Good morning!

How are you doing Lee?

Tatoulia, your birthdays sound fun.

I have birthdays and I get older. My mom sends me presents. My inlaws call and we have an awkward obligatory conversation that makes my mil feel like she has done her duty. Sometimes I get to pick a restaurant and possibly even announce a command performance to my kids. One year I got all the kids plus ❤️Dd and ❤️Gs to the restaurant! Honestly, that was too many people at a restaurant - we couldn't all have one conversation.

Good luck with your bag.

CM, it is great that you can help your roomate out with the vines. On year I had a non-allergic friend clear some poison Ivy for me and it was a huge gift!

Yesterday was long and exhausting. I picked my seeds up from my friend, which was good. And I got to have a long conversation with him, which was also good because both my girls have some really awful stuff going on in their lives right now, and he loved them too. (He calls them his nieces) Things I can do nothing about.

And TODAY is my long day!

Dishes are just piling up.

I do love birthdays, SubC and you've had some fun ones! I am happy just the two of us this year.

I'm sorry your girls are facing struggles.

Okay back to work. Supposed to be beautiful here today.

Family things are still going on. The girls are handling tgem well, but both are hard.

In other news, dsil got some great medical news today that removed a big stress on him, Dd and me.

And Dd says I can have Bean on Saturday AND Monday.

Good school day. Only one kid out for quarantine today.

Ran a load of dishes.

Great news! Sorry the girls are working through some stuff but yay for your son in law. And your visitor! Have a blast with him! You have such a nice family.

Painter is here today. He's finished the ceiling and is now taking a lunch break. I work harder with him here. I can't just jump up and start doing stuff. So I'm glued to my computer and I'm grateful for that.

Having a storage unit day today

Looks like some off and on rain maybe tomorrow and some days next week, so I'll run errands or do stuff at home. There'll be sorting of stuff from the storage unit, stuff to computerize, etc.

Am about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way with the vines and will fit them in around other tasks and the weather.

You are doing great, CM!

My painter has left for the day. He's done the ceiling, primed the walls and dine the trim and doors. Cannot wait to see the color tomorrow!

Did pretty satisfying work at storage yesterday. I'm getting a little better with zeroing in on a goal and keeping my focus. I attribute this in large part to having gotten the ball rolling last fall with that garage sale; wasn't sure if there'd be carryover but apparently there is. And then I guess just going over a few times in the winter and refamiliarizing myself with what is still to be done. So now often I can isolate a specific task to do instead of just looking at the mess and going 😱 AAACK!

So I had a goal going in yesterday. Get the remaining set of sturdy wire shelves set up in the spot I'd designated for them. To do this, I needed to set up my card tables by the door and carry out the books that had been on one of the rickety shelving units and get the rickety one out. In the process I found some books that can go.

Got the good shelves positioned and partly assembled but needed more little connectors because sometimes they break or get lost. By this time the sky had clouded over and I knew we were going to get rain today but I wondered if it would start early. It didn't, but since the afternoon was getting on, I wrapped things up and went out to Menard's to get more connectors. The rain came later.

The forecast for the next few days is for cloudy weather and maybe rain, or maybe not. It changes. Temps look okay though so I'll probably be able to keep working.

The half of the unit that many books are piled in looks awful right now but I will be able to conquer it in due time. I'm really trying to keep in the forefront of my mind the question of what books I can live without, as I sort through. I've had time to rethink a lot of reasons I used to keep lots of books on many subjects, but now much of the same information is readily available online and more up to date. That helps a lot.

I do have books that are "old friends," many I've enjoyed from childhood on, and that would be out of print and hard to replace. I went through children's books and culled a decade ago. There are a few more I think I'll be willing to part with now. I would really like to find them good homes though, the ones that are vintage and I kept nice.

Rant: It makes me ragey when people let their kids just destroy books. They should keep the books put away if the kid is really young, and get them out for reading time - and make it a special ritual that also gets the little ones excited about reading! Then when the child is ready to learn how to care for the books teach them how. And praise them. Now I realize that being taught this way myself can sometimes backfire and make a child too attached to possessions, but most kids aren't born with the hoarder gene as I was.

Rant over; I just want to find the right person to give certain children's books to! 😉 Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Everybody have a good day and be blessed with great progress on your goals.