Tuesday, September 9, 2014

One of Those Days

Today my to-do list is kicking my rear.

First of all, my darling 4-year-old nephew Huey is in the hospital with respiratory problems (Huey has asthma like me). Please pray for him, if you do that kind of thing, or send some kind secular thoughts his way.

I'm exhausted, and I'm not sure why. I went to bed late, as I had been getting Facebook message from my sister-in-law about Huey, but I slept okay. But after my daughter left for school all I wanted to do was nap, and I would have except that we're having carpet ripped out and wood floors put down in a few bedrooms upstairs, and that makes more noise than you'd think. If it were a regular sort of noise I could probably sleep through it, but first they pound for awhile, then the generator starts up, then the nail guns, then back to pounding.

I've been waiting a year for these guys to rip out the carpets, so I can hardly shoo them away because I want to sleep. But I'd like to.

Also the phone keeps ringing. My boarder called to tell me that we'd caught another skunk. (For "we" please read "the professional company we hired because while I could probably set a trap for a skunk I'd have no idea what to do if I got one.") I'm not sure how many skunks we've caught so far, but it's not enough, there's still more.

One of the items on my to-do list reads "skunk sh*t." It means "clean up all the skunk excrement in the odd corners of the barn." Of course, this item can't be accomplished until the skunks stop sh*tting.

Then Mack, who mows for me (which means "mows and weedwhacks all 52 acres on a regular basis, except the stand of pines, which he ignores") called to tell me that he's burning the brush pile today. Today. He's been threatening to burn the brush pile since last October. I'll report back on this one. If he actually does it it will be a miracle, since the brush pile, as it turns out, can't be mowed.

I'd like to write (meaning "my novel" not "this unfortunate blog post") but my brain feels like oatmeal. I've tried coffee. It didn't help.

There are 42 items on my to-do list. All of them are medium-term stuff--nothing short term like "dinner tonight," but also nothing long-term like "get the floors redone" or "burn the brush pile." Some of them are problematic. "Ironing" for example. Seems straightforward, but there's a freezer blocking my ironing board. (It's one of those pull-down ones attached to the laundry room wall. I don't have a regular ironing board anymore. I was always catching my fingers in it and my husband deemed it dangerous.) The freezer needs to go into the basement. The guys putting in the new floors have agreed to move it--I've known them forever, they built my house--but first they need to remember to bring a doily.

"Clippers." That means "find someone who can repair the electrical cord on my $300 horse body clippers that my daughter's idiot horse stepped on and severed when I was trying to clip him last year."

"New curtains." "Wash, iron (oh, no!) and hang the curtains you bought at the Highlands Festival flea market in the guest room, replacing those awful floral things." Well, aside from needing access to the ironing board, this requires that the workmen finish in the guest room. They're mostly finished, except for some trim pieces that they need to remember to bring with them.

"Pony club new member." A technology puzzle. I opened her email on my phone, and for some reason it's not on the email on my computer. However, I need to get her attachments onto my computer to print them. I'm not awake enough for this one.

Scratch that. I tried, and now I can't even find the original email. I'll sort this out, I'm sure. As soon as I get a little sleep.

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