Summer Semester and Projects...

The long summer session begins Monday (June 1), and, while my course site is ready, I'm not. Geez, where do the days go?


The projects for the summer--paint the bedrooms, living room, and hall; paint the Sears circa 1919 iron bed and some bookcases; rip the carpets up and refinish the red oak floors; make new curtains; get my daughter to build some bookcases...what else? Oh, yeah. Finally, sheetrock the wall I knocked down last year in the bathroom. The kitchen and bathroom might be good projects for next year. I don't have the money or time to redo them. Painting, etc., is going to be hard enough. I hate moving furniture, and I have no idea where I'm going to put all this stuff. Hmmm...I think a garage sale is in order--anything but my books.


I feel a trip to Lowe's coming on.


*****

My mom called me this morning around 8am to let me know that a close friend of the family, Emma Davidson, died of a heart attack. I'm shocked. My mom and dad were planning a trip with them in August. Funeral arrangements are pending, so I don't know when that will be, but I'm guessing Monday. I wonder why, the older I get, the more surprised I am when people older than I am die. Of course, I'm also shocked when people younger die. Let's face it--I'm shocked when anyone I know dies. I hope I'm not holding on to the idea that I'll live forever. I thought I got over that many years ago.


So, here's a sunflower for Ms. Emma.

Staying at Home

I'm enjoying not driving on a daily basis. I mean, I still drive, just not as often. I did go into the big city yesterday to visit my parents and drop a check in the night deposit slot at the bank, but I don't drive four or five days a week. And, since I'm not driving 90 miles a day and staying away from home for long hours, I've been working around, on and in my house.

So, today, I tackled the garage. Since I moved in three years ago and unpacked most of my stuff, I've had a stack of empty boxes piled in there. I finally broke them down; I filled up my trash can and have another stack that won't fit in there this time. I used nails and hooks to hang up my hand tools and an old rack someone gave me for my long-handled tools. I neatly restacked the boxes of books I don't have shelves for on the wall opposite the tools. I swept out the garage. If not for the riding lawnmower, I'd have room to park my car!

Before the day got too hot, I put some edging around the front garden I dug up this week, but I don't have enough of it. My mom needs to finish her front flower bed before I'll get the rest of the edging, but, so far, the front garden looks good. And I finished mowing the front yard.

I washed all of my dirty clothes. I had company last week--my sister--and I've been ignoring that chore. And I still need to close up the back wall of the shower. I'm so tempted to start pulling up carpet, but I have to think through that project before I start it--I'd need a pry bar and sandpaper, and polyurethane, and who knows what. So I'd better put that off for a while. But it's on the list of things to do, along with the chicken coop and yard, the compost bin, raised planting beds...