Nothing But Cleaning...

---

-faints from exhaustion-

That's pretty much how I feel right now.  Today has been nothing but cleaning for me... vacuuming, tidying up the clutter, thoroughly wiping down kitchen counters, washing pots & pans and other various dishes, cleaning the hutch (inside and out), getting frustrated at the vacuum for crapping out on me right in the middle of the day, and then relieved when it came back as normal after letting it rest for a few hours.  I still have a few surfaces to wipe down, plus mopping the kitchen floor, washing sheets on the guest bed where my mom will be sleeping, and cleaning out cars tomorrow morning before we pick up my mom at half past noon.

I managed to sneak in a shower just now, seeing as I was informed earlier today that we have a spontaneous invite to my brother-in-law's house for dinner tonight.  Which is fine with me, any night that I don't have to cook or worry about what's for dinner is a great night to me... haha.

My feet are aching right now, so I'm just relaxing until the hubby gets home in about 15 minutes, then I think we'll be on our way shortly afterwards.  Moral of the story for today's post: our house is too big. 😝

False Hope

---

Well... that hope that May would be the month where I wouldn't miss any days for this blog is forever gone.  Haha.  It has been busy here, what with trying to get everything cleaned up and ready for my mom's visit for the next two weeks.  I'm so excited that I'll be seeing her on Wednesday!  But this massive cleaning of the house is wearing me out.  Although it doesn't help that I ran into a door handle yesterday morning, so now a large portion of my forearm is bruised and sore.  It was a really hard hit, I couldn't move my arm at all for several moments.  And yes, I really am that stupidly clumsy. 😒

Anyway, that brings me to a small rant that I have to get off my chest.  Although I don't know how to really explain it, because it has to do with something that I can't openly talk about... ugh... I hate how something traumatic happened to me over 10 years ago, and it follows me around forever, changing how people react to certain things, at least the people who know what happened.  I don't want to forever be known as 'that girl.'  But I'm afraid that I always will be, at least in their eyes.  For now, I just brush it off and move on, which is really all I can do.  Sorry for being so vague. 

I suppose I should get back to cleaning now.  I have so many more tedious little tasks to get done, and I really hope I'm going to be able to get through most of them today, rather than tomorrow... I hope the title of this entry isn't accurate in that regard though!  Haha.

Oh and on a side note, today marks NINE YEARS since my hubby and I first started dating!  👀

Keep Queuing the Nerves...

---

Well.... I just found out that it is going to be yet another full week before I find out the results from the story contest, as I thought it was every week, but it's actually every two weeks.  I guess because the entries are longer than poems, they take longer to judge.  Ugh!  Now I'm going to be anxious for a whole week longer than I thought.  Maybe I'll use that time to psych myself down, so that if (knock on wood) I get good news, it'll be that much more exciting and rewarding. 😆 I'm sure I'll have plenty of cleaning and working to keep my mind off of it also.

Finding that out just kind of ruins my night though.  Haha.  We had a spontaneous change of plans today.  We were going to head up to Sacramento to participate in a march they're having at the capitol building, but opted to stay home instead and work on getting the office cleaned a bit.  We succeeded for a few hours, but then had to break for lunch and got into watching more of The Santa Clarita Diet and haven't resumed since then.  We still have plenty of time, so I'm not worrying too much about it at this point.

We lost track of time and before we knew it, it's 5:30pm and too late to do anything with the pork roast, and he forgot to marinate it anyway... so yeah, another abrupt dinner change tonight.  We had a late lunch, so I figured we'd just have a late dinner, but it's just getting too late to do any prep now.  Still not sure what we're doing but I suppose we'll figure it out soon!  Other than that, not much else to report for today.  😊  Happy Saturday!

Friday of Doom... or Boredom

---

Well, it's Friday the 13th.  I hate when the 13th falls on a Friday!  It makes the day seem doomed from the start.  Though nothing bad has happened so far, but I hope I didn't just jinx myself by saying that. 😶

Anyway... my nerves are still going haywire but I've managed to keep my mind mostly off of that.  The hubby's already home from work, after working a half-day, but I'm not sure if we have anything specifically exciting planned for tonight, or even worth mentioning.  We need to hit the grocery store in a little bit, once we figure out what veggies to have with the pork sirloin tip roast that I defrosted this morning... though we may end up pushing that back to tomorrow night and just going out for a quick bite to eat tonight, maybe to our favorite local pizza place that is conveniently located next to Trader Joe's, which is our usual stop after eating there.  They also have this amazing mini chocolate cake, called a No Name Cake, but it's really just an elaborate Ding Dong (although SO much better) and I LOVE them! 

I talked to my mom today and she's getting excited about her visit out here in just three weeks!  I'm excited too, but that also means that I need to start some major cleaning of the house before she gets here.  Starting with the office, this room is such a mess and I hate that I've let it get this bad.  If we don't get around to cleaning this weekend, I'm going to use every free moment I can find next week, to start the cleaning process.  Well, mostly every moment.  I really hope I'm going to be in a cleaning mood for these next few weeks! 😄😳  Wish me luck on that!

Positive Reinforcement

---

Well today has been mildly productive.  We somewhat randomly decided to work on cleaning out the garage a bit more, so that we could move an old armchair out of the guest room before my mom gets here next month.  We're planning on either borrowing my brother-in-law's truck, or renting a U-Haul to cart it (and a few other larger furniture items) over to a dump next weekend.  It feels good to get stuff done like that.  It's crazy how cluttered our garage can get, what with just throwing things in there quickly and kind of forgetting about it.  We've got lots more to do in there, organizationally, but at least now we actually have the room to get it done.

I had last night to myself, seeing as the hubby went out with his brother to a local bar to watch the UFC fights, and that is just not my scene.  Never has been, really.  Anyway, I ended up finally getting around to watching La La Land, which came out in 2016, so I'm a little behind, haha.  I knew I wasn't going to get him to watch it with me, so I figured last night was the perfect time.  I love Ryan Gosling (and Emma Stone), so that was part of my reason for wanting to watch it in the first place.  I don't mind it being a musical.  Though I have to say it's not for everyone.  It got a bit weird in some places, but overall, I liked the dynamic of the movie.  Emma's style of singing felt slightly odd to me though, not sure if I liked it or not.

We also spent some of our free time this weekend watching the second season of The Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix.  It always reminds me how much I love Timothy Olyphant too!  His reaction to his wife's new 'condition' is just so amusing.  I love the daughter, Abby, as well, she's such a ... 'firecracker' is the first word that comes to mind.  And not just because of her red hair! 😛  Seriously though, how she stands up to a high school bully in the episode we last watched was great.

That's about all I have for tonight.  Also, I feel I should apologize slightly for my last post, but I just couldn't stop that flow of emotions. 😳

Goodbye Samsung, Hello GE!

---

Sooo, my most exciting news from today is what you see above!!  Our new fridge is finally here and completely settled in!  That black slate finish was totally worth the extra wait, I don't care what the hubby says. 😏  And I am loving the little pop-out door (top right photo), where you don't have to open the whole fridge door to reach a few of the most-used items, which for me, would be milk and coffee creamers.  Although I didn't get my way in having the creamers conveniently located on the shelf at the bottom, or even on the swivel shelf in the middle.  But that can be changed later, if necessary.  I'm going to have to get used to opening both doors for the fridge items, instead of that left one being for freezer items only.  The joys of switching from a side-by-side refrigerator to French-door-style.

I love it! 😊 I can't stop myself from just staring at it whenever I'm in the kitchen now.  Haha.  There I go being a dork again.  Until tomorrow!

Early Arrival!

---

Soooo, that last thing I said in my previous post?  Scratch that, we are now getting our new fridge this coming Monday, 3 days early!! 😁  We got the call last night, shortly after dinner and I have to admit, I got excited on a pretty dorky level. 😏  So this means that we definitely have to finish cleaning out our existing fridge this weekend.  I'm so excited to finally have the refrigerator we originally wanted six years ago!  I'll be sure to post a photo on Monday after it's all settled into our kitchen.  Look at me, talking about it as if it's a new pet or something. Haha.  I seriously am such a dork sometimes.

These next few days are going to seem to just drag by now, hour by hour.  And I can't think about anything else to write about, so I'm going to leave this post at that!

Theories & Anticipation

---

Sooo, I think I may have a possible reason for my neck pain.  I had a theory yesterday that maybe it's from the car wreck that the hubby and I were involved in, about a year and a half ago, where some idiot rammed us from behind, while we were stopped at a stoplight, and he obviously wasn't paying attention.  We went to the ER that day, both got diagnosed with whiplash, but other than a slight headache and soreness, that was the end of it at the time.  But I wonder if it's possible that injuries like that can lay dormant for a certain amount of time and then randomly pop back up in this way?  My head was thrown back in laughter when the car hit us and I remember my neck being abruptly jolted forward, so I think it's highly possible that this pain could have originated from that incident.  Ugh, I dunno.

I just wish it would magically get better before we have to meet my mother-in-law and family friend (Reno) for a dinner date tonight.  We invited them a week ago, when we ate at the restaurant and had the idea that the two of them would like the place also.  It's just going to be annoying, having to pretend that I'm not in so much pain.  That slightly-hunched-over position of eating irritates my neck so much more, which makes the process of eating somewhat difficult.

Finding Excitement in the Little Things

---

So, one thing about me... I tend to get overly excited about the little things in life.  Such as, when I first got a cell phone with an actual keyboard, you know, one of those that swiveled out and had those tiny little keys to type on.  Haha.  And now the keyboard is actually on the screen instead.  I still liked that little keyboard though, it made me feel "cool." 😎

I had another one of those moments this morning on the way out of the gun show over in the next city from ours.  There was a booth advertising this metal dual charger cord with both an Apple and Android connector, but that wasn't even what drew me in. (although it was a large part, because I have a Samsung phone and then an iPad Mini, so it was convenient to have both types of connectors!)  The cords were colored.  And they had my absolute favorite shade of green!  So I just had to get one, which is what you see to the right of this text... it was like a sign or something.  (Just let me keep telling myself that.)  Though I still need an adapter to charge my phone because I forgot that the newest Samsung phones have a different one now, but the hubby says he has some extra ones somewhere around the house that I can have, although he still has yet to find one... the Apple side of the charger works fine though.

In other news... remember that reloading bench that the hubby and I were working on building awhile back, in January?  I now have an updated photo to share, of the finished product:

I'm actually pretty proud of our work on this!  From being completely made from scratch, I have to say that I like how it turned out.  Teamwork pays off in the end!  And I have to admit, this was sorta fun to make, to have a project with the hubby that allows us to spend time together on the weekends, instead of just us doing our own thing separately, which usually consists of him playing video games while I read, or play SWTOR.  Although sometimes I like that also. 

Focusing on Organization

---

So today was a completely exhausting, yet productive, day.  We spent ALL day installing the ceiling-mounted shelf that you see in the photo above.  We still have lots more to do before the garage is completely finished, but it does feel good to have this part done.  Cleaning out and disassembling the existing shelves that used to be against the wall was the most time-consuming task.  Although I did reach my step goal for the first time in about a month, without even trying!  That part feels great, but my feet are definitely telling a different tale.

A Rare Evening to Myself

---

So it's 4:10pm and the hubby just left with his brother to go to an all-you-can-eat-crab-feed tonight.  I am not a fan of crab in the slightest, so I voluntarily opted not to go with them, because honestly, it would be a waste of a ticket.  So now I have the night to myself.   We slept in this morning until 8am, which is the latest we ever sleep on a weekend, and after getting some breakfast at Black Bear Diner (if you don't have one of those close to you, you're missing out!), we spent the morning breaking down boxes, in preparation for a cardboard dump run.