Good Idea/Bad Idea

Okay, so it's now the end of June, and I still don't have all my flower beds made. I forgot a tiny thing. Well, it's not so much forgot, but didn't realize. I decided to teach 5 classes this summer. I thought, hey, no problem, since I teach 5 during the regular semester. What I forgot was that the summer session is only 5-10 weeks long, depending on whether I'm teaching first, second, or full summer session. So needless to say, once the regular semester finally ended, I had a week to pull everything together for the summer, and it's been a race to stay on top of things.

Last week, I looked around me. Tumblefur everywhere. There was no denying the house was in horrible need of some serious cleaning. Then I went back to my to do list and made a new one. At the top were the never-moving listings for "soot" and "flower beds." I sighed and added about 20 more things to the list.

I started working on the soot in April. Basically, since we used a kerosene heater for heat all winter, the kitchen walls are now covered with the grimy, gray coating of, well, soot. There's various colors, depending on how recently I got the wallpaper border removed (which, yay for me! I finally finished that project!). There are also places where the wallpaper border remover stuff ran down the wall, creating these lovely streaks of drippy soot. I like to think of it as "Modern" art--I call it "Painted Soot." Jeremy just looks at it and shakes his head. I did get most of the soot removed from about a third of the room. Then I sort of got busy. I like to think of it as an excellent portrayal of "before" and "after"--similar to those project photo shoots. Unfortunately, the after is staying around a little longer than anticipated.

I did get a few of the flower beds made, finally! I was very proud of myself. Again, there seems to be a negative side to this as well. For one, it was only a couple weeks ago that I got those done and only the ones in the front yard. I would say at least 50% of the seeds I started in February died. Okay, so it wasn't exactly the seeds that died, but the plants themselves after waiting for roughly 5 months to be planted. Then, right after I got my little tiny plants in out front, it got hot. I'm pretty much guessing another 50% of the plants died. I would say I've learned my lesson, but probably not. I still have about 2 trays of plants that need planted in the back yard, along with about 100 bulbs that I ordered. I keep meaning to make the flower beds for those, but it has just kept getting hotter and hotter (yesterday it was like 105 with the heat index). So instead, I end up on the front porch with a beer in the evening, thinking about the projects. I have to say, more people should do this--it's much cooler and there's a lot less swearing involved in that method.

Then there's the fur problem. I spent all day on Saturday cleaning the house. I swept all the floors, mopped all the floors, did dishes, cleaned the bathroom, organized things. . . I was a cleaning fool. Alright, so I was cleaning just to avoid grading more papers, but by the time I was done, the house looked a lot better! I can't say the same for the papers. . .

That's when I got this brilliant idea. Our cat is long haired, and since we don't have air in the house, I normally take her to get shaved when she starts shedding really bad. However, when I was at Wal-Mart, I saw a pet shaver for like $30. I had to buy it! That would save money year after year, since it usually costs anywhere from $30-$60 to get her shaved. I congratulated myself on my brilliance. Then I grabbed the cat when it was time to start. Really, it wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't take so long. But pretty much after about an hour of shaving her, she lost patience with the whole process, and there was nothing I could do to hold her still.

By the time I quit, I had managed to shave her entire back and most of her sides--but that left all the rest of her fur from lower sides down. Then I also noticed I missed a big clump right on her back end. She looked like some weird alien being with a bad haircut--a cat mullet. Topping it off was the one long clump of fur sticking straight off her butt in the back. I found a little bow and made a little ponytail out of the weird clump and watched her high"tail" it away from me. Then I got busy again--the end of the first 5 week summer session is this week. So basically, the cat's been roaming around the house for almost a week with her bad/half shave job. Maybe it would have been simpler just to take her to a groomer.

Yesterday, I finally decided I needed to do something about the mountain of dirty laundry that's been steadily growing in the bedroom. Since we are working on the master bath, we don't have a place to hook up the washer yet, which means I have to drive the laundry to the next town over to get it done. Which means I often try to ignore the huge mound of dirty clothes. The problem came last week when I had to buy new underwear. Suddenly, doing laundry became a priority. So I sorted everything, loaded it all up, rounded up my quarters, and headed out. I estimated I had about 5 loads of laundry to do, and that I had just enough quarters to do 5 loads of laundry. Well, I did have just enough. I was lost in thought about the water bill. It totaled $100 this month, and they were trying to convince us that we had used 31,700 gallons of water last month (as compared to our normal 2500 gallons. Turns out that despite the fact they claimed to have "reread" the meter, they didn't and were trying to charge us for our total water usage since we moved into the house). Anyway, distracted, I just started popping quarters into a row of 5 machines and turning them on. I opened the first and poured in detergent. I opened the second, and crap! Somebody's clean clothes were in there! I opened the 3rd and the 4th--same thing. Only the 5th was empty. A wonderfully intelligent move on my part, I was now paying to rewash 3 loads of someone else's clothes and now only had enought money for 2 loads. So, I sorted out the most essential (underwear of course) and washed my 2 loads. For now, the rest of the dirty laundry is doing some traveling. Stuck in the back of my car, it's now been to campus, to Wal-Mart, to Subway. . .

Yes, I probably should have gone and finished the rest of the laundry today, but instead I'm blogging. Once I'm finished with my blogging, I think I'm headed for the front porch with a beer. From there, I will enjoy Abbeville's fine entertainment. Maybe the 2 teenage boys in the golf cart with the duck whistle will be back following the not-so-impressed teenage girl out walking. Or maybe hairmetal SUV guy will be cruising around town playing Def Leppard or Ratt. Or maybe one of the numerous town drunks will be out tonight. Oh, the possibilities--as long as it doesn't involve me doing something badly, I'm set!