Mini-Vacation

I'm off today, tomorrow and Wednesday but the 'To Do List' is long.  There are only two projects on the agenda today ...really only one project but it needs to be done in two different rooms.  The guestroom and my office are in desperate need of a complete overhaul. De-junking, deep-cleaning and reorganizing.  None of that sounds like fun to me, but it has to be done. 

The guestroom hasn't been occupied by an actual guest in a long time, so the two beds have slowly accumulated 'stuff' that just needs to find a home.  When I re-vamped our bedroom a couple of months ago, the guestroom became a handy place to move things while I painted.  Somehow after the painting project was done, there were still a lot of things laying around the guestroom.  Exhaustion or my lazy streak won out and I just closed the door and forgot about it ...until recently.  Now our grandsons are coming to visit 4th of July weekend and the guestroom is in a shambles!  I pick them up Friday after work, so this project is a priority. 

The other room to be overhauled is my office.  Just another catch-all space in the house.  We refer to it as my office, but it's also my sewing machine and where we set up the dehydrator.  It was originally intended as a formal dining room by the couple that built this house and there is a wonderful walk-in pantry in one corner.  It's wonderful in that it's 5 feet deep by 6 feet wide, with four 12-inch deep shelves on three of the walls.  Great for storing all kinds of things ...a nightmare if the shelves are full but disorganized.  Unfortunately, that's how I would have to describe it right now ...a disorganized nightmare.   My hope is to designate each of the three walls for a specific function.  One wall would hold all of my equipment such as the two canners, the Foodsaver, canning jars/lids, and various empty plastics that I can use for food storage.  Another wall would would hold all of my sewing and craft materials.  The third wall would become the short term food storage.  

Right now, we keep a only few days worth of staples in the kitchen cupboards because space is limited in the kitchen.  The rest is kept in the food storage area we built in the shed down the hill.  I make an average of three trips to retrieve this or that from food storage during the week.  That doesn't sound like a lot of hassle but there are days when my feet are screaming and one more trip down the hill would just do me in.  So my hope is to designate about a third of this walk-in pantry for it's intended purpose ...a pantry.  I would stock these shelves with enough of our most commonly used staples to last about a month.  What gets put on the pantry shelves would come from what's already in storage in the shed.  I would restock it about once a month, again pulling from the food storage in the shed.  New groceries brought into the house would get date marked and put in storage in the shed so we would be able to keep everything rotated.  It will sure make things easier on me for those days when I just can't make it down the hill but it will also ultimately make more space in storage so we could possibly expand our current 12-month by at least an extra month. 

Tomorrow ...Day Two of this Mini-Vacation ...I'll be gone all day.  I need to get the oil changed in two vehicles and get an inspection on one of them.  That may not seem like a lot but it will pretty much take the whole day because of logistics.  When Yeoldfurt leaves for work tomorrow morning, I'll follow him in another vehicle.  We'll leave one of them off at the shop when they open at 8:00 and I'll use the other one to drive Yeoldfurt the rest of the way in to his job.  It's another 20 miles so it will take me an hour or so to drop him off and get back to the shop.  Hopefully by then, the first vehicle will be done and I can leave them the second vehicle.  The second one will take longer because there's a burned out tail light to be replaced and then the inspection.  The shop, like anywhere else, tends to get busier as the day wears on.  By the time I drop the second vehicle off, half a dozen other customers may already be ahead of me in line.  So I'll a few hours hanging out at the courthouse with my old work buddies until the second one is done. 

In other words, I will be totally not productive, just goofing off and killing time as far as projects around the house go.  When the second vehicle is ready, I'll go pay the bill and pick up both sets of keys, then head off in the direction of Yeoldfurt's job.  It will probably be two or three hours before he gets off, but I there are plenty of places to kill time in that neck of the woods too.   

Yard work is the big project for Wednesday.  The three inches of rain we got last week has really transformed things.  Our yard has been brown and crunchy for weeks but is now green and growing.  I hope to get the yard mowed, the raised bed weeded and the shed branches down to the burn pile.  I much prefer yard work to house work, which is why I have to save the yard work for last.  One thing would lead to another and I would never get around to the house work.  So I don't dare start the yard work unless and until both of my indoor projects are done.  

So far, it's not sounding much like a vacation, is it?  But I had my 'play time' earlier this weekend.  While Yeoldfurt was off at the blog shoot in Lockhart, I was driving to San Antonio for an overnight with my daughter.  First things first, I spent some serious cuddle time with my little granddaughter, Bella, Saturday morning.  She and her mom had a commitment that afternoon and I had a wedding to attend so it was only a few hours, but delightful for me.  The bride at the wedding I attended is the daughter of one of my best friends.  Her mom and I have known each other for more than 30 years and I was glad I was able to share that moment with her.  It was a lot of 'special' to fit into one day. 

My daughter is in the choir and her husband plays bass in the Praise Band at their church, so they always go early and attend both services on Sundays.  I went to the early service and kept Bella with me instead of putting her in the nursery ...a little extra cuddle time for Grandma.  I passed Bella back to her parents and said my goodbyes after the early service, then drove 30 miles out to Boerne to visit another dear friend.  I've only known this lady for a few years, but it seems like we were friends as soon as we met.  She happens to be my son-in-law's grandmother which is how we met.  That makes us 'family' now too, a double blessing for me. 

My desk at work will be knee-deep when I get back on Thursday but I'm glad I took this time off.  Even if I only spend two of the five days playing, getting a few things is its own reward.