Saturday, March 7

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Decent sleep.

My Sweetie and Dan got more work done upstairs, getting all of the drywall put up. Now both the basement and the small room upstairs are ready for the expert mud and tape guy to come. My Sweetie thinks it will be very soon, as soon as he's free.

Then I got up and ate (he made me breakfast), and we chatted.

Then we did chores and gathered up everything that needed to go to the dump. Some of it was small pieces of drywall out of the basement that was no use for future projects, miscellaneous crap from the basement, household garbage, some twine from the barn, and the recycling.

Then we took it to the dump.

We headed home again and we trimmed Brownie's feet (goat), as well as spent some time walking Dandy around to see how he's doing. He seemed to be moving okay, and even volunteered to trot and did some prancing around. I put him in with Wonder, and they ran around together.

Hmmm.

Then we got cleaned up to go to see a live band at the local cool theater.

It was very full when we got there, a sold out show with free seating. This venue has just these round tables that seat four or five people, and when you come to something like this, people kind of have to share their table with strangers.

We thought we were early enough to get a table closer to the band, but ended up being at the very back of the room, which made me feel kind of "away from the action" even though the sound was good.

We did share our table with two strangers, though we talked with them for quite a while before the band played (doors opened at 7, band played at 8).

There was a very good opening band, and the main attraction was very good too, but their songs kind of all sounded the same. They were a sort of upbeat smooth blues band but every song had the same tempo and the same vocal range and so on. It was odd.

Overall good, and after some prompting I did get my Sweetie to dance a little bit for the last two songs. He doesn't like dancing, and isn't good at it, and I LOVE dancing, but I'm not going to go up there and dance by myself, or sort of try to barge in with other people who were dancing.

Then we came home and it was raining, but it might freeze later.

We put Dandy back with his people, and my Sweetie headed to bed.

Comments

[ratunderpaper]

It's nice that he'll take you out and dance with you, even if it's not his thing.

And – hearty applause on two rooms nearing completion!

[gottawonder]

The rooms are CLOSER to completion, but as always, the danger is that they will completely stall at the 90% point.

You know, maybe the basement won't get baseboards for five more years, or the little room upstairs will take another year or so to have the floor finished.

I'm trying to just focus on the progress being made presently, which IS happening.

[ratunderpaper]

I no longer hope that some rooms will be anything other than the bear gardens they are. But, as you say, focusing on what is happening is a good thing.

What I can do, I will do. I plan to continue to clear out a good deal of the "box room", whether or not it can actually be turned into a proper room. There are boxes of old, cheap picture frame parts, cheap curtains, and unused old bedding. Now that there's a lot of daylight, I can get in there and root out some stuff.

I bought an antique mantel and bookcases that were used in the first house, but have been sitting dismantled here for over 20 years. Hopefully, there's someone who could buy them and make use of them.

[gottawonder]

Maybe once you get going in the box room, it won't be difficult to let a lot of it go. It doesn't sound like you're overly attached or in need of those items.

The mantel and bookcases probably will sell, and twenty years is long enough to know that you probably won't use them. It will feel good to know that someone else will do something with them.

Then, hopefully you will have a mostly empty room. Even if it isn't going to be a finished room, it could maybe become a place for you to neatly store your magazine collection, and your saved art works. You could frame dozens of your favorite pieces and cover the walls from floor to ceiling with art, the way the old fashioned galleries used to do.

[ratunderpaper]

It will be easy to remove boxes of old frames, drapes and curtains. The denizen has countless filing cabinets and a comic book collection, and there are several large boxes of Christmas decorations. I'd like to put up art, but there are no walls yet, and only a plywood floor.

There was a start on building walls and putting in electricity many years ago. I hired someone who suddenly became ill and could not continue. Around that time, I reined in hometime spending.

I sanded some of the ceiling, but to continue, I'll have to remove a lot. I prefer to do that quietly, to discourage filling it up with more bear garden stuff, of which there seems to be endless supply.

Many boxes were full of gift bags and other boxes. These have been recycled, so that's a start.

[gottawonder]

As you say, do what you can do. It all matters.