Completion of Tasks

My life is becoming about completion these days. We have so many tasks around the house that haven't quite been completed. It's been driving me nuts for many years, but today I decided to have Eric help me do something about it.

We finished two strips of siding from above the garage door that have been missing for about 5 years. The reason we didn't get it done in the first place is because it's about 14 feet in the air and we didn't have a tall enough ladder. So we got it done today with two tall enough ladders.

We went snake-hunting under our house and found 3 snake skins...all larger than the snake we found in the house on Tuesday evening. Yes--that's right....snake in the HOUSE. It was watching TV with us for who-knows-how-long. Then Eric was standing in the living room and looked up toward the front window and said, "Oh, look! A lizard!" I turned to look and thought to myself, "That's not a lizard's head." Then Eric looked a little closer and said, "Wait a minute. That doesn't look like a lizard." As it turns out, it wasn't. It was a little corn snake or some such thing.

He managed to catch it before I lost my mind completely and released it across the street. (The snake--not my mind.) I asked him to look under the house for a pit of venomous vipers (a la Indiana Jones) before he left for work the next morning. That didn't get done and didn't get done, so I sent him under the house today, whereupon he hung two halogen lights from the floor joists, so now we can actually just turn on the lights and do a spot check for venomous vipers or any other critters in the future. He's so handy. (Wish he'd hung them about 8 years ago when I was 7 months pregnant slogging through ankle-deep water that was under the house for some reason which I cannot now remember.)

I also hung the 50 lb. heavy bag that I got last Christmas for Ethan to vent his frustrations. He told me yesterday that since school was starting soon we needed to actually hang it up so he could use it. Sad but true. (Fact of the matter is that I got it for me as much as for him. We hung it a a great height for punching for him and kicking for me.) So we got that done. Not looking forward to feeling like using it, but I'll be glad it's there when that time comes.

I hung up a couple of our fishing rods. I need to get some more clips to hold the rest of them. (And I need to get a pink fishing pole for Rachael. She NEEDS a princess fishing rod, don't you know. Have you ever seen a princess fish? I don't think it happens in real life.

What else did we get done? Eric went through an entire tube of caulk to seal up between the siding the trim on the garage. That will be helpful when the next hurricane comes. Ethan coiled a rope. Twice, actually. His sister got ahold of it in between. I hung a pulley contraption that hangs a bicycle from the ceiling. Love it.

This has nothing to do with finishing anything (except dinner), but we had dinner in the dining room on our fine china tonight for absolutely no reason. That was nice, except Ethan was missing. He's spending tonight at our neighbor's house. (Last-minute thing.) We had talapia with white wine and tomatoes, rice, canteloupe, watermelon, and sweet tea. (The kids drank their tea from our china tea cups. It was really sweet.)

The things that went unfinished today:

* Cutting up the pine tree that fell from our neighbor's yard into our yard. I think I have to leave this to Eric because I haven't run a chain saw before. (One of the few pieces of power equipment I haven't tackled....I don't know....maybe I'll try to learn.)

* Painting the front porch rails that I hired one of our neighbors to build. We already primed them, though, so it's hard to get motivated to paint them white. There will be no visible difference.

* Putting more blocks in our retaining wall. It's only one layer high right now and that layer keeps getting covered over with dirt, so you can't tell they're there. We're adding more blocks as we have time/money/inclination. So far it's only about 25 blocks long. It needs to be about 32 blocks long, so we'll need about 240 more blocks. I think we have 15 to add to it right now. It's going to be a long process. (I started this project about 4 years ago, I think.)

One other thing that got done...getting a picture of my daughter in a dress that was made for my grandmother. (Sorry...I don't have the patience to figure out how to flip this picture so it's up and down. Just don't have it in my right now. Bigger fish to fry.)

It has a flag motif because my Grandma was born on the 4th of July. I think she received it for her 2nd birthday. My daughter is now 3-1/2 (and a tall 3-1/2 at that), so it fits more like a shirt, but we have a picture of my Grandmother in the dress and now a picture of my daughter in the same dress. I only let her wear it for about 2 minutes, because I was so nervous that she'd rip it or something. I think that with the 2 pix and the dress itself, it will make a nice shadowbox keepsake for my girly.

And the final accomplishment of late...we made travel arrangements to Illinois to lay my grandmother to rest. She passed away this past Valentine's day at the age of 86. I love her so much and will forever treasure the woman she was in my life. I am so grateful that God made her my Grandma. I miss her laugh and her humble way. She taught me so much just by living rightly.

Sorry to end on such a somber note, but that's life. I'm done writing because I'm going to go spend time with my family.