Too Busy

 

Prissy, from Quartzville Road.  She loves to play and wants to be a house kitty.

I have an inspection of this place in a couple days.   I should have been preparing earlier.

Ah, shoot.  

 I replaced a few of the stick on vinyl floor tiles.  They were supposed to last 5 years max and now we're on year 18 here.   The sub floor is osb, which, if it gets wet, turns to sawdust and boils up.  So when the elderly vinyl squares fail, first cracking and breaking up in the corners, if water when I mop gets through to the osb, well you guessed it, sawdust.

However, by now, the original design has been discontinued.   So the floor is looking like a patchwork quilt.

Maybe one day I'll have saved enough to put in panel flooring at least or find some used and in good shape.

I meant to repaint a couple of walls.  Long overdo.   I haven't yet.   But its in the works.  

I took the Christmas lights hanging off the gutter out front down yesterday.  

We've had such dreary days of heavy rain and gray and dark.  They're depressing.  And icky.  Suddenly, yesterday, the sun comes out and there was no rain.  It wasn't warm but it wasn't raining!

I didn't bother with a coat merely because it wasn't raining.     It was in the 50's I think. Around here, that is shirt sleeve celebrate the sun weather, if its not raining and sky is clear.

Today I wash all the windows.   The inspection isn't for cleanliness, but nonetheless.   I use it as a propellant to get projects done.

My neighbor drove me to Sweet Home two evenings ago.  She wanted to get out of the house.  Bad timing as it turned dark and the rain poured down in buckets.  She was nervous driving in that.  But we made it.  I was nervous riding with her as she struggled and went 40 mph often in the fast lane. She did fine after awhile though.  The drivers around here are known for little tolerance of slower drivers but it worked out.  I needed to deliver a carrier to the Sweet Home lady holding the two Quartzville road boys.  They have a barn home to go to end of week.  They go to the barn home in a carrier and have to be used to sleeping in it, which can hard to get people to understand sometimes.

I asked my neighbor if she missed California during Oregon's gray winters.  She said yes, she missed the sun.   She lived when younger in Ohio and said it would rain a lot there but nothing like it does here with the gray miserable soggy days stretching on and on.  She's taking a cruise in February, out of Florida, ten days of sun, she hopes.  A friend of hers is currently in Belize to escape the Oregon gray.   I worked in Alaska when I was young and noticed there a lot of people made all their money in the 4 to 6 months of spring and summer, then would take off to somewhere warm for the rest of the year.  Most of us are stuck here to maintain through it.   Some claim to love the constant rain and detest summer's sun.   The summers here have changed drastically.  They get much hotter.   It can happen suddenly, the change from rain to extreme dry heat.   With that change, came the danger of massive wildfires that sometimes block the sun weeks at a time.   With summer, we just hope no massive wildfires destroy lives, homes, forests and our hope for a break from the gloom of winter.  January is a gloomy month.   Six more months til summer.  It seems so far away.

Today is Gleaners work day.   I better get a move on because I need to wash some windows before I go.   Cleaning is daily here anyhow, so at least I don't have a lot of extra cleaning to do, just some projects I wanted to get done.   The oven's cleaned, the dryer is vacuumed out and the washing machine hoses fixed.  Got to make sure the smoke detectors are in working order, with that loud test button push that sends all the cats careening and stampeding.  I finally got Muffy on my lap with my failing clippers, that hold a charge less than five minutes.  In two minutes I got a big mat shaved off just above her tail.   Yeah, the clippers are dead again.