Finally...

House Projects:

So I finally reached Level I of my compromise list on the house projects. Despite a developing cold, I spent most of the weekend outside on a mission to finish the scraping and priming of the north wall of my house. Done! I finished the last 3 feet of wall by the soft glow of the street lamp. I was determined that I wasn't going inside until I was done!

Sunday I got my last few plants in the ground, mowed the yard, raked leaves, mowed off the flower beds for winter and all that fun stuff. Now all I have left to do on the "must do" list is silicone the front upper two windows and cover a gap in the roof edge with some extra flashing(the roof edge needs special trim but I don't have time to buy it, cut it and then paint it before winter hits) . If it was a small gap, I'd leave it but it's large enough to house a whole lot o' birds and bats over the winter -- not my idea of a good development!

If there is time and warmer weather ahead, I may work on the trim or the front porch columns (they still need primed) but I'm not going to worry about it too much.

Books:

Well, I couldn't wait for the paperback version of the latest Lackey-Mallory collaboration to come out (likely in six months) and caved in to the tempation to buy the hardback version. My November paycheck will likely make me cringe with not just my bookstore purchase but all the coffee I've been sucking down lately. Last Monday alone was a 7-cup day. Ugh.

It'll be nice to jump back into Sci-Fi as I've been on a murder and mayhem kick for the past few weeks. I'm anxiously awaiting for the latest Jefferson Bass forensic novel to come out in paperback in January. Who knows -- I may have to order that one in hard back too! That's the problem when you read too quickly -- my favorite authors can't keep up!

Zander:

Zander's been doing really well lately. He attending the hospital's NICU picnic reunion a few weeks ago and apparently blew away all the parents and doctors. Becky had been given the impression that Zander was still developmentally behind but apparently none of the other premies at the picnic had even started walking -- while Zander was running around all over the place!! Zander wasn't even the oldest one there! Some of the parents asked Becky was she was feeding Zander to make him superbaby...lol. Anyhow, he was a feature on that night's newscast and was called a "beacon of hope for other premie parents". In my personal opinion, he was the best looking baby there (from what the news clip showed)...but I'm not prejudiced or anything. :)

Fall purge?

I don't know what's been getting into me lately but I've been on a major purge mission in the house. It started with the bathroom. Like any other female, I had a growing collection of lotions, shampoos and etc that I had purchased but didn't like. Rather than toss them, I told myself "waste not, want not" and stuck them in the cabinet/storage cubes for use later. Uh-huh. There they stayed and the collection continued to grow. So, finally disgusted with the amount of crap hanging around, I quickly went through stuff and either tossed or kept, whittling down my crap to about 1/3 of what had been there. Next I moved onto the fingernail polish and make-up. Okay, now I enjoy fingernail polish but rarely wear it because I chip it almost immediately. Neither do I wear make-up that often simply because it tends to "melt" off by lunchtime and then I've got goo to wipe off. Why bother if it doesn't stay put, you know? To my amusement, I discovered six tubes of mascara, two of them still with the packaging intact. What the heck!?! I had to laugh. For not wearing the products, I'm sure prepared for any occasion...

I even went through my medicine chest, discovering cold medications in there that had expired in 2005. Yeah, that got tossed. In fact, most of it was tossed. I rather enjoyed seeing a nearly empty medicine chest. Makes a gal smile. :)

Now if I could only get motivated to purge the closet...