3 days gone by

I love 3-day weekends but my expectations for productivity are seldom met. I had thought I would be motivated to accomplish great things at home and be a responsible homeowner during the Vet's Day weekend. It didn't quite work out that way. I feel I don't do my house justice, it needs more attention and care than I give it. Sometimes I feel my house is almost an animate object and that I owe it good care. It gives me such good shelter and provides me with a nice home and what do I do in return? Not a whole lot. The building itself could use some basic maintenance; the siding is in need of a few nails here and there and certainly it needs to be stained again sometime in the next 5 years. Since it's 2 stories, this is not a job I will do, and it will cost thousands of dollars to pay someone else to do it. I can't afford that. At least the roof is good, it's metal and should last a long, long time. I should wash the outside of the windows. I should put up some sort of skirting around the bottom. I should fix the hole in the kitchen ceiling. I should do some other things. But this weekend I did accomplish some things:

I washed the kitchen window and put plastic up on the inside. I don't like that stuff but it makes a big difference in my electric bill. I'm planning to do 3 of the 4 living room windows but I have to buy 2 more special kits for BIG windows, I only have one. I hate putting the plastic up, it's a real pain in the neck. I've put new weatherstripping around my front door.

I put away the flower pots on the deck--but not before one of them broke from the frost (it got down to 16 on Fri. morning), and I had to bring 2 of them in to thaw out, the dirt was frozen solid even yesterday, when it was in the 50's.

I emptied the 2 barrels full of waterlogged hardwood kindling. I did not dispose of the waterlogged kindling in a satisfactory way, though: it's just piled on the ground, to be dealt with later. At least it looks better in the yard now.

I messed around with my firewood, restacking the portion of the pile that tipped over and recovering the portions of the various piles that had come uncovered. Not a great situation, since they're only covered with plastic tarps and these tarps become miserable to deal with when covered with ice and snow.

I burned a lot of trash.

I filled the bird feeder. Come on, birds! There's food now!

I cleaned the fish tank and put in the new fish. 3 of them promptly died while I was adjusting the new heater. I now have two fish: one lonely danio and one peppy orange platy. I will buy 2 more tetras and one more danio. The danios only cost 99 cents, no great loss, but the tetras were $2 each. I now have the heater set at the right temperature and the water is clear. For some reason it was very cloudy after I cleaned the tank and it's taken 3 days to clear up. Geesh, this aquarium thing just gets more and more complicated.

I cleaned out my car, including washing the windshield.

So the weekend wasn't a total loss, but I slept a lot on Saturday, which was very disappointing to me. It was a nice day, fairly warm. Friday was a miserable day, 30's all day and spitting snow. I stayed inside, knitted and watched TV mostly. Sat. I had hoped to do outside chores but didn't. The dogs had a great time on Fri., went in and out all day. They were more bored on Saturday. Friday night I went out with Lin and Ralph, to our old haunt in Keeseville. It was great to be with them again, we haven't gone out in months and months. Ralph and I ended up reminiscing about our long-ago past, 15-20 years ago. That was really nice. Saturday night I ended up at one of the camps below my house, with two of my favorite people, along with Ken and Bill. The two men who hosted us were here for the weekend, for their Extreme Workfest. It's really just an excuse for them to come for a weekend in November and test their mettle. They love being here when it's really cold so they can say they did it. We had a great time and I love being with them. We had Sunday dinner together yesterday, too.

Yesterday was a beautiful day and I did my outside stuff in a t-shirt with no jacket. I loved it. I should have stapled plastic around the bottom of the house but I did the other things and felt pretty self-satisfied so went inside. I'm easily impressed by myself.

Last night it was so warm that I let the fire go out, so I had to take the time to build one this morning. The wind was really whipping, 40 mph gusts today, so even though it's warm right now it's supposed to get colder by this afternoon. I have a quick appointment with my psychiatrist then I have to go to the Black Brook town meeting tonight to show support for the AuSable Forks library (rumored to be having $2500 cut from the town budget). In between those two things I need to get my fish and put them in the tank, feed and pee the dogs and eat something, plus drive 30 miles home and 15 miles to ASF.

For some reason I relived a very unpleasant episode from the past with my former director while I was driving to work this morning. I can't imagine what possessed me to do this, it made me very sad to think about that and all the crap she put me through. Now it turns out she's here to go out to lunch with the new director and I just heard her braying laugh. ICK!! At least I don't have to see her (I hope).

And now I must catalog a whole bunch of videos for AuSable Forks. Perry Mason videos. I can just imagine the incredible demand there must be for those.