Notes From the Canyon

Good morning, it's a beautiful day in the canyon. I'm feeling a bit tired this morning, so I thought I'd sit down and write a few notes here. I felt great yesterday, got up early, packed the trash in the Jeep and took off for the dump. This time the trash included my broken DVD player and printer, some more cardboard (I'm so tired of all these cardboard boxes, but my diabetes supplies, some medicines, Samson's Chewy's box with his food arrive this way. I just have to limit the rest.) In the afternoon, I went to Joyce's for crochet group and got a good start on the baby blanket I'm making and plan to donate to a charity in town.

I fail to understand why there's a hall closet and a linen closet, but no broom closet and no laundry room or hook ups for a washing machine/drier in my house. It was built in 1977 and the guy who built it had a wife, who I presume would clean and do laundry. Errol fixed something in the shed for a washing machine, dug a stretch underground for the water drain pipes to a ditch where the water drains. That works really well. 



I have decided that since I have two good size closets, I don't need a hall closet. So I will make it into a broom closet. Everything will fit in there perfectly and most of it is in there already. 

This is my huge suitcase that went with me to Sweden the last two times I went. Like Russian nesting dolls, it has many mini versions inside, as well as a few other bags. Last time I went to Sweden, I went to bury my sister. And I wanted to bring back as much as I could of her things and other things I would buy there. I may have known I would never come back. While I still use and love some of the things brought back, dragging that big suitcase and more, around an airport that was not Los Angeles, my destination, and where we had to collect our stuff, walk for miles or so it seemed, in order to go through customs. There were some problems at LAX, don't remember what. Phew, I learned my lesson to travel light, believe me. Now the big suitcase, together with most of it's nesting bags, will be donated.

Dogs wondering what's going on.

As I worked my way through everything, I dumped it in here, my office/second bedroom. I decided to hang the clothes I want to donate in this closet, together with the clothes that were already in here. I was tempted to continue to go through the boxes that remained on the closet floor in the master bedroom, but somehow understood the wisdom of Marie Kondo's recommendation to do all clothes at the same time and then move on. 

I've now cleaned up the above mess and that's what I took to the dump yesterday. My next step will be to go through the closet in this room, organize the keep, donate, toss piles. Add one for consignment stores as some of the clothes, bags, etc., are in good shape. Then there will not be much more to do in the bedrooms, just some boxes to go through. But there's more, of course, it never ends.

Other than that, we had a huge rain storm one night. The winds were horrible, gusts up to over 60 mph, the house felt like it was shaking, stuff was banging, terrible and scary noises were going on outside. Faith was very perturbed and so was I. Samson was totally calm, snoring away at the side of my bed, while Faith and I stayed up most of the night. When morning finally arrived, I was happy to see that rain had turned to snow and it was white and pretty outside. There wasn't much and it didn't last. It never does these days. 

So that's a few things we've been up to. Oh, Samson is now running loose with Faith and me outside, well, they run, I don't do anything. I will take some pictures for a future post. He's so happy though, I should have done this ages ago. 

Finally, thank you for your nice comments on my bird picture. I wasn't fishing for compliments, I seriously am not happy with the fact that I feel I have about a quarter of what I need to take a good picture. The rest all has to do with learning the camera, practice, patience, and all those good things.