walls. And wiping down the bathroom walls/ceiling (don’t ask). And then I want to add hard floor cleaning to a monthly maintenance schedule.

Yes, I know people clean their floors more often. I vacuum once a week, even the hard floors. Baby steps. We don’t eat off my floors. Obviously.

So…that’s the plan for my “vacation”. Be all adult-like and do the stuff I keep putting off because I just don’t wanna (or in the case of writing, just want some focused time for). Seems like as good a use for the time as any, especially since they’re vacation hours I didn’t plan on using until later.

Next year, a trip, but for now…spring cleaning. Errands. Maybe a little Pokemon. Good times!

Support your author:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Smashwords | iBooks

Nov 27 2018

Mental Loops & Twisted Feet

Author: Jamie DeBree

For those of you dying of curiosity, yes, my new skivvies and bras came in, and the old got thrown out, and life is much better/less painful now. And I have a line item in my budget for such things, so I can…well, not get in the same situation again. Or that’s the idea, anyways.

Bonus the menfolk might be appreciate: when you shop for bras online for a time and then open up your Facebook page, your ads are all women modeling bras. You’re welcome.

The jewelry armoire/vanity combo that I really wanted got me stuck in a mental loop. I thought it was the stuff inside the dresser that was the sticking point (and I’m glad I dealt with that), but the thing I just couldn’t let go of was that piece of furniture, and how nice/organized it would be to have. And since it’s out of my budget for the foreseeable future, it caused a loop of sorts in my head where I couldn’t really do much of anything but try to figure out how to obtain that particular piece, or how to circumvent needing one. I get like that sometimes, and it sucks. I can’t really focus on anything until I solve, to my brain’s satisfaction, the lack of whatever it is I’m obsessing over.

Bug, not feature.

So, I spent a lot of brain power on the problem, trying to decide how to solve it without paying $400 for a piece of furniture I really don’t *need*. Finally I dug an old bookshelf out of a closet, took the cardboard drawers out of my little cardboard dresser and put them in the bottom two shelves of the bookcase (for socks), found a lined basket and put that in the top shelf of the bookcase (for skivvies – keeping them in the bathroom messed with my morning routine too much), and basically turned that bookcase into a nicer looking dresser. I want to eventually get all matching lined baskets for the “drawers”, but I like it, and I think it’s a definite improvement on the cardboard dresser that was there.

Then I went through and cleaned out both my big jewelry armoire and a smaller jewelry box, and reorganized my entire jewelry collection so I’d have easier access to the pieces I want to wear more often in the armoire, and the pieces I just keep for sentimental value or occasional wear are stored in the smaller box. I got rid of a lot of stuff I’ll never wear and didn’t want to keep, so that was good too.

After that, my mind finally broke free of that “gotta have it” loop, thank goodness. Zero money spent (though I will eventually buy baskets), several problems solved. Whew!

At some point that same weekend, I stepped on one of the dog bones in the living room in such a way that I twisted my foot, ankle and knee. I didn’t realize how bad it was at the time, but the next day, the top of my foot in the center and the sides of my ankle hurt like crazy. The day after that, my knee hurt too. For almost an entire week I walked around on a sore foot and ankle, until finally I decided I’d better treat it gently for a few days to let it heal. So, I limped a bit when people weren’t looking, keep pressure off it as much as possible, and now it’s down to a manageable level of soreness (still healing). Just a bad twist? Hairline fracture? Hard to say, and I have no intention of getting it checked out as long as it keeps healing.

However, having to baby that foot and then getting sore arms and a stiff back simply by hauling a turkey around on Thanksgiving Day (seriously!) has forced me to acknowledge three things.

1. I’m not young anymore, and it takes longer to heal/recover than it used to.
2. I really, really need to get back to daily yoga and alternate-day weight training, because my body is just as happy to sit and atrophy if I let it. Which is painful in the short term, and really bad news in the long-term.
3. I really should pick up dog bones on a daily basis.

My workouts have fallen off since Halloween, when we were working out pretty well just getting everything put out and then hauling it all back to the basement. But then everything was just piled into the workout room, and due to a couple busy weekends since, I haven’t gotten it all put away again just yet. I don’t even have room to do yoga in there at the moment, and I haven’t been moving fast enough in the mornings to get my yoga time in anyways (I just need 10 minutes, but I’ve been staying up too late, which makes me move slower in the mornings…bad cycle).

But, due to the rearranging in the bedroom (see above mental loop situation), I have room to do yoga there. I tried it out Sunday and Monday nights, and I tell you what – three rounds of sun salutations, and my back was feeling *much* better. And since I’m more awake and organized at night, I’m going to make a point of doing yoga right when I go into the bedroom to change into sweats at night – usually after I walk the dogs. That should get my body back into a more pain-free state.

This weekend I’ll get all that Halloween stuff put back into the storage room, and vacuum the workout room so I can lift two to three times per week, starting next week.

And as of this week, I’m adding “pick up dog bones” to my early morning routine. It will take two minutes, and potentially save me a lot of pain, so…worth spending time I don’t really have on, methinks.

Of course as soon as I got out of the mental loop above, I got stuck in another one, and have since spent more money than I should have on bras and boots. My wardrobe is driving me nuts again all of a sudden, and I need to get that under control before it costs me any more money.

Just before Christmas is an excellent time to clean out the closets and visit thrift stores, right?

Stupid loops…

Resolution Check-In
Sleep 6 hrs: Yeah…no. I mean, close, but I’m missing the mark way too often. And that screws up my mornings, so, gotta get it under control.
Goals check-up: Well, I suppose the whole working out thing and sleep thing tie into this year’s goals, but no formal check-in. It’ll definitely happen before the end of the year, though!

Writer’s Notes – none this week.

Sep 25 2017

Maintenance, Literature & Fall Excitement

Author: Jamie DeBree

Taking apart a dryer at 9:30pm on a Sunday night is not my idea of fun. I mean, yes, I did leave the little door/trap open while I cleaned off the screen, and yes, that little booklet to tell how to use the new detergent shouldn’t have been so precariously perched on top of a mountain of mis-matched sock singles, but still.

Our house is older but not super old, built in the 1950’s. It has some issues, like all older houses do. This past Saturday we had the plumbing guys in to snake out the floor drain in the basement, because it was to the point where I was flooding a corner of the basement every time I did laundry. What would have taken us at least a couple hours took him less than an hour, and he said it was nothing we could have prevented – just rusty old pipes. Which kind of made me wonder (but not for too long, because I didn’t want the headache it was bringing on) if the pipes would eventually rust out completely. And if they do, what the heck do we do then? I mean, these are under the basement floor, going out under the foundation and under a two-foot thick patio that the previous owner poured…

Yeah. Not going to think about that this morning either. Our electrical really needs to be redone too, but at least all that is above the foundation. We have a bathroom to fix and remodel, the other bathroom needs some upgrades (yes, needs), the kitchen floor needs to be replaced, and we’d like to put gas fireplaces into the wood burning ones at some point as well. So, lots to do. But it’ll be worth it, eventually.

Last week one of my goals was to make more time for reading. And I did. I’m still working on Tami Hoag’s The Bitter Season – for some reason, the book just isn’t doing it for me, but I’m half-through so might as well finish it. I also read The Cinderella Deal by Jennifer Crusie, which really did resonate strongly with me (love her books anyway). Then I started The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton, which is written in a much more literary style – very high-level prose with the occasional word I have to look up the meaning of. I don’t read a lot of “literature”, mainly because it takes more time and concentration to delve into, and while it’s almost always worth the effort, I don’t always have the energy or time to spend on such involved reading. I’ve been wanting to read this one for awhile now though, so I’ll keep working through it a little at a time. Lovely writing, for sure, and an intriguing story right from the first page.

The other notable thing I did last week was buy a bunch of tickets. Friday was payday, and I bought tickets to a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party this coming Saturday at our local Moss Mansion, and then more tickets to their haunted theater show on Oct. 27th just before midnight. Another set of tickets to the Highly Suspect concert on Oct. 7th, and yet more tickets to the Yellowstone Art Museum’s annual Masquerade Party.

So that’s our entertainment sorted for this next month, which is all very exciting. Of course one can’t go to a masquerade without a costume, so hubby and I thought about it, and decided to go as Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. My riding hood costume and jewelry is ordered and he’s got a suit coming and a mask picked out. He’ll be a very dapper wolf indeed, methinks…no full fur suit or makeup, because he has to fly out on a business trip at 6am the next morning and removing makeup/spirit gum/etc would be a nightmare between leaving the party and getting to the airport at 4am.

Many fun things to look forward to in October…exciting!

For now…it’s Monday, so back to the week-day grind…

Writer | DBA | Dog Wrangler