January 17, 2015

Exhausted!  

A Lot Accomplished!

January 17, 2015

Wow!  What a day!  I got up a little before 7:00, got my shower and washed my hair.  Next I started the first of 6 or 7 loads of laundry.  Then fixed breakfast and ate.  I didn't know if my regular housekeeper was coming or if I would have her sister during the afternoon.  It turned out I had the sister in the afternoon.

Last night I had started cleaning the drawers in my bedroom.  I did one last night and the rest this morning.  Then I stripped all the beds since they had all been used as well as the couch and a pallet on the floor (inside the space capsule for our youngest grandson).  I set out clean sheets on each bed for the housekeeper and folded and put away the extra quilts.  All the time I kept the laundry moving from basket, to washer, to dryer, to sofa for folding.

Before we fixed his pallet in the Space Ship

 The living room was still a mess with the cardboard castle the grandchildren had been playing in and the Christmas tree that needed to be boxed and put away in storage.  I moved the castle to the garage - I am not ready to part with it but had told the kids there is only room to leave one set up and they voted for the spaceship.  That works well because it is in the second guest room.

Also in the living room we had two small refrigerators in use while the big one was basically our of service for 3 weeks.  Now that it is working well, I had returned all the food to the big one a couple of days ago so they were now ready for Ron to move out to the garage.  I emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it and started it running.

By late morning I was down to two loads of laundry still to be done, and had gone outside to move the castle from the living room to the garage when I saw what an amazing day it was.  I ended up spending the next hour cleaning one small section of the yard beside the driveway.  I trimmed bushes, cleaned dirt and leaves off the edge of the driveway, hauled several loads of debris to the pile at the back of the property and carted off dead limbs that had fallen in the area.  This particular area is very overgrown, but the birds love it so we leave it that way.

Ron returned around noon and helped a little in the yard.  Then I called Mom to see if she and Carmen were ready to come over.  They were, so I left to pick them up around 12:30.We went by Antonio's to pick up some plate dinners for which we had bought tickets.  We came home and all ate lunch before Carmen started cleaning.  I baked a cake and then cut out a scarf while Mom tried to do the handwork on one, but the fabric is very hard to sew through, so she didn't get too far.  We decided to go on to Best Buy so she could look at some computers that were on sale.  This decision has been months if not years in coming.  We have all told Mom for a long time that she needed a new one.

When we got to Best Buy, we were quickly helped by a kind, patient young lady.  She seemed to know her product well, and we had a lot of questions.  She showed us many features and Mom was ready to make a decision but we needed to go back to her house and measure the opening in the computer desk before we made a final decision.

This is an Apple computer and I have never owned one.  My two sister have.  So we ended up texting and finally calling one of them for input on the decision.  The picture quality on the monitor alone had me about ready to buy one.  Awesome.  After the trip to the house we returned to Best Buy and spent at least the next hour actually buying the unit.  I don't know why, but it seemed the entire staff of the computer section came over to observe the purchase.  Was it the almost 92 year old lady buying her 3rd or 4th computer?  They were all helpful, but it took a long time.  She wanted to set up for the Geek Squad to come to her house to set it up and transfer her files from the current computer for her and they have scheduled to do that very soon.  I was impressed.

When we left, they loaded it for us and we were close to Rudy's so we went there to pick up supper where we had a very nice young man take and prepare our order.  When we got home it was almost 8:00 and Carmen had been working away while we were gone.  Ron had worked in the yard and then slept for a while.  We ate our delicious supper and then Ron agreed to take Mom and Carmen home so he could take in the computer and bird seed he had gotten for her this morning out at Loop Farms.  He also got oranges and grapefruit.  Yummy!  The orange I just ate was wonderful.

Tree across the street from Mom's house

The day was too  busy for me to take time for photos.  I took only one and it is of a tree across the street from Mom's house.  It looks like it has its fall colors.  That is about as close to fall as we get and here it is January.  Our poor plants are so confused!