Getting Things Done

For the first time in weeks, today I felt as though I was actually getting things done.  And it's a good feeling.

For months now I've had a "to-do" list of things that I wanted to see to around the house, but I could never seem to cross anything off.  No matter what I set out to do, it always seemed as though the universe was conspiring to prevent it.  If I got up in the morning determined to declutter a room, Big Guy would have something going on in that room.  If I wanted to shift furniture and deep-clean the living room floor, he'd pick that day to rack out on the sofa channel-surfing all day.  If I wanted to spend the day getting all the errands done, he'd suddenly disappear with the car for hours, or Daughter would need to be taken shopping or to the dentist or somewhere transit doesn't go.  If I wanted to start a sewing project, I'd find someone else's stuff all over the table ...  It was getting to be the story of my unemployed life  -  no matter what I wanted to do, someone wanted / needed something else to happen.

Until yesterday afternoon.

I've already mentioned that Daughter is working out of town, probably until mid-November.  Yesterday, Big Guy and a friend loaded up the camper and drove away for a week (at least) of fishing up the valley.  So I have the house all to myself.  For literally the first time in over thirty years, I have the house all to myself for more than twenty-four hours.  It's eerily quiet ... nobody is talking, unless you count the cats; nobody is crashing around in the kitchen or the basement or the workshop; nobody is yelling every five minutes for me to do something, or find something, or fix something, or clean something; the television hasn't been turned on all day.  And I'm loving it.

So what am I doing with all this unaccustomed peace and quiet?

Last night I was lazy; didn't do a darn thing except finish a library book and start another one while the cats took turns purring in my lap.  Bliss!

So far today I've gone online and applied for three jobs, touched up my grey roots, washed and hung up two loads of laundry, rearranged the living room and steam-cleaned the floor, got all caught up on e-mails and online surveys, and got half the pieces for Other Daughter's quilt cut out. I also gave our downstairs tenant the perfectly good mattress from our dying sofabed to augment hers, and had the city garbage truck take away the frame.  The living room looks twice as big and just as comfortable; once I find time to reassemble my Ikea armchair, I think even Big Guy will see what an improvement it is to have the old sofa gone for good.

This evening I'll be mending while I watch a lecture series on the origins of civilization.  I've always regretted having to leave college halfway through, and never having the funds to continue; and I've always looked for ways to keep studying the subjects I'm interested in, outside the framework of "formal" education.  So when Mom started getting university-level lectures, on DVD sets, with study guide books, I was delighted  -  especially since we have very similar interests.  So far I've studied my way through a series on the origins of religion, and when I finish the set I have now, I'll return them to her and borrow the set on the origins and evolution of language.

Tomorrow?  If it's nice out, I'll probably spend a good part of the day gardening and cleaning up the yard, possibly stacking firewood.  If it rains ... well, there's always that quilt.