The whole house is box free. I worked on the back porch today reorganizing it and got everything out of all the boxes back there. I ordered a few things to help make things go in their right place but otherwise am pleased with how everything fit. I did add a few more things to the pile on the curb that need to go away.
I scattered pictures throughout the house. I haven’t hung any yet but that is next on my list of things to do. I have an overflow of pictures that I need to decided what to do with. Not sure I can get rid of some of them knowing I will have more walls at the house I am building. I found room for most of them though.
I still need to sort through my Knick-knacks and see what I can discard or store. The bookcase I have to put them on is overflowing and I don’t like crowded shelves. That will be even harder for me to decide what to do with the left overs. Many are souvenirs I picked up on my travels around the world and others are family items. Maybe my kids will take some of the left over family items?
I had a real hard time finding sleep last night. Don’t think I slept more than two hours all night and that came in bits and pieces. I was tired and cranky this morning. I took a nap this afternoon in my chair and slept hard for over an hour.
I fixed chili today. I was able to find everything I needed but it is a struggle getting to things in this tiny kitchen. The trash can is in front of the drawer with the lids and the cabinet with the spices. The drawer that has the lids is small and I had to take all the lids out to get the big one I needed. The spices are all piled in the cabinet and it was a challenge to find the five I needed for the chili. The canned goods were not fun to find either. I have way too many of them. I burned the hamburger as I am not used to using a gas stove. I just tasted the chili and you can’t taste the burned meat – thank heavens. I need to reduce the number of cans I have and my chili recipe calls for eight of them. Not sure I can tell I removed eight cans from the cabinet but it was a start at using some of them up.
I did order a spice rack that hangs on the wall. That will making using spices much easier. The racks that allow spices to sit on elevated shelf’s are too big for my cabinets.
This kitchen will call for me to cook simple things as it will be too much work to fix things that have lots of ingredients I will have to find. At least, that will be my excuse not to fix complicated things.
We got just a bit of rain overnight and into early morning. The clouds with the heavy stuff went around us. I kept checking radar during the night as there was some nasty looking blobs showing up on radar. The dogs were a bit upset during the night and restless too. Not sure if it was the weather or they were picking up on my energy.
Kathy took a load to recycling and hauled off another pile of boxes. I’m grateful she is taking care of those things for me. It is handy being so close to the recycling center in town. When I lived in the country I stored it up and only brought it to town when I had a full car load. Now we can take it when we have one tub full.
I haven’t received the funds from the sale of the house yet. They told me I probably wouldn’t get them until Monday and possibly Tuesday. I’ll have to decide how I want to invest them. A lot of it will go to paying for the house I am going to build but the other part of it I need to put to work for me in some way or other.
I was pretty cranky this morning but my nap helped. I need to zoom out and realize how much I have gotten done. I sit in my corner chair and see all the things that still need done and focus on that and forget how far I have come in several days.
Tomorrow I want to finish up my bedroom and make the extra pictures and Knick-knacks go away and clear my floor. I also need to reorganize the shelf in my closet as I just piled things up there when I unpacked the first time. Phil repaired a window in the living room and I need to paint that tomorrow.
I have several things I need to take care of on Monday. I need to get my driver’s license address changed and register to vote with my new address. My driver’s license expires this year so I will go ahead and renew it too. I also need to pay the second half of property taxes for my rental houses in Emporia. I paid the second half of my two Chase County properties earlier.
I also want to price a temporary dog run of some sort. I have a guy that is going to build me a sturdy one but he isn’t available until possibly June or July. The dogs need a place to be able to be outside most of the day. I don’t trust their electronic collars and there is a leash law in the city. I need a break from them during the day!
Next week I want to get out to the shed and get it in shape. The shed itself also needs painted. I will paint it the same color as the house. I also have several places in the house that need reorganized such as the bookcase in the living room. It is too crowded and I need to eliminate some books from it. For some reason it is missing a shelf and I will have some wasted space but nothing I can do about that. I also need to reduce the number of stuff in my food pantry by about half so it is easy to find things.
When all that gets done I then get to decide what I want to do with all my free time. I do want to start walking lots again. The dogs will need taken on long walks everyday and that may help give me motivation to get out and walk more and stick with it. This yard needs lots of love and attention. I am going to hire the two guys that helped me this week take stuff to the dump to come here and make a huge pile of yard waste and bricks to go away. I need to collect it all first though.
I still haven’t attempted to hook up the TV. That type of thing can only happen when I am in the mood to be patient with myself and that hasn’t happened yet! I don’t watch TV much anyways so no rush on that. However, if something comes up in the world I want to be able to tune in and watch things happen. Never know when that might happen so I want to get it hooked up sooner than later.
I’m not sure it has fully hit me that I no longer own the country place. I did think about it last night as I watched radar and saw the threat of severe stuff headed our way. What a relief to know I am not sitting on top of the hill in that huge house anymore. Maybe when I get the funds from the sale of the house it will feel real.
Nothing on my calendar for next week except exercise three days and the errands I want to run on Monday. Saturday is Craig’s funeral and Sunday is Tagen’s high school graduation. Talk about an emotion filled weekend! Good thing I have some time to rest up for all of that this week.
The dogs are still shedding and leaving white hairs on the rug in the living room. I am grateful I had them shaved as I can’t imagine how much they would have left with their heavy coats still on them fully. I am thinking I will get to vacuum this rug daily from here on out.
One day next week I will clean this house. WOW! Finally a house that I can clean the whole thing in an hour tops. That will feel good. The other house took me several days to clean it all and I rarely had the energy to get it all done at the same time.
It has been fun watching the stuff disappear at the curb. Today a kid rode up on a bicycle with a sack in hand and filled his sack. Not sure what all he took but he looked like a kid on a mission. I’m grateful he took some things. Some people come and look and take lots and others don’t take anything. Just so grateful it is going away. If it isn’t gone by Monday I will have to haul it to Salvation Army.
Sitting in a good head space this afternoon, thanks to my nap. This week has been jam packed with moving and Craig’s death. I can feel the emotion that I had suppressed starting to come to the surface so I will need to allow time to grieve and allow those feelings out. It will be good to have a relatively quiet week ahead so I can have time to sit and feel those hard feelings. I need to release them gently so they don’t erupt and I dump them on someone else that doesn’t deserve them.
Not sure what support the kids will need this week. Michelle will have an especially hard weekend with Tagen’s graduation on top of her dad’s funeral. It won’t be an easy week for any of them and I will allow lots of time for me to be there as they need me. Sure wish I could lift some of their pain for them but know they each have to find their way through their grief each in their own way. I can only sit beside them and hold space for them to grieve.
Grateful for the progress that I have made getting settled into this house, grateful there are no more boxes in the house, and grateful I know what I need to do to take care of myself and my kids.