Dateline Sunday, 21 August 2022
If there is anyone who reads this blog regularly, including on days when I don’t make mention of a post on Facebook, they will note that I missed posting last Friday. I can’t think of the last time I totally missed a post. A few times I’ve made a minimal post late in the day. A few other times I did my post a day late. But it’s been a long time since I totally missed one.
Why did I? One reason was our son was here for a week’s visit. A few weeks back, when Lynda’s sciatica came on very strong and debilitating, he was ready to hop on a plan in Chicago and come right down to help out. We advised him not to at that time, and he complied, but he scheduled to come see us at his first opportunity after this. He came last Sunday and left Saturday.
He had to work remotely much of the week—it wasn’t vacation for him. After his workday ended, he helped us in our decluttering process. The main target was the garage. This has become a catchall place for things we wanted to get rid of, but we never seemed to get around to deciding what was trash, what was for donation, and what, if anything, actually needed to go back into the house.
We already had a donation pile. Tuesday we worked around 3 hours, sorting trash from donation vs keepers. We had a full trash barrel and a large donation pile. Wednesday evening early, Charles and I loaded that in the van and took the stuff to Goodwill. Then we worked another three hours. Thursday, I had writing critique group meeting. I worked a little that afternoon on organization, and that evening drove the car into the garage. That hasn’t happened for 15 years.
Friday evening, we drove into Bentonville, took a walk on the Chrystal Bridges Trail, then walked to the square and ate at a somewhat fancy restaurant. At least it was a good restaurant. Then it was walk around a little to find a certain store, then get some ice cream. Saturday, we took Charles to the airport, dropped a few electronic items off at the Benton County recycling facility (for a cost), came home, and relaxed for the rest of the day. I could have written a post then, but I just wanted to read. I also worked on an inside the house project: converting paper files to electronic files. I did that to 10 old letters. This is a long-term project that I do a little on each day, and hope to get done in around a year.
The other reason is that our air conditioner went out. That was last Saturday. We suffered through it until Monday our HVAC guy got here and gave us the bad news: complete replacement, costing in 5 figures. But supply chain issues means we won’t get the replacement for 2 to 4 weeks. Yuck. A man at church loaned us two portable vent-through-the-window unit. On Tuesday our HVAC man loaned us a third, It’s not quite 90 in the house as it was early on Monday, but it’s hotter than normal, and that leads to not feeling like doing much, including things like blog posts.
Now it’s Sunday. I taught Life Group this morning and will head back to the church shortly for a Teams meeting.
Tomorrow, I hope to get back to writing, something I did almost none of last week. Maybe I’ll even take time to write the next couple of posts in my climate change series.
Stay tuned.