Thursday 13: Hi

Since I haven’t blogged in quite a while, I thought a Thursday 13 would be a good way to start back.

1.    Since a cat picture is always a good way to start a Thursday 13, enjoy this picture of Tara.  She’s camera-shy, so I’m always happy when I’m able to get a picture of her.

 

2.    I don’t really have a great reason for not blogging much.  One of the main reasons has been that I find myself alternating between ridiculous amounts of doomscrolling and then taking myself entirely offline for a while.  Also, I tend to blog about very unimportant things, and that has felt wrong lately.  Recently, my friend at my work showed me where they keep all of their documentation to be here.  I’m not sure what else to call it.  This person legally immigrated here over 30 years ago, has multiple advanced degrees, and works for the government.  (I want to be clear that I am not saying that this person’s degrees or employment status make them more worthy of not being snatched off the street and potentially sent to a concentration camp.  I’m just trying to make the point that plenty of people, regardless of other factors, are living in fear simply because of their skin color.  And that is not OK.)  But, recently, they came to me and said, “Because I’m brown, I want to make sure someone here knows where all of these things are.”  They then showed me where to look in their wallet for various forms of documentation.  On one hand, I’m glad they showed me because, unfortunately, I think it’s good for someone to know.  On the other hand, that is not a conversation we ever should have needed to have.  I hate that they’re in a position to need to pick a person at work to have that conversation with.  It’s hard to come home and write a blog post about groundhogs or flowers after something like that. 

3.    I don’t want to make it sound like it has just been misery that has kept me from blogging,  It hasn’t.  I have a very bad habit of trying to start way too many projects at once.  In April, I decided to start a massive decluttering/organizing project on the whole house, sign up for the A to Z Blogging Challenge, take on a fourth Chemo Angels buddy, start the garden, continue working on our big drainage project, and work on some other projects in the yard.  Some of those things have gone better than others, and some have spilled over and are still going on.

 

4.    On the decluttering/organizing front, we have made tons of progress.  This closet used to have things falling off the shelves.   We didn’t keep track, but between donations and a few things that went to the dump, we got rid of probably dozens of carloads of stuff. 

 

5.    We each got rid of about half of our clothing and reorganized where and how we store a lot of things.  It makes keeping up with laundry, putting away clean laundry, and getting dressed so much easier.  Plus, it makes me ridiculously happy every time I see my shirts organized by style and color.

 

6.    Theodore absolutely loves storage cubes!

 

7.    With our neighbors’ help, we have finished one of the French drains we were working on.   After this project is finished, I will be very happy if I never have to shovel gravel again!

 

8.    We are almost finished with the second French drain.  We just need to add the overflow valve and finish filling in the trench with the pipe. 

 

9.    We haven’t started on the third one yet.  Between heat advisories and storms, it has been hard to do much work outside.  We hoped to be able to hire someone to finish the project and do some grading work, but after the estimate, that’s off the table for a while. 

10. Some parts of the garden are going better than others. 

 

11. The Orange Chef’s Choice tomato plant is doing fairly well.

 

12. The Roma tomato plant is barely hanging on.

 

13. I’m working on catching up on visiting all of your blogs, and hope to “see” you soon.