Weekend accomplishments
The weekend was different because the stupid downstairs a/c died sometime late Friday afternoon, and no one noticed until we were sitting down to dinner and thinking "Gee it's kinda warm in here". Normally it wouldn't matter by the first week of November, but summer has continued to chug along in the south with highs over 80°. We've had precisely one (1) day of fall-like temperatures.
I'd say it wasn't normal, but what the fuck is normal anymore. I used to think I'd retire in Louisiana, but this state is going to be uninhabitable in 10 years, regardless of what happens tomorrow.
Mom spent all weekend fretting that it's permanently dead, but no one smelled burning or heard any weird noises. I'm sure it's just the same thing that happens once or twice a year, the guy comes out and empties the drain or something and it's fixed in 10 minutes. The only remarkable thing is how it always seems to happen late Friday, because the HVAC guy won't even answer his phone on the weekend. Which, honestly, respect. It's a job, he gets a weekend same as anyone working in an office.
It's funny how Mom's anxiety and mine never match. Like I'm always losing my mind over something I feel she's being enragingly blasée over, while she wrings her hands over things that I think will be basically fine.
Saturday I made eggs and toast, then finished reading You Like It Darker, so I am all caught up with my Stephen King short fiction. I only had to go to the gas station and the grocery store. It was warm in the house but not bad with the ceiling fans on/window shades down, especially for Mom and Phil, they don't really get hot until it's really hot. And even with their recent trimming we just have so many trees around the house that it helps keep the temperatures down. I got them lunch, then went upstairs where the less-than-a-year-old a/c was effortlessly pumping out cool air.
Next up on my bedroom decluttering list was the desk. The top shelf I mostly left alone, it's a couple of totes of fountain pen stuff and blank notebooks, I went through all that recently because I decided to sell some of it off in Facebook groups. The second shelf is mostly books, so I went through those and pulled out a few I decided I didn't need to keep. I read most of my books on my Kindle Fire--I've heard all the arguments about how digital ownership isn't real and I don't disagree with them. But I read so much that it just can't be physical books all the time. I don't have the space and I do not want to hump dozens of heavy boxes of them whenever I move again. At the same time, I love to support independent bookstores and I love used bookstores, so I do still accumulate some books.
The desktop was littered with painting and various craft supplies, so I found spaces for a lot of that in the wicker cabinet I cleaned out last weekend, or in the craft cart. I dusted everything, vacuumed under the desk (David got the vacuum unclogged), and untangled the bird's nest of cables as best I could. Our wifi router is under the desk in my bedroom, and a lot of the cables turned out to not even be connected to anything. I think they were leftovers from the old desktop.
I threw out a couple of trash bags of crap, so I'm not just "churning", which is a term in hoarding where you don't actually clean but just move stuff around.
There was a lot of potato salad leftover from the night before, and I bought a rotisserie chicken at the supermarket, so we didn't need to heat up the downstairs more with cooking. After supper I watched a couple episodes of the new season of The Diplomat and painted. Turns out a series about international politics that is very soapy and totally fictional is the perfect balm for *waves hands*
I gave Mom my box fan to use because she had complained about not sleeping well with the bedroom being stuffy. I only use it for white noise.
Sunday it wasn't too bad downstairs in the morning so I figured it would be okay to make breakfast. I made French toast and bacon, then kind of had the rest of the day free since I didn't have to cook. I had planned to make tonkatsu and a white chocolate cake because David's birthday is today. When that became a bad idea, I said I'll just treat everyone to pizza. David loves pizza like, even more than the average American male, and we have a very good pizza place in town.
I watched the new Dateline and changed the bed sheets. I deliberated not doing laundry because the dryer adds heat. But I hate to get off my schedule; the laundry room has a door so I figured it would be all right as long as I kept it shut. I washed my sheets and put on a load of clothes, then grabbed 4 of the books I wanted to give away and went out hunting for the 4 Little Free Libraries that the app told me Abbeville has. (I have considered starting one myself, but we're too far out in the country and almost never get foot traffic.)
I found 3 of them; one of them appears to have disappeared. I left The Screwtape Letters, Music For Chameleons, and a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. It scratched the same itch that geocaching does, something I now realize I haven't done all year. Anyway, there are a lot more in Lafayette so that's where the rest of them will go, I'll do one or two a weekend.
Back home I made the 'rents lunch, then decided it wasn't too hot to vacuum the living room rugs. I read for a while--I started Lauren Groff's The Vaster Wilds before bed Saturday night--then watched a couple more episodes of The Diplomat and painted some more. I ordered the pizzas when it was time and picked them up, and after supper I watched the last episode of The Diplomat, which ended in the most dramatic way possible.
This weekend's watercolors:
*sigh* So what's everyone's plan for tomorrow? I will be voting in person before work, as usual. I don't think they'll call it for a few days so I don't plan to follow the election returns; in fact I'm going to make a point to avoid coverage and probably instead get high (which I usually don't do on a weeknight) and watch a dumb movie.
I'd say it wasn't normal, but what the fuck is normal anymore. I used to think I'd retire in Louisiana, but this state is going to be uninhabitable in 10 years, regardless of what happens tomorrow.
Mom spent all weekend fretting that it's permanently dead, but no one smelled burning or heard any weird noises. I'm sure it's just the same thing that happens once or twice a year, the guy comes out and empties the drain or something and it's fixed in 10 minutes. The only remarkable thing is how it always seems to happen late Friday, because the HVAC guy won't even answer his phone on the weekend. Which, honestly, respect. It's a job, he gets a weekend same as anyone working in an office.
It's funny how Mom's anxiety and mine never match. Like I'm always losing my mind over something I feel she's being enragingly blasée over, while she wrings her hands over things that I think will be basically fine.
Saturday I made eggs and toast, then finished reading You Like It Darker, so I am all caught up with my Stephen King short fiction. I only had to go to the gas station and the grocery store. It was warm in the house but not bad with the ceiling fans on/window shades down, especially for Mom and Phil, they don't really get hot until it's really hot. And even with their recent trimming we just have so many trees around the house that it helps keep the temperatures down. I got them lunch, then went upstairs where the less-than-a-year-old a/c was effortlessly pumping out cool air.
Next up on my bedroom decluttering list was the desk. The top shelf I mostly left alone, it's a couple of totes of fountain pen stuff and blank notebooks, I went through all that recently because I decided to sell some of it off in Facebook groups. The second shelf is mostly books, so I went through those and pulled out a few I decided I didn't need to keep. I read most of my books on my Kindle Fire--I've heard all the arguments about how digital ownership isn't real and I don't disagree with them. But I read so much that it just can't be physical books all the time. I don't have the space and I do not want to hump dozens of heavy boxes of them whenever I move again. At the same time, I love to support independent bookstores and I love used bookstores, so I do still accumulate some books.
The desktop was littered with painting and various craft supplies, so I found spaces for a lot of that in the wicker cabinet I cleaned out last weekend, or in the craft cart. I dusted everything, vacuumed under the desk (David got the vacuum unclogged), and untangled the bird's nest of cables as best I could. Our wifi router is under the desk in my bedroom, and a lot of the cables turned out to not even be connected to anything. I think they were leftovers from the old desktop.
I threw out a couple of trash bags of crap, so I'm not just "churning", which is a term in hoarding where you don't actually clean but just move stuff around.
There was a lot of potato salad leftover from the night before, and I bought a rotisserie chicken at the supermarket, so we didn't need to heat up the downstairs more with cooking. After supper I watched a couple episodes of the new season of The Diplomat and painted. Turns out a series about international politics that is very soapy and totally fictional is the perfect balm for *waves hands*
I gave Mom my box fan to use because she had complained about not sleeping well with the bedroom being stuffy. I only use it for white noise.
Sunday it wasn't too bad downstairs in the morning so I figured it would be okay to make breakfast. I made French toast and bacon, then kind of had the rest of the day free since I didn't have to cook. I had planned to make tonkatsu and a white chocolate cake because David's birthday is today. When that became a bad idea, I said I'll just treat everyone to pizza. David loves pizza like, even more than the average American male, and we have a very good pizza place in town.
I watched the new Dateline and changed the bed sheets. I deliberated not doing laundry because the dryer adds heat. But I hate to get off my schedule; the laundry room has a door so I figured it would be all right as long as I kept it shut. I washed my sheets and put on a load of clothes, then grabbed 4 of the books I wanted to give away and went out hunting for the 4 Little Free Libraries that the app told me Abbeville has. (I have considered starting one myself, but we're too far out in the country and almost never get foot traffic.)
I found 3 of them; one of them appears to have disappeared. I left The Screwtape Letters, Music For Chameleons, and a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. It scratched the same itch that geocaching does, something I now realize I haven't done all year. Anyway, there are a lot more in Lafayette so that's where the rest of them will go, I'll do one or two a weekend.
Back home I made the 'rents lunch, then decided it wasn't too hot to vacuum the living room rugs. I read for a while--I started Lauren Groff's The Vaster Wilds before bed Saturday night--then watched a couple more episodes of The Diplomat and painted some more. I ordered the pizzas when it was time and picked them up, and after supper I watched the last episode of The Diplomat, which ended in the most dramatic way possible.
This weekend's watercolors:
*sigh* So what's everyone's plan for tomorrow? I will be voting in person before work, as usual. I don't think they'll call it for a few days so I don't plan to follow the election returns; in fact I'm going to make a point to avoid coverage and probably instead get high (which I usually don't do on a weeknight) and watch a dumb movie.