In which xmas is officially put away, except for a few glass ornaments hanging in the front window that I’ll take down when we get a February Thaw. If we do, that is. I don’t think we got any kind of a thaw until about April last year. Still, this winter is NOT last winter.

I was slow to get started on today’s main chore, putting xmas away. The tree went outside last night but all of the lights and ornaments were sitting on various surfaces waiting to be put away and there were needles all over the floor. The GG had warned me something like, “Pine needles cannot be vacuumed. They will clog the vacuum cleaner.” I knew that he was right if he was thinking about the Tornado Vacuum or the Electric Dog. I also knew that Rooooomba would not pick them up. But hey, we have a “shop vac”. I haven’t ever gotten along very well with the shop vac. Today. I got it out, cleaned up 99% of the pine needles, figured out how to open it up (to empty it), discovered that the filter was FILTHY! Found an unused filter in the “Hall” Closet, CHANGED THE FILTER ALL BY MYSELF WITH NO HELP, NOT EVEN YOUTUBE, and ordered a new filter online. I am waaaaayy prouder of myself for doing this than I should be because I know that this stuff is not hard to do for people who are “handy”, which I am not except for various esoteric things that don’t matter much in terms of keeping mechanical systems going (aka, I am not Kaylee). But pride goeth before a fall and my own personal fall is that now “wet/dry vacuum filters” are dominating my facebook ads. Kee-reist, like I am gonna hoard a whole bunch of those…

I went on to re-vacuum with the Tornado Vacuum, then I let Roooomba have a go at it and then a final run-thru with the Tornado again. It *feels* cleaner in the back room now although I did not pull out the couches and clean behind them. I’ll do that in the spring. I’m sure I’ll find pine needles…

And then I sorted pins. Did you know that The Commander had / has a Twitter account? @finfran. We were up at Command Central once and I went “somewhere” (probably for a walk) and the GG set up The Comm with a Twitter account. One of her [very few] tweets was, “I’ve been sorting pins.” I sorted safety pins today. And paper clips and related thingies. I am fast at this and it is fun for me. I have been sorting / organizing / data-basing things my whole life.) I put a whole bunch of safety pins into a baggy for donation. I put a whole bunch of paper clips and a few other fasteners into a baggy for donation. I did not get rid of the heart paperclip. It has special significance.

I did not note that yesterday was The Commander’s birthday. I definitely remembered it. What the heck, it was also Richard Nixon’s birthday. We used to laugh about that! So, most of yesterday was a sort of challenging day and if I believed people could reach down into here from the other side, I would’ve figgered The Comm was messing with me. But then Mouse and npJane came over to help me get the dern xmas tree out and we had so much fun going out to dinner afterwards. Maybe The Comm was messing with me then too, but in a good way.

I don’t really believe that those who are on the other side are actually interacting with us. But ice cubes clinked in the back room a few minutes ago and the GG is outta town this weekend…

Love y’all and wish I was hanging out in Gaylord tonight!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 10th, 2015 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.