I’ve had a few people ask me this week where I’ve been, as the blog posts have been few and far between. I think we’re still recovering from our trip, trying to get caught up. Work is incredibly busy for both of us right now, and is taking a lot of our energy and time.
We are still working to get the old house ready to sell, so that takes all of our weekend time. Our original plan was to sell the old house before building the new one, but we decided that we’d be financially better off to not do that. We’re paying for it in time now, our weekends are consumed.
Since we’re not here to work on the new house on weekends, many things aren’t done yet. Like kitchen shelves for the dishes. We are having open shelving on the cedar wall, but the boards are on the back porch waiting to be cut and stained. The brackets are on the counter, waiting to be installed. So, meantime, we have dishes stuck here and yonder in the pantry, on the counter, in drawers. I’m not the most organized of people, but this bothers even me.
The guest bedroom is stacked with boxes waiting to be sorted through. I have give-away, throw away, Goodwill and yard sale piles to be made. My daughter is moving into an apartment this weekend and will likely be able to help with some of that. My stepmother is chomping at the bit to have a joint yard sale, so I need to get motivated.
Out pasture-yard grows about 2 feet a week, no kidding. We don’t even worry about the back side, except for occasionally, but the front 3 or so acres need mowing almost constantly it seems. We just finish, and there it is again. This takes a chunk of time.
We can’t park in the garage. SOOOOO much stuff in the garage. If we ever have time, we’ll build shelves and other storage in the back of the garage and start organizing Mike’s workshop. Seriously, it is filled full. This really nags at him, but we just haven’t had a chance to get to it.
While we were traveling, the weeds in the garden took over, so we’ve been trying to spend time each evening cleaning it up. It’s a big garden. Really big when you are trying to totally weed it.
I have herbs screaming to be transplanted from their tiny pots. I managed to get my Basil into a large pot last night, more to go.
We are avid road bikers. We love getting up early on a summer Saturday morning and meeting friends for a wonderful long ride. We haven’t been on our bikes in a year. A year. We got an email from a riding buddy today saying that the group is going for a 30 miler tomorrow morning, wants us to join them. I probably couldn’t ride to my mailbox from my house right now. That makes me sad, sad.
My problem is that when I think about all there is to do, I get so overwhelmed that I don’t get anything done. My new strategy starting this weekend is to just try to tackle one ‘out of the ordinary house stuff’ thing each weekday evening at the new house, maybe we’ll start catching up. We can hopefully wrap up the old house tasks in the next few weekends.
So this weekend, I would love to bake, make preserves, plant some things, make dog cookies for the boys, ride my bike, read, write, sit on my back porch and so nothing. What I will actually do is trim rose bushes and shrubs at the old house, help Mike cut down a couple of dead trees, clean, maybe paint a room, help with the bush hogging.
So much for my rambling…but I guess this explains where I am.
I am going to try to get my blog under control. It started as a tool for us to document the purchase of our land and building of the house. Now that it’s done, I need to regroup a bit and figure out what I want to do with it. Maybe I’ll work on that this weekend too.
Even with all that, we still take time every day to look around in awe and count our blessings that we are able to live in the giant wooden house in the middle of the giant overgrown pasture.
