Hope you all had an absolutely lovely first weekend of the New Year! I love the beginning of a year – it is a chance to get things right once again. If you flubbed something up the year before, a new year is God’s way of giving you a second chance to get it right. If you have kids, you get to have two beginnings each year – one on January 1st and another on the first day of school!
We were busy here at LiaH this weekend. Friday was really, REALLY stressful – having to deal with PayPal and American Express and our (not so friendly) credit union trying to get a duplicate transaction removed from an account and the subsequent almost $200 in overdraft fees and charges. It was a nightmare to say the least. By the time Friday was over and done with I was frazzled to the breaking point. Needless to say, we will be leaving our current credit union and going with a different bank – a bank that actually gives a crap about their customers and will do what they can to help them make a better life for themselves – not just try and bleed them dry of every dime possible. Meh, I’m not even going to get started on that!
Hubby found a stand (finally) at the Goodwill store for half the price of the one we were looking at at the Salvation Army thrift store. So he spent Friday night bringing in the new stand and breaking down the armoire that was in our living room. Yippee!!! I absolutely positively HATED that armoire! We’ve had it for almost 10 years, and everything was falling apart on it. All of the trim work had fallen off and was laying in a pile behind the armoire for that “I’ll glue it back on one day when I have time” that never rolled around. From years of it being banged against and moved, the doors were all scarred up on the front – it was basically held together by the grace of God Himself and that’s about it. So it is finally gone – woo hoo! I’m actually quite surprised that everything that was in that huge armoire fit into something half the size!
Saturday came along and we were all up at the crack of dawn (if you call 9am on a weekend the crack of dawn) and ready to get the day started. I’ve still been tackling the absolute MOUNTAIN of clothing that appeared in the laundry room after the boys’ finished cleaning their rooms – added to the six or seven loads that were already in there before the room cleaning. (Isn’t it amazing how clothes that were clean just two days ago, never worn, miraculously end up back in the laundry room after a room cleaning?)
I’d promised the neighbors that I would cook dinner for everyone Saturday night … The Man Thing’s sister-in-law had sent over a ton of food from their New Year’s feast … so basically all I needed to do was just warm everything up lol! So it was nice to spend some time with my neighbors around a meal of turkey, candied yams, green beans, potato salad, macaroni salad, homemade macaroni & cheese, cabbage and homemade rice pudding! (I admit it, I hid the rice pudding in the very back of the buffet set up so nobody would readily see it and therefore leave it all for me me me!!!!) After dinner we had a cut-throat couple hands of Spades – got our butts handed to us the first game but the second game we sent ‘em home with a red butt from the spanking we dished out! Bwah ha ha!!!!
Yesterday (Sunday) – I think the Man Thing’s brain was invaded by aliens. He cleaned out his bedroom closet. HE THREW AWAY ALL THE JUNK HE HAS BEEN HOARDING FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS! He threw out all the old cords and screws and broken light fixtures and shower heads that no longer worked – all of it – gone. I’m surprised I didn’t go into cardiac arrest. He even let go of all the clothes that he’d been hoarding that he hasn’t been able to wear for a good five or six years as well – all bagged up and off to the Goodwill. Today is my turn.
My eldest testosterone carrier decided to try and push the whole cardiac arrest issue yesterday as well. He was in taking a shower and had forgotten his towel so I went in to put it on the vanity for him. I had just stepped out of the bathroom and pulled the door shut when all of a sudden I heard this loud bang and then a series of smaller thumps. I ran back into the bathroom and my poor son had slipped in the tub, banging his head on the back ledge of the tub, and was laying there twitching as though he was having a seizure. I screamed for his dad to come help me get him up – and of course I was then naturally banished from the bathroom because dear son is “at that age” and it is totally uncool for mom to see him naked. Never mind the fact that I gave BIRTH to him and changed his diapers and KNOW firsthand everything he’s got going on….boys! He has a lump on the back of his head – and we checked him every other hour on the hour last night when we finally allowed him to go to sleep two hours later – and have kept him home from school today. He has a doctor appointment tomorrow morning so we will be having his PCP check him out as well before allowing him to go back to school.
So the weekend comes to a close, and, continuing along with the organizational theme for 2013, here’s what is on the books for this week:
Computer/Online Organization: This week we are working on getting the computer cleaned (removing old programs and files no longer needed, uploading information that we need to keep to a secure site just in case the external does a nose dive) and then compressing and defragmenting so that the desktop runs at top speed once again and doing a complete back up of the cleaned system. In addition, we are reviewing our massive bookmarks and deleting what is no longer needed/wanted, as well as reviewing affiliate programs, social networking sites, etc. and doing away with those that we don’t have time for or that are not beneficial to us.
Home Organization: I’m working on the master bedroom (cleaning out bedroom closets, filing cabinets, nightstands and finally the desk) and then later in the week I will be working on pulling together a list of things needed/wanted to make our apartment home more efficient and those little decorative things we want to add that make a house a home. We know we are going to be here for at least another year or two – and we’ve already been here five years – so its time to stop ‘just living’ here and actually make it our own and make it a home. Maybe then it won’t feel like we’re living in a box. I’ve got a great idea to open up some space in the dining room area but I haven’t talked to the Man Thing about it yet. It is one of those projects you have to ease them into!
So how was your weekend? What do you have on the agenda for this week?
Spring cleaning early, huh? Just think of all the free time you'll have in April, while others are busy doing what you are doing now.
LOL – well that would be nice, we'll have to wait and see if it actually works out that way! Knowing this crew though – I'll need to do another full-house spring cleaning again in 3 months!