A household hint

Ok, so it is kind of weird the stuff I think about sharing, but here are my thoughts anyway.

I learned this trick from my daughter-in-law (wonderful lady, by the way).  We both detest cleaning the trash can.  Her trick - put TWO trash bags in the can, one over the other.  If there is no leak when you change the bag, you can just remove the full one, put another one on top and you are ready to go.  If it does leak, chances are good that the second one will catch the leak.  Just take both bags out, put in two new ones and you are done.  If they both leak, you still have to clean the can, but that doesn't happen often.  This has saved me a lot of unnecessary work.

Vermont Teddy Bear commercial

I’m not sure if it is just me, but I find the Vermont Teddy Bear Valentine’s Day commercial to be terrible. Every time I see that commercial, I just get more and more disgusted with their portrayal of women.  I am NOT a big feminist, but that commercial just gets to me.

Their assertion that something that lasts (Teddy Bear) is better than something that doesn’t (flowers and chocolate) is not the problem.  They say if you get them chocolate, they’ll eat it and then ask if they look fat.  Then they say “you don’t want to go there”.  You don’t want to go where?  They make it sound like every woman whines all the time or that it is a burden to listen to her.

But the part of the commercial that gets to me the most is the main point.  Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a day to make your loved one feel extra special by doing something for him/her.  (Whether this is a “holiday” made up by marketing companies is a subject for another article.)  This commercial makes it very clear that guys should buy their Teddy Bear, not simply because she will love it, but so they can get “rewarded”.  By the speaker’s tone, it is pretty obvious what “reward” he is expecting.  

Beginning

Before I begin, be warned – the following is me rambling and may not be grammatically correct.  I’m trying to start a habit of blogging and I know that if I write, wait, proofread, wait, proofread again and then publish, it will never get to the publishing stage.  Once I get in the habit, the writing will improve (I hope)!

I’m 45 years old and I’m STILL trying to figure out my life.  About a year and a half ago, after working for many years, I left the work force to stay home.  For the first 5 months I spent almost every day working on our house remodel.  Then the holidays came.  We got to a “good enough for now” stopping point and prepared to celebrate with friends and family.  After the holidays, we were still so exhausted and tired of all the manual labor and mess that we didn’t start again for about 3-4 months.  During our hiatus, I don’t even really know what I did, but I did not seem to accomplish much.   Some of the time was spent working at my parents’ convenience store, but mostly not much got done.  Once I started working on the remodel again, I continued for 3-4 months.  Then we were pretty much done with what we could do.  We didn’t do our bathroom (we still have a plywood floor) and we have one bedroom (currently the “tool room”) that hasn’t even been touched; it’s too full of tools and “stuff”.  Until we can build another storage unit to put the stuff, we can’t do any more work.  So, I guess we are done with the remodel.

Now, I have to do something else.  I have realized that I am extremely disorganized.  Oh, I knew I was “kind of” disorganized, but now I see that it is really a problem.  I start on one thing, then see something else, then something else, etc, etc, etc.  I work on a lot of things, but none of them seem to get done.

After discussing with my husband, I have determined that I really need to create a schedule/to do list.  I have come to realize that I don’t like change, including changing from one task to another.  This creates a problem for me – if I know I have to work at the store at 4pm, for example, I can’t seem to start anything significant before then.  I end up wasting the entire day.  Logically I know that I could still get several things done, but just having that 4pm deadline hanging over my head keeps me from starting.

Now that my eyes have been opened to this shortcoming, I hope that I can fix it.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that I am no longer working at the store.  As I am writing this, it occurs to me that I also know this about myself – I ALWAYS get stuff done when there is a hard deadline (not just one I created as a “hope to be done by this time”).  Maybe writing all this down will help me see myself more clearly and realistically.  I hope it will also help me figure out why I never had trouble getting stuff done at work.  Maybe because it was someone else’s deadline?  Any thoughts would be appreciated.

FYI – working on this blog IS on my to-do list!  But, since it is not the only thing on the list, I guess I’ll move on to the next item.

Until next time,

Ronda

If you ever plan to do a tile job (counter, floor or whatever) these are the spacers I recommend.  They are made by Tavy.  I have only seen them at Lowe's, but they are worth any extra miles you might have to go.  The first spacers I bought were the regular X (or plus sign) type of spacer.  They work ok and they are cheaper but the Tavy spacers are MUCH BETTER!  They don't fall over (or in between cracks) like the others do.

Remodel update - tiling the bathroom & laundry room

Today we are working on tiling Travis' bathroom and the adjoining laundry room.  Right now we are in the process of getting all the remaining little bits of old vinyl flooring out so they won't be in the way.  We are also getting the walls ready to refinish (remove the strips covering the drywall joints and all the trim).  Hopefully our drywall mud guy will come today!

(Still) Working on the house

Today was a busy day. In addition to the usual - make breakfast, do the dishes, do the laundry, make lunch and make dinner - I am still working on the house remodel. Now, "What remodel?" you may say. I'm glad you asked. We have been remodeling our house since the middle of July! Future posts will contain more information, but the gist is we gutted just about everything and we are starting over!

Anyway, today I caulked the prep sink area in the kitchen. I need to get that done so I can set the backsplash tiles. I also did some general clean up as construction is messy! The best thing I think I did today was tackle the room that has all of the stuff we left here when we relocated 4 years ago (we moved back in July and rented out the other house). Most of the stuff is actually our daughter's, but she has no place for it right now. I didn't actually go through the stuff, but I put what was loose into boxes and then arranged all of the boxes in the center of the room. Now we can get to the walls to finish the drywall and paint. Also, to be able to see in the closet (also full of stuff) I needed to fix the light. It is one of those lights with a string you pull but the string was broken. I bought a new pull cord switch and replaced the broken one with it. It was pretty easy to change out.

Today we also removed a cabinet and water heater from the laundry room area. This was a 2nd water heater so we don't really need it anyway. Now the laundry room and adjoining bathroom are clear of stuff on the floor so we can get the tile floor done. We need to get it done soon because we want to get the rest of our stuff (that is still at the rented house) brought here in about 9 days! I am anxious to get my furniture here, but we have to get the floors and walls done so we have some place to put it.

Dinner

Dinner tonight is at Tres Amigos!