I made some great progress on the house last night!

I mowed the lawn.  Grass grows differently here in the south, I think, than it does in Wisconsin and Minnesota.  It grows FAST.  And TALL.  I know it’s time to mow the lawn when I’m standing in the kitchen and I can see the tops of grass weeds over the back of the couch and the patio furniture.  So I mowed the lawn and put everything back into the storage closet like it was supposed to be organized.  After a week of pulling things out to go to the beach, the place was a wreck.  But now the patio is back to being a place of calm serenity.

I also took care of the kitchen.  I didn’t really intend to do that one, but I went down to scrounge up some dinner and, well, I had to fill up the dishwasher so I could find the sink.  And then I had to wipe down the counters.  Which meant pulling out the flowers from the vase to add fresh water.  And when I gagged because the rotting stems smelled so badly, I had to throw them into the trash and that bag had to go out to the bin, and what’s the use of throwing out a bag if I haven’t checked to make sure that there aren’t other things that I should throw out?  So I went through the fridge to find what had gone bad, like broccoli and peaches and leftover fish and fried okra.  Which meant that I organized the fridge while I was at it; and then I had to organize the pantry a little, too, because it just wasn’t balanced with one tidy and the other not.  And by the time that was done, the kitchen was pretty much clean.  I still need to do the floor, but I’ll get those all at once.

While I was taking care of that, Justin took care of the laundry, finding all the discarded clothes from the bathroom and bedroom and sorting everything out.  He washed the sheets so we had fresh, crisp sheets to sleep on.  And a couple more loads made it through before the end of the evening, but it’s going to take a little longer before we get all the way through our laundry.

But the house feels nice.  I got up this morning and looked out at the backyard and it looks wonderful.  The grass is trimmed.  The raccoons didn’t get back into the trash can again.  (They got into it the night before to find the watermelon that was tossed out, and they spread it all around the trash can in a fly-covered mess by the time I got there.  I put on latex gloves and a face mask and picked up the whole mess, and then filled a glass jug with water and put it over the top of the bin to keep it closed.  We’ll find out tonight if it kept out the day-time trash-raiders or not.)  The umbrella is up and the table is cleared.  Everything that should be out is out where it belongs and everything that should be tucked away is tucked where it belongs—with the exception of one chair from the table that’s out in the middle of the lawn holding a solar lamp off the ground so it can get some good light.

And I was able to make my lunch in the kitchen and feel like I knew what my options were for available food choices without running into mystery aluminum foil packages and Rubbermaid containers filled with what I think was Miracle Whip that got warm and liquefied.  (I confess, I’m a little confused why the foil-wrapped fish was left in the fridge but the watermelon was thrown away, along with, I assume, the Oreo cookies and the chocolate chip bars.  And 4 lonely M&Ms were left in the candy jar since last Tuesday.  Also, we’re missing a magnet.  Where’d that go?)

But the point is that the house is starting to feel less chaotic and it feels good.  Give us another day or two and we should have it back to normal again.