I Saw That Going Different In My Head

Tomorrow I’m heading back to my usual life, which means spending most of the daylight hours doing my actual job that doesn’t involve shoveling 3000 pounds of topsoil by hand. Weird.

I expected to face Monday morning with a ton of things checked off my list, and the feeling that finally finally I’m on top of things.

Ha.

Ha ha.

Yeeeeaah. Not so much. I made a lot of progress on a number of different projects, but didn’t manage to check even one of them off my list. Hold on, I need to go breathe into a paper bag for a minute after writing that sentence….

Oh, wait, actually, I started and finished this wine rack. So there you go. Anxiety attack averted. That project aside, however, I’d hoped to get a lot of the weeding and gardening done around the house and barns, get the vegetable garden in, clean out the barn and workshop, clean my house, get some curtain rods, switches, and outlets in, and rent a bobcat to clean up the rest of the junk pile and maybe start putting in the permanent pasture fence.

Here’s what really happened:

I got rained on, a lot.

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When I tried to use the mower, I realized it had a flat and had to spend part of an afternoon at the tire shop getting it fixed.

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After my battery operated weed whacker couldn’t hand the jungle around the barns, I stole borrowed a heavy duty version from my dad and spent another afternoon trying to get the damn thing started. To no avail. So I chopped down all of this…

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And this…

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By hand.

I also weeded, a lot. I even solicited help from my mom and grandmother who did an excellent job on the front and side of the house. But the project isn’t quite done yet.

I spent a good deal of time being taunted by chickens.

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For real, nugget?

I finally switched out the eleven switches and five outlets in the foyer/dining room…

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And now the two lights in that room don’t work for reasons that completely escape me.

I did a lot of cleaning, but about 3 minutes into the vacuuming portion of the routine, this happened…

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Actually that’s a lie. What happened was that the vacuum stopped working. So I ripped its guts out. This did not result in a cleaner floor.

Something else that did not result in a cleaner floor was setting up this blockade using Ikea dresser parts to funnel a chipmunk out of the kitchen…

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No shit, after I got the bugger out I walked upstairs and the cat was napping on my bed the whole time. Which I suppose is preferable to the disembodied tail incident, but still.

I also attempted to hang the last two curtain rods in the living room, only to find that I’m definitely missing parts from one of them.

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And I came real close to getting all of the drawers from my Ikea dressers finished, only to find out that I didn’t route a long enough grove in the last freaking drawer, so I couldn’t assemble it.

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Uh, and this is how far I got in organizing my entire workshop, which currently has zero square feet of visible floor space.

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BUT I DID MANAGE TO SWEEP UP ALL THE CHICKEN FEATHERS IN THE LIVING ROOM.

So, ha.

(I mean, you know I’m going to walk in there and find like ten feathers mysteriously laying in the middle of the floor, but I’m just going to revel in my ignorance right now.)

The good news is, all of this happened in one week, instead of spread across the next five weeks, which is probably how long it would have taken me to get to all these projects.

And while things aren’t “done” I did do quite a bit of shoveling and planting. There are flowers in some of my flowerbeds, and vegetables growing in my unfinished garden.

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This last week did help me re-prioritize a couple of big projects though, and I’ve learned some lessons for staying on top of things next Spring when the growing season starts.

I’ve got just a few hours left in the day, and while I’d really like to go face-first onto my bed right now and not move for the next twelve hours, I’m hoping to tie up a couple of loose ends before the reality of day-job-plus-farm-chores sinks back in.

 

11 Responses

  1. Awwwww!!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Mawhaaaaa!moooohwaaahhh!! he he he he!!! Teee Heeee!! lol! lol!
    OOOOPS! I”m sorry.
    For a second there I thought,.. no one has days like this but me.
    I’m wrong…..Want to feel really bad and say it gets better. just find myself saying, “ahhhhhhhh at least I’m not the only one.”
    Misery loves company.. ROTFL!!!!
    Crud!! Again sorry!!!!
    I am not that person….Maybe I am.

    1. Ha. This is life, right? You have to find some humor in it, or you’d go crazy!

  2. Do those switches go to outlets? If they do, did u break the little tabs off the outlets? If you didn’t the outlet will be always on instead of switched. I’m sure u already knew all of that but hopefully it just slipped your mind. Happens to me. Good Luck!

  3. That’s a lot of stuff to go wrong in one week! Urgh! Hang in there, next time everything will just fall into place!

  4. Sounds like a stressful week but if you think about it, it was probably a lot of “fun”. I have days like that too but laugh at the end because “Yeah, it could only happen like this because it’s ME doing it” hee hee

  5. Oh my……I apologize right up front, but your post made me laugh. Well, if that was the intent… Bravo! Seriously, though, I thoroughly enjoy your Blog and it always makes me smile (at a minimum) or snort something, usually liquid, out my nose (at a maximum). I love the fact that you don’t “pretty” things up and just give it to us as you get it. There are some bloggers who seem to have perfect houses and perfect lives and perfect projects and …. I lose interest in them sooner rather than later. So thanks for keeping it real, and funny.

    1. Around here, it’s always meant to be funny. And real. I think a lot of people hold themselves to a standard of perfection, I hold myself to a standard of authenticity.

  6. Those might be two way switches on the lights that don’t work…..

    But you probably knew that.

    1. The picture is actually of a single-pole switch that goes to the office. Those lights work. I didn’t take pictures of the other seven switches (it seemed a little redundant.)

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