Pat on the Back

I give myself a little pat on the back today. First, I kept my plans from yesterday and ended up having a nice time chatting with friends. I think I was immediately rewarded for that: A and I stopped by Trader Joe's on the way home and picked up some yummies!

Second, when I woke up early this morning, I was still thinking about my gardening plans - no, nothing I have blogged about, probably ever, but something I've spent a bit of time thinking about this week - and had a bunch of ideas. Yesterday, A was not very receptive to the idea of helping me with the garden. I think (hope!) that it was because he was wiped out at that moment and not that he doesn't want to help ever. (Especially since he talked about doing the gardening if we ever open a BnB, which has been a dream of mine for a while now!)

So, instead of throwing all my early morning gardening plans at A, I kept them to myself and I think that's pat-worthy. It was hard not to bombard him with all my ideas, because in the end, it's actually about simplifying and I just want someone to hear and acknowledge my minor genius.

It's hard in general not to bombard him with my ideas - I am very aware of the areas in our home that could be re-organized or sorted or clutter cleared or cleaned - and I have lots of ideas about how to make our home more beautiful and functional, but I generally keep them to myself. I think when I have weekends off, it'll be easier to spend a short amount of time working on these kinds of projects together instead of trying to do them when we're both tired after work and looking for entertainment.

However, I think I'm going to keep working on this gardening idea - a few shady plants in the back yard, a couple of pots of veggies in the front - nothing too outrageous, but I don't like to see the desolate and untouched garden strip he made for me last year and I want to grow something that I can eat!

4 Months Later

After living with A for over 4 months, I'm happy to report that I'm almost done unpacking! I took the morning off work to do this and feel very rewarded for my efforts.

Because I love preparing food and am used to my own tools, there were several boxes with kitchen items in them that were 1/2 unpacked, even open in the garage. I managed to unpack all of those, so now everything I need should be at my fingertips. I am missing at least one favorite item, but I'm hoping it will turn up where I least expect it! There are still two bins with kitchen items, but they are rarely used baking items, extra glasses and summer appliances. Oh yes, I have seasonal appliances - snow cone maker and ice cream maker - don't laugh or I won't share!

Another 1/2 unpacked box that had become a catch all in the garage contained the afghan my mom made me, my pageant gown, my pillow (A already had 2 memory foam pillows), a couple of bags and some bathroom supplies - pretty misc and probably why I never unpacked it - it was nice to get those things in and out of the elements.

I have a bunch of bins left to haul upstairs and plan to do that tonight. Mostly crafting and sewing supplies, CD cases and misc. I've been pretty brutal with my personal clutter clearing all week, so I'm hoping to apply that here as well and donate a bunch of that stuff. After that, it's just putting things back in the bins that will be stored in the attic and donating all the stuff I don't want to keep. Easy, right? I hope so! After all, I've lived without most of this stuff for 4 months!

I did go ahead and make a run to Goodwill today and donated several items of clothing, a dog bag, a craft bag, a backpack, shoes, towels, a framed print that I inherited years ago and was showing it's age, 10+ steak knives (vegetarians need good kitchen knives, but not really steak knives!) and some other misc. This is in addition to all the magazines and paper I recycled this week after clipping through them at the Word Share.

I'm feeling pretty clean now - perhaps not as clean and unburdened as my friend who just had a colonic hydrotherapy session, but clean. And motivated. And decisive. And I can thank the folks at Google Labs for a lot of this, because I found the Google task list yesterday and that seems to have helped me screw my head on straight again.

So, now it's back to work until 6 when I get to work on planning community guitar lessons!