hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

Not exciting weekends can be pretty awesome! I know how you feel about slow drivers...I have a bit of a tendency towards the lead foot myself, lol. Don't blame you for not jumping into the middle of the mess at the UPS store. I wouldn't have either!
 
i've never been big on cleaning, i figure that if i were meant to be clean i'd have been a raindrop or something else. for sure i won't regret going to my end knowing i didn't waste time on cleaning. that is what fires, tornadoes and hurricanes are for. ok, sort of, i'm not that bad, but still i try not to spend too much time fretting over some dust or clutter. as long as it isn't food scraps/dirty dishes and clothes laying around or wet towels on the floor i don't really care.

one time i went to visit someone and the place had six inches of stuff on the floor, old pizza boxes, dirty clothes, etc. i never went back. my room is clutter but the floor can be mostly walked on and you won't find dirty stuff piled on the floor. i know how to do laundry, wash my dishes, etc. Momma didn't raise me that badly, i've just always been a horizonal organizer so out of sight is out of mind for me. i keep track of projects by where i leave them and i don't want anything moved or i may not find it again. i remember where i put things by the visual clues around them, etc. so don't mess with my filing system! :)
 
Since dust is a country accent, I don't worry too much about it- except on the electronics, where it can really mess things up. We keep the dishes washed, the counters wiped, the laundry done, and the toilet and tub clean. I try to vacuum at least once a week because the dog hair gets to be too much, same with mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors. My big bugaboo is keeping the kitchen cupboards organized- otherwise I waste way too much time looking for ingredients and tools when I'm trying to fix a meal.
 
@flowerbug too funny! Messiness can be it's own file system sometimes, I hear ya on that. I've been known to mess myself up when I clean something up, then I can't find it, but I know right where it was in the mess!

@Britesea there are some things I do manage to keep up with, the dishes are mostly done, and the laundry has been more consistent since I've been working from home and I can toss a load in while I'm here. Much easier that way!

Most of my concern with the cleaning is that the cat hair is everywhere. And I don't like to walk on a dirty floor in sock feet, and it's getting warm enough that it's sock feet or barefoot time. And a gritty yucky floor is just not cool to me. :sick Lord knows there's dust bunnies everywhere, and the counters aren't as clean as they should be, but the house is not really that bad by some people's standards, for sure. I wish I did have the time/energy to vacuum more consistently, because that doesn't always get done once a week, either. But all in all it's not bad. We just get into the habit of dropping stuff, or leaving it sit because I'll get back to it or something like that, and then it sits.

Yesterday I did do a bit of picking up and organizing, which was good. I got quite a few things in the guest bedroom taken care of. My riding instructor will be back next week, which means she needs to actually be able to get into the bed in the guest room... which means I need to un-bury it from all the crap that's gotten dropped in there. My neighbor gave me 5 bags of clothes, again, so now I need to sort through those (that's on tomorrow's to do list while it's raining), but I got quite a few other things put away in the room, so that is progress. I also have a tree that lives (it's dead, by lives I mean sits) in my office that I hang things one. During the holidays I traded it out for a christmas tree because having 2 trees in the house makes me feel swanky, and that gave me a tree to put the presents under since I don't put the gifts under the tree in the living room because cats. So the dead tree went into the basement for a while, and even though we had the christmas tree down for a long time I hadn't put it back, partly because it's a wee bit too big to fit where I have it. But a friend gave it to me, and I really like it so I was trying to make it work. I trimmed a few branches off of it, and it fits a bit better (though still not quite as good as I'd like), but it's back in the room. I had to move some things the BF stuck in the corner, but we'll have to deal with those later. The room is mostly put back together the way it should be, and that was a big help.

I've got a lesson with Oliver this afternoon, so that's a bit of extra cash. Tomorrow I'll try to get some more done in the house so that I'm not frantically cleaning next week before my trainer gets here (amazing what you don't feel the need to do when no one is visiting!). Saturday I'll be running deliveries for the farm I expect, and then Sunday we are going to pick up some T1-11 from a friend. I'm hoping we can get the broiler coops started this weekend, too, but we'll see what we get to. I'm still trying to work out how I can have a nursery space, plus the coops that will hold a total of 30 birds... I'm really not sure how that will work out, but I want to figure something out because then I can almost double my capacity. I've got dog crates that I could use as nurseries, but that would also mean that I need to keep them in the shed so they're protected, and I don't know that the BF will be very happy with that plan. I may talk to my friend TW and see what she thinks about getting them taken care of. I REALLY wish she'd let me use her barn, she's GOT space, but doesn't want to raise them there. But she's willing to chip in on the costs, so that's good at least. I also need to figure out how to make them a secure yard outside, so they have some room to roam, because I do NOT want the fox getting a hold of these birds. It's one thing if the fox gets a layer... it's totally another when the fox gets a dinner bird! Stay tuned for more on this saga... :rolleyes:
 
I read that creative people are MORE creative when they work in a messy environment; they get more ideas when surrounded by their ideas, as it were. I know that when I was making jewelry I was constantly getting another idea while working on one design, so I would put the current project down and start working on the idea. My desk was always crowded with different pieces in varying stages of completion.
 
i'm so glad we have all wood floors through most of the house here. no animals to contend with fur/hair - we both don't do well with them. my worm farm is self-contained and no real problems from those buckets. i get some dust when dealing with the paper shredding but that's just the way it is.
 
@flowerbug yeah, the animals contribute to a lot of the dirt from their hair. And then there's the farm dirt that just makes it way into the house, despite taking shoes off at the door (99% of the time...). So there's always cleaning that needs to be done.
We had a WAY busier weekend than I would have liked. Saturday I ran deliveries for the farm. Managed to get $30 in tips, so that made up for last weekend's no tips I guess. Stopped by the house on the way home and picked up the BF, and we headed down to Joann's to pick up something he wanted, and then I was finally able to get my refund for the speical order that I had placed when a friend of mine wanted curtains, but then changed her mind later. We stopped at Cowboy and Coyote's and then came back home, cleaned up a bit and walked over to the neighbor's for a spontaneous cookout. It was really nice of him to do that, and he sent us home with extra meat, too. It saved me from coming up with something for dinner, as well, so that was a relief. Stayed there way too late, and then walked back home and crashed.
Sunday I got up, went and did the chores at the barn, while the BF loaded up the tractor and went to get a big bale of hay for us. He brought it up to the barn just as I was finishing chores, so that was good timing. He reloaded the tractor and headed home. I stopped at SR's to pick up my money from delivering, and grab the order that my friend CH had placed. Stopped by Cowboy and Coyote, and then headed home. Got cleaned up while the BF put the trailer on my truck, and we headed down to VA to give CH his order, and get some T1-11 from him. He had several sheets left over that he didn't need from a project, and we can use it for the broiler coops that we're working on. We stood in the driveway talking for entirely too long, and finally left to come home at about 7:30, for the almost 2 hour drive home, and still had to swing by Cowboy and Coyote on the way up the road. We didn't get home until about 10:00. I was SO exhausted.
Monday morning I got up, and was cranky, probably because dinner the night before was a blueberry muffin and a cupcake when we got home, and I headed out to the barn. When I got back the BF had breakfast going, and we talked for a while. The stress of things has been challenging because both of us have had shifts in our routines. I'm working MORE than I was before, and he's working less, and it has disrupted out rhythm a bit, and that's made both of us somewhat cranky. To add onto that his mom bait and switched us into coming over for lunch, and I didn't really want to go. The BF had told her he was coming over to cut up more of the trees they had cut down to bring it home for firewood. She got all excited an said she wanted to have everyone over for a cookout. So then she told his brothers that we were coming, and so of course they agreed to come, and then we had to come. I was mad that it took time away from the BF that he wanted to use to try to get something done, and she used us to get his brothers to come over. It seems that's the way she does things sometimes. We went over, but didn't stay long, and when we got home (after taking care of Cowboy and Coyote), I was just beat. I got in bed before it was dark outside, and passed out.
This week isn't going to be much better schedule wise, but hopefully I'll be able to manage ok. I finally have a lesson coming up, so Storm got worked today when I went to the barn for his trim. He did fairly well, it helped a bit that it was pretty warm, so he didn't have much energy. I'm hoping that my trainer will have some insight into why he's been lame on his left hind when we've been trimming him. I also need to run a lyme test, and have been saving up for that (thanks to working on the farm on Saturdays).
I told the BF that we need to take a break once GH and SH get home. I want to go to his parent's beach house for a weekend and not do anything. I hope that happens sooner rather than later!
 
Thanks FEM! YES it does!!
So my old explorer that the BF has been driving is about to die. Like for real this time. He is now manually shifting an automatic transmission. :oops: Better him than me. Since KBB values it at $45 (no lie), it's not worth repairing. It's got 251000 miles on it, it doesn't owe us a dime at this point. SO now we're trying to figure out what to do next.
He has decided he's going to get a car (probably a Chevy Cruze), with a small loan, and hopefully keep the payments under $200/month. We MIGHT be able to squeeze that out of the budget, especially since I've been setting aside about twice as much as I need to for the car insurance every month. At this point based on the estimate, we should only need to pay $126 more to cover the insurance for the rest of the 6 months that we have it paid up. I have a lot extra sitting in that fund, so I'm hopeful that we can squeeze out the payment out of that. Right now there's just not enough without his overtime pay.
He mentioned he could get a part time job, which I do agree with, but I also suggested that he have a heart to heart talk with his boss and figure out where his company is at. Summer is normally their busy season, and they have picked up a little bit, so hopefully the hours will come back. There's no point in him getting a part time job if his hours come back because he won't have the time to work it, and it will have been a waste of his time and his potential employer's time. There are plenty of things sitting around this house that need to be sold, and gotten rid of, so that just needs to be done.
His thinking right now is that he's going to just get a loan for a used Cruze, and keep it for about a year, and then trade that in on a pickup truck. Hopefully by then he'll have more set aside for a down payment for what he'd rather have (a pickup truck, really), and we'll be able to handle the payment a bit better. I think that's not a bad idea, though it's going to keep the payments higher than if he used the cash he has on hand for a down payment.
At this point it's a waiting game until we know more. We're in a better position to handle all of this than we were years ago. I have a really tight handle on exactly how much we need to keep things running, and I know where the money is going. He continually says he feels like he doesn't have money, which is frustrating because right before all this crap exploded (first his root canal and crown, and then losing the hours, and now needing to replace the vehicle....) he was starting to be in a really great position. We both were, and I'm just really thankful that I'm hanging on because I can help pay for things that he often pays for himself (like the oil for my oil changes). So at least one of us is still staying a bit level, but it's really disappointing that when he was almost at a point where he could start to move forward with some things that he wanted, he's kicked back again. We'll keep chugging along, there's no other option, really, but things are gonna be tight.
So it's back to my penny pinching and hoping we can keep the air off for a while, and hang drying clothes instead of drying them in the dryer, and all my other funny money saving quirks.
 
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