Finally.

I've always known I work better under pressure. And now that I have deadlines things are finally getting done. Not necessarily the way I would have done them had I had plenty of time to save for the materials I wanted, but at least done well enough to get through the next few years.

I finally have carpet in the living room and the tile gone on the rest of the floor. I got my garage cleaned just in time to trash it again with a huge pile of tile & subflooring torn up from the house. My parents were in town to visit last week and my Dad stayed a few extra days to put the floor down. He put up the door trim around the bedroom doors and fixed the 2 doors that the last handyman hung a few weeks ago. Apparently the handyman did a craptastic job, according to my Dad who is a carpenter. So out of curiosity I asked him how well my and my daughter's bedroom doors had been hung...mine was not bad and my daughter's was "damn near perfect". Guess who hung the door to my daughter's room?



I am even if it did take me 2 weeks to do it.

He also fixed the broken stair riser in the garage for me. And I had to call an electrician last Monday since a breaker kept tripping and wouldn't reset. Turned out a wire went bad, possibly because the doorbell transformer blew. So he came back on Friday to fix that and while he was here I had him fix the 2 light switches that were giving me fits and move a third light switch from one side of a room to the other. He also showed me how to determine which wire gets connected to which screw for a 3-way switch so I was able to install the last 3 of them myself and fix a 4th I had mis-connected originally. So the electrical is done and I am FINALLY finished with the switches and outlets. Except for 1 outlet which is making me crazy b/c the wiring in the dining room is too heavy a gauge for the plugs I used so I have 1 single plug in the whole house which is different. It is a constant irritant to me so I am picking brains on how to make it work (safely of course) with the plug I want and without rewiring the room. Did I mention this 1 plug being different from all the rest is making me crazy?

I have been accused of being obsessive-compulsive.

I prefer to think of it as paying attention to details.

My ex-h finally came over tonight to tow the old mini-van up to the scrap yard. They gave me $360 for it...and considering I paid $350 for it in 2008, let my sister drive it for more than a year when she didn't have a car, and used it a lot myself in the summers to go back and forth to the garden centers & hardware stores I think I definitely got my money's worth. I'm putting the $$ in my son's account to use for his first car or school.

And tonight my son finally got a job. He's been putting in applications since January and gotten nothing. A few weeks ago they tore down the local Dairy Queen and started putting up a new expanded building for it. On Tuesday morning I saw they had a "now hiring sign" in front so I told him to have his dad take him up there today to put in his application. Of course his dad did not do this so I took him up there at 5 and after a few minutes he came out and said he had to come back at 6 for orientation, and now has training daily until Wednesday with the opening on Thursday. He just happened to walk in at exactly the right time, they had already received over 500 applications.

Of course the timing is pretty bad too since I am leaving for France Saturday night for the next 2 weeks. And since he does not yet have his license I can't leave my car for him to use. So he will be walking on several days when my sister is not able to drive him, unless I can talk him into actually riding a bike. I'll be able to take him to get his road test and license when I get back and then see if we can talk his dad out of his truck for a while. His dad has 3 vehicles, please tell me why a single person who has nothing to haul or trailer to pull needs a pick-up in addition to his main car and his "spare" car? I understand having a spare "just in case" vehicle, that was why I had bought the mini-van, but 3 vehicles? Really?

My new position is now officially announced and effective tomorrow. I am finally getting the job I should have gotten last year which they gave to the worm instead. He is being moved into a different role and I am taking his position. Justice at last. I will spend the next 2 weeks there with him to transition the projects over to me. My daughter will come over next weekend so she can take her placement tests for school before they close for the summer.

Unfortunately while everything else has been so busy I have been neglecting exercise and nutrition. I'm no worse than I was at the beginning of the month (several pounds over my goal range) but no better either. I'll take it considering I've done more eating out than in this month and lucky to have gone running once a week. I don't anticipate it getting any easier for a few months, at least until we are finally moved and settled in sometime in August or September. But I am taking my running shoes with me this trip and plan to check out the bike paths along the river to get in some miles.