Last day of June

As of today, we have one month before we vacate. We'd hoped to go to the flea market to offload some stuff today, but no luck.

It rained. A lot.

In the grand scheme of things, no big deal. I saw photos of major flash-floods from one town over, with people's cars half-submerged. Like I said, it puts not being able to go to the flea market in perspective.

I did finish emptying the bottom of the downstairs closet today, so I've recovered another storage bin and reorganized tools in a smaller bin. I gave each of the kids a trash bag and they filled it with an initial pass in their room. We took four bags to the dumpster today.

We did manage to take a small load of stuff over to The Scrap Exchange. I say 'small load' but it was enough to fill one of their shopping carts to overflowing. They got back some cans of paint we'd bought from them last year, plus some lumber and plyboard, lots of paper and office supplies, some electronic stuff, and all kinds of arts & crafts materials. Mainly, I was happy they took all my wrapping paper. (I say 'all' but who knows what I'll discover in the coming weeks...)

After having bought four suitcases at the thrift store yesterday, I put one of them to use by using space bags my sister had given me a couple of years ago to vacuum-pack all my sweaters. Yes, all my sweaters (compressed) filled a suitcase. It is now in the downstairs closet, ready to go. I won't need them until fall (but the Babaloo assures me I will need them), so they're out of the way.

I also packed all my professional and business casual foldables in a suitcase. The Prowler does have about two feet of hanging space in a small closet at the back, so we'll leave all our suits and blazers on hangers for the move.

After removing 75% of the clothing from my closet, I discovered a large brown suitcase. It wasn't empty. Inside, there was another suitcase. If you're keeping count, we now own seven. 

I also filled two large trash bags with clothing I don't want to take to Arizona. Those are in a laundry basket along with a bin full of household goods and linens for me to take to the donation center tomorrow. I am making progress.

I also spoke to my sister and she does not want/need more books, so I have to decide on a home for five boxes full. She helped me mull it over, and I think I'm going to just skip trying to sell them to the secondhand book store. I could drive over to the one in Raleigh and get a quarter apiece for them, but I'd just as soon take them to the donation center, too, and just get a receipt for taxes.

That's it. I'm done for today. More later.

Oh, wait. Here's a glimpse of the downstairs closet, which is looking much better. Ignore the Babaloo's pants. I'd just finished a load of laundry when I thought to snag a photo.

Tools! (Mostly) empty rod!

You have to break eggs

As you know, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. This is what I keep telling myself as I stumble around boxes and tubs. There are 'broken eggs' all over my house right now.

This morning (after coffee), I cleared the home-schooling bookshelf. I have two milk crates full of books for my sister to look through, and three boxes of books to sell or donate. The bookshelf is now holding the few books that made it beyond the initial pass, empty boxes, the higher-quality art supplies, and the emptied fish tank.

This is the 'after'... er, between? 

Does anyone want cookbooks? I use AllRecipes now.

I'm trying to sort as I go, and have piles or tubs or boxes of things started for the donation center, for The Scrap Exchange, for friends to pick up, or to take to the animal shelter.

This is not junk. This is a slew of school & art supply stuff.

I finally finished sorting sewing material, I think!

Too many donations for the storage tub.

Towels we don't use.

I'm kind of torn on the towels we don't use. I think I'm going to set them all aside for now and use them to pack fragile stuff for the move. Whatever we don't use, I'll take over to the animal shelter. I hear they're always in need of blankets and towels.

I did take a tub of shoes and clothing over to the donation center today. The guy laughed when I said he could have the contents but not my storage container. I also gave two hula hoops to the neighbor lady's daughter for her kids. Oh -- and we also took out SIX bags of trash. Yes, six. I'm beginning to get really brutal with the paper stuff. Nobody really keeps tax forms for ten years, right?

Friday

I did not post yesterday because we made Thursday a family day. To celebrate a successful year of home-schooling, we took the kids out to a matinee (Iron Man 3), out to lunch (Bob Evans), and to buy a PC headset (Best Buy, despite my reservations). We also dropped the truck off at the RV mechanic to have the 7-pin cable installed.

This morning, I sold a set of golf clubs we'd listed on Craigslist, went to the library to return books, and took a deposit by the bank. The golf clubs had been occupying a portion of my living room for about two weeks. Also, it's interesting how many people emailed to say, "My child is X years old. Will these fit him/her?" I don't know, ma'am/sir. Is your kid a giant, a runt, or average height? These things are scaled by height, not age. (Yes, I had included a link to a height/club length chart.)

You would not believe the number of people who cannot read.

This afternoon, we got a call from the RV mechanic who was freaking out because he couldn't get the lights to work on the Prowler. The Babaloo freaked. I simply put on eyeliner. (These sorts of things have to be discussed in person, y'know?) We headed to the shop and by the time we got there, the mechanic had figured out the problem. We now have properly cleaned & greased wheel bearings and snazzy new wiring connections on both the truck and the trailer.

We also finally received the title to the trailer recently, and I found this link that gave a phone number so I could call Fleetwood to request an owner's manual. The customer service rep was really friendly and did NOT make fun of the fact I was requesting documentation for the 1977 model. By 5pm, she had emailed the pdf to me for the 1979 model (the closest one she could find), so now we have data.

I went to the grocery store tonight. It's requiring a shift in habits, since I'm trying to find good coupon deals only on the things we'll eat/drink in the next four weeks. I've been skipping all deals on household cleaning products for about three months, and I'm down to my last two bottles of laundry detergent. I picked up juice boxes tonight, since those will travel well for the trip, and I never buy juice boxes. It's a shift, is all.

We were hoping to head to the flea market this weekend to offload some stuff, but the weather is calling for thunderstorms. Of course, that could change tomorrow. I don't know. I'm just glad we're done with all the trailer/truck maintenance so I can start loading up the truck to take stuff over to Goodwill some sort of donation center.

Chicken Wednesday

A note about the title: at my university, the cafeteria has served chicken on Wednesdays for as long as anyone can remember. Wednesdays are a happy occasion, because apparently one thing the cafeteria does exceptionally well is chicken. When a student is glum mid-week, classmates will remind him/her, "It's Chicken Wednesday!" I attended four years of undergrad and two years of grad school and never ate in the cafeteria, mainly because the to-go cafe that served coffee was closer to my end of campus. I can't vouch for the chicken but I can tell you the cafeteria ladies make some stellar Rice Krispies treats.

It's been a mellow day around here. I shuffled some paperwork and checked the mail; I discovered the kids' end-of-grade exam scores. They (and we) are thrilled with their results and their improvement over last year. We pulled them out of public schools halfway through the first semester over a year ago, so this is the first full year they've been home-schooled. Did I mention tremendous improvement? Our older kid (just finished 8th grade) made college-level scores in five of seven subjects. Our older kid (just finished 6th grade) made college-level scores in three of seven subjects. Yes, I recognize that --given the state of public education-- that's not saying much. We're still happy with the progress they've made this year. The Babaloo suggested that we reward them with a special outing of some sort. They both kind of shrugged and our older kid actually came back with, "My scores are reward enough. And, really, you need to stop saying you're proud of me. It makes me feel weird." Sigh.

I looked into requirements for home-schooling in Arizona. This led to my having to order certified copies of birth certificates. The podunky, rural Register of Deeds required a simple, five-minute process and I was able to order online, pay online, and upload my photo ID to complete the order. The metropolitan Register of Deeds doesn't offer any of that and their application isn't even fillable. I had to actually print it, complete the form by hand(!), put a stamp on it, and walk it to the mailbox. Sigh.

...

Surprise! It is raining here today.

Turn your volume down. Rain sounds like loud static.

Every time it rains, even for as little as ten minutes, my sidewalk floods. This is because the landscapers have not trimmed the bush out front in three years and they insist on throwing mulch all willy-nilly so the water has nowhere to go. I put in a request for them to trim the bush and edge the sidewalk. They edged all three of my neighbors' sidewalks and ignored mine and the bush. Grumble-sigh.

Nowhere.

But I don't have to go anywhere today so I will gracefully ignore the water. I snapped this photo and then went inside to serve dinner. I pulled two lemons and four chicken leg quarters out of the freezer (which we are trying to empty) this morning and stuck 'em in the crockpot. If you slice two lemons to line the bottom of the crockpot, the chicken doesn't stick and you get that awesome lemon flavor. That's it: two lemons, four frozen chicken quarters, and a good sprinkling of rotisserie seasoning on high for about six hours. 

Yummy.

Chicken was a pleasant way to end the day. Contented sigh.

Two steps forward, one step back

I was up early this morning and as soon as I finished my coffee, I began clearing out storage bins from the downstairs closet. By the time the Babaloo woke, I'd already emptied two large containers and sorted them into stuff to keep, stuff to donate, and trash.

Then I took photos of a handful of items to post on Craigslist, and renewed posts for things I'd posted over the weekend. I immediately got a phone call on a couple of items and an email on three others. I don't know what happened to the woman who promised to be here before noon. I've been waiting on her all day and she never showed. The woman who emailed first thing this morning texted again at 6pm to confirm I was home, but it's been two hours and I haven't seen her. It really feels like two steps forward, one step back. And I am tired of having to haul my phone around to make sure I don't miss calls and tired of checking my email every half hour and tired of moving stuff from the dining room to the front door for folks only to have to move it back again when they flake. I am thisclose to just loading up the back of the truck and donating every last bit of it. Harrumph.

BUT! The Babaloo took the encyclopedias and the bookshelf over to my sister's today. I really, really hope my niece gets some happy use out of them. I really, really hope that my sister gets a chance to come look at the rest of the books to see what my niece & nephew might want &/or use.

The major productivity, today, though was clearing out FIVE garbage bags of useless stuff. I'm telling you: once we complete this purge and finish moving, I am not letting anything in my house unless I absolutely love it and the minute something stops serving a purpose, it will be gone. For example, my notarial seals. My commission as a Notary Public expired in 2009, I think. If I still lived in the county where it was issued, I'd have taken them to the courthouse to turn them in. I haven't thrown them out because I didn't want someone to comb through the garbage and use them for nefarious deeds. (HA! Deeds.) Finally, forced with having to get rid of them, I decided to take an X-acto knife to the stamps to prevent any possible forgery before dumping them in the trash.

Neurotic? Maybe. I sure don't want my name on forged documents, though.

And the humidity is back, along with a dull hint of another migraine brewing.

Thunderstorms. Approaching 90% humidity again.

This is where I'll be next month. 24%, I think I can handle.

Bearings, baskets, and books

At 7:30 this morning, I started calling mechanics. My regular mechanic is unable to work on RVs, as I suspected, but was able to recommend 'his guy', also as suspected. It took a few phone calls and some mapping on Google, but we found him and took the trailer over shortly before lunch. He seems like a pretty up-and-up fellow, and says he can have the bearings cleaned and repacked by Thursday. We'll then take the truck over to get him to swap out the 4-pin cable (which only controls lights on the trailer) for a 7-pin cable (which controls both lights and brakes). 

We took the long way home and hit the Cookout for onion rings, burgers, and shakes. I will miss Carolina style burgers.

Then I touched base with my sociology buddy, Dee. She came by to visit for a while, since I hadn't talked with her all month, and to pick up a stereo I wanted to pass along to her daughter. I'm thrilled that she took me up on the offer of a whole slew of textbooks. For the most part, we've taken identical courseloads during grad school, but she did manage to pick a whole box of books I'd collected along the way that she can use. Books are heavy. I'm really trying to go digital these days.

This is the stereo I bought when I got my first apartment as an adult in 1997.

I also did a boatload of laundry today. More culling of stuff the kids have outgrown. We won't mention how I tossed a handful of old t-shirts they'd commandeered from the Babaloo for sleep shirts. I refuse to carry paint-spattered shirts with holes across the country. There are baskets all over the dining room, full of clean clothes to go various places.

I also finished clearing off the bookshelf that previously held the fish tank. Part of the books went to Dee. The encyclopedia set will go with the bookshelf to my niece. The remaining books will probably be sold or donated.

My parents bought these for me when I was in junior high. You know, pre-internet.

My dad salvaged and restored this shelf when the kids were tiny.

I think that's it. It's very hot and humid today. I'm tired. I also just remembered that I was supposed to call a lady today about some miscellaneous items I need to get rid of, but I forgot. I'll have to do that tomorrow. It's been a long day.

Lazy Sunday

I titled it 'Lazy Sunday' but I was up at 6am and halfway caffeinated by 7am or so when I got a phone call about something I'd posted on Craigslist. The fellow drove over and I met him out front around 10am, but the item I'd listed wasn't what he wanted, so no deal. He was actually really nice and emailed me when he got home to thank me for taking the time to meet and to wish me luck in selling my item.

For the items we're not selling, Craigslist has also been a great tool. I listed our pet fish yesterday afternoon and they were re-homed by 10pm. That lady was pretty awesome, too, and stood around for a few minutes to show me photos on her phone of her 55-gallon tank full of Danio and Tetra fish.

Our zebra danio and neon tetra, bagged w/ the air pump, waiting to leave us.

Today really has been a mellow day, though. I had coffee and did the breakfast dishes, watched a couple of episodes of TV in my queue (Hulu and Amazon; we don't have cable), and made progress on laundry. The laundry is rather slow-going this week, though, because I'm having to call the kids downstairs and hold up every single item to ask whether it fits, if they love it, or if it should be passed along.

My major accomplishment today was cleaning out the fish tank. It still needs a thorough scrubbing, but I did empty all the water and wash down the insides.

Light + no sucker fish = major algae problems, by the way.

I hope to finish clearing this bookshelf to take over to my sister's house this week. Re-homing the fish and cleaning the tank were the first steps in this process. I thought about pushing to get it done today, but after lugging buckets of fish water to the commode and scrubbing the heck out of it to remove algae, I was kind of done for the day. Plus, it's still been threatening rain.

That's it. Plans for the coming week include taking books/movies/albums to the local used bookstore to see what they'll buy, finishing the laundry and clothing culling for the kids, and donations to the re-use center and/or secondhand store. Oh, and the Babaloo's dad told him a horror story about someone having improperly greased wheel bearings spark and that person hauling a flaming trailer down the interstate, so I'll also be calling around to local mechanics to see who can repack the wheel bearings on the trailer before we embark on a 2,000-mile trip. 

Slow Saturday

A friend expressed a bit of surprise at how much we accomplished on the Prowler over two days. I explained that the Babaloo and I are 'sprinters' ... we can push hard for two or three days and then we need a day or two to recover. Today was recovery day.

We got up and had coffee, and I noticed that the Durham Beekeepers were going to be at the downtown farmers' market today. We took requests from the teen (the younger kid was sleeping in), and popped over to the Central Park area of town. We got a chance to talk to a couple of folks about bees and honey and concerns about infiltration by killer bees! and how lovely Blue Orchard Bees are, too.

Some folks were supposed to be there to talk about home canning and to give out samples of pectin and pickling spice, but I was so entranced by the bees I forgot to look for them.

The Babaloo and I nabbed some lovely, warm scones and two loaves of bread, plus some pretty little zucchini, the most gigantic, shiny onions, and peaches, which are finally in season here.

The onions are, like, the size of a child's head.

On our way out the door, the Babaloo had sneered at his regular hat and grabbed a ball cap instead, so when I got home, I scrubbed all the sweat, sawdust, and fiberglass off his regular hat. I hope I didn't ruin it. I did triple-check instructions on the interwebs, and it seems to be drying well so far.

Balanced on an upside-down pitcher inside a shallow bin.

Then I started some laundry and listed some shelving on Craigslist. I got a call almost immediately.

Seven of these are no longer in my household.

After that, I also scrubbed the heck out of the tub and commode upstairs. I'd unclogged the tub and sink drains last night with lye, because for some reason you can't buy Drano crystals and the liquid stuff is absolutely ineffective. 

The guy at Ace Hardware was reluctant to sell this to me.

...backtracking... While I was at the hardware store last night, I also bought a wide-angle sticky mirror for the Babaloo's truck, and hardware to attach the license plate to the trailer. The license plate is no longer hanging by two pieces of wire, but we need to scrub his side-view mirrors really well before adding the auxiliary mirror.

And that's about it, because I get migraines about four times a year, and I've been fighting one all day. Part of it is from being overly tired. The larger part of it is we have a major thunderstorm headed our way and the humidity is off the charts. Tired + air pressure + humidity = migraine.

Tonight's forecast.

Credit: Weather.com

Have I mentioned that I'm looking forward to a drier environment?

Trailer - second day (lots of photos)

Happy Summer Solstice!

When I woke up this morning at 6 and plodded down the stairs, I was surprised to hear the TV was on. The Babaloo fell asleep so early last night that he'd been up since a little after 3 this morning and had already gotten a jump start on his coffee. He waited for me to get caffeinated and I'm glad, because the first part of today's to-do list included all that measuring that I didn't want to do while mentally beat yesterday.

Lots of measuring.

We still had to cover the left side wall with paneling, and there was a lot of wiring to avoid.

The Babaloo, working out a detail with hammer and chisel.

The last space at the front left corner, at the loft.

Then we found the window frames and installed those.

The guy who sold it was nice enough to save every piece.

Look at the tiny window in the loft!

Then we installed the three window valances. This took a bit of brain-work to figure out how the three intersected, but we managed it. We also installed extra blocks under the side valances, because that's where the face of the loft rests when it folds out to make a sleeping area.

You can see the face of the loft in the bottom of this photo.

Then we installed quarter-round at all the corner seams. We won't talk about how I accidentally smacked the Babaloo with a stack of molding as I carried it out of the trailer. 

Looking better...

Also, I had been calling a coping saw a hacksaw in my head for who knows how long. The Babaloo described it and I knew exactly where I'd seen it in the house earlier in the week. We also managed to clear up why I'd been offering all morning to bring him a hacksaw. In my mind, I knew it was the right tool; I'd just been calling it the wrong thing.

This is a coping saw. You use it to saw curves in molding.

Then we installed all the flat molding. I don't know what it's called. We used it to cover the joints of all the panels we'd installed in the walls and ceiling.

I'm sure it has a real name.

Finally, we were ready to install the loft facing. I insisted on doing this part because one thing I can do is drive a screw into a hinge. And, boy, was it a hinge -- one of those long piano hinges with about 24 screws. My Black & Decker was a champ, though, and got the job done.

It looks like a cabinet with three doors, but it is not.

Then we drilled holes for the latches which hold the loft facing upright when it's not in use.

I gave up trying to clean the dust once I realized it was paint overspray.

Then we wiped and dusted and Windexed and swept and vacuumed and swept some more and vacuumed some more. I strategically placed Renuzit stank absorbers every five feet or so. We found the hardware to fasten the air conditioner cover in the ceiling. We put the cushions in place and started to pack up the tools.

Let me remind you, for a moment, what it looked like yesterday morning:

I'm kind of sad I couldn't step back far enough to get a wider photo.

Now, what we had when we finished shortly after lunchtime today:

You are tres jealous of the 1970s decor.

The water spot on the floor is from ice that melted in the fridge.

That's it. This project is done for now. I'll update you with other trailer projects down the line.

Trailer - first day of repairs (lots of photos)

Okay... so I explained we bought this travel trailer, right? The back story on it is the guy who owned it was halfway through renovating it for his girlfriend and him to use for camping, when they broke up. He told us that every time he went to finish the project, he just couldn't deal. You get that, right? I get it. He sold it to us with the interior of the front portion torn out but with all the original trim, new wall paneling to install, and insulation.

This morning, we were up shortly after 6, caffeinated by 7, and by 8:30 I'd finished baking a batch of homemade blueberry muffins so the kids wouldn't starve while we worked.

Two dozen muffins. Don't starve, kids.

The first one hadn't cooled when I ripped the paper off to snag a photo.

Then the Babaloo and I got to work. We pulled the trailer up to about 20 feet from the front door, set the leveling jacks, and took stock of what was needed and what we had.

First thing this morning.

The first thing we did was go along every single exposed board with a hammer and a nail set to clean out and remove or bury nails and staples so the paneling would sit flush. There were about a hundred of these suckers.

3% of this step.

Next, we noticed that the wiring was not run through but over the framing boards, so we had to chisel channels for it so they wouldn't get squished.

Yes, it is held in place with scotch tape. It's what I had.

You can also see in the above photo the cross-piece 2x4 boards we installed in the ceiling to strengthen it.

We also had to install a few L-brackets to get rid of some wobbliness where the side walls met the front wall.

The bracket of L.

Some time during this process, I noticed the Babaloo was getting frustrated having to disconnect the saw to plug in his hammer drill. We decided to run the drop cord from the house to the trailer and then plug the tools into the trailer outlets. Duh, right? I can only offer that our coffee hadn't kicked in when we started this morning. He also reminded me that I had a Black & Decker drill (which he's teased me for owning for almost ten years) so we used that to drill pilot holes instead of swapping drill bits in the hammer drill.

Outlets! ... and, ready to install insulation.

Now, the insulation the guy had included was something like a bazillion inches thick and it was nekkid. I'm used to the thin pink stuff with paper on one side. No such luck. After I finally succeeded in explaining my idea to the Babaloo, he was on board: staple flat trash bags to the framing to hold the insulation in the ceiling until we can get the paneling in place. It worked like a charm.

A charm, I say!

After dealing with fiberglass insulation, it was time for a cold shower. The Babaloo got his first (he'd been wearing a sleeveless shirt & was covered). While he was gone I bundled up the rest of the roll of insulation. Local folks: anyone need some extra thick nekkid insulation? 

After showers, we were ready to keep rolling. We managed to install the ceiling board and the front wall board pretty quickly.

See that skylight hole? The Babaloo is a plunge-cut rock star.

The two panels on the right wall were a bit trickier, what with the notching and windows and the wiring we had to avoid.

The gaps will be hidden by trim later.

At this point, the Babaloo's back was starting to hurt and I knew if we continued with the left wall, we'd start making mistakes. Never do detail work when you're tired, folks. While he finished nailing the paneling, I picked up tools and trash and we shut it down for the day.

Huge improvement over this morning, no?

We agreed that cold beers would be nice. I told the Babaloo that if we got beers today, we could have them tonight and they'd be ready for when we finish our work on the trailer tomorrow night, too! He offered to go to the store while I got the first shower, since he'd gotten the first shower earlier today. I told him that if he bought Guinness, I could have a beer, too (stout is the only thing that doesn't trigger my allergies). He said I didn't have to twist his arm.

That's it. That's all I have for now. More later. Guinness now.

Paper

When I was a tiny kid, I remember my dad taking me to see my mom's aunt before we moved across the country. Great Aunt D met us on the porch and visited with us for a few minutes. Just before we left, she asked us to hold on a second and dashed into the house. She returned with three shoeboxes, each with a brand-new pair of identical bunny slippers but in three different sizes. My dad helped me pick the ones that fit, and we thanked her and were on our way. I didn't think much about it, since I wasn't even two and hadn't yet established a basis of comparison for what was normal, I guess.

Fast forward to a little over ten years ago, when one of my cousins bought-inherited (it's convoluted how heir property works, so I won't bore you) the house where Great Aunt D had lived all those years. The Babaloo and I spent a couple of afternoons helping to clean out the house.

Now, if you're familiar with that show, Hoarders, then you may have the slightest inkling what we were dealing with. My mom's family laughingly refers to it as just one aspect of 'the family illness'... but it's not funny. The woman had saved every jar, bottle, and box that had ever entered her home. She had worked in a department store in a major metropolitan area, and had apparently suffered a bit from compulsive shopping. She had stacks and stacks of 1960s-era, still-in-the-package linens. The Babaloo and I were newly married so we inherited a hot pink bath mat and some psychedelic washcloths that year from her stash.

The biggest problem for Great Aunt D was paper, though. Rumor has it that she had piles of paper stacked chest-high in a couple of the downstairs rooms, with an 18" wide pathway leading through them from the front door to the kitchen. To this day, when any of us neglect piles of junk mail for more than a week, we're apt to get chastised by family members who remember her house. Memories of her house are also why we all spay or neuter our pets. But that's another story I probably won't tell.

Even knowing this, I have a hard time letting go of paper. It's part of the reason I was so glad we finally graduated and our digital transcripts updated from pending to awarded because now I can throw out every piece of paper related to school. That's four years' worth of assignments for the Babaloo and six years' worth of assignments for me. It's a lot of paper. I've also been putting it off because who knows what accidentally slipped between binders and stacks of old exams, right?

(heavy sigh)

The other part of this story is that we own and rent out two houses in other parts of the state, and we'd like to sell one before we move. I've been bugging the Babaloo for a couple of months to contact his realtor (he used to work with the woman's husband, so he should call, right?) and last week, he finally did. She emailed forms and we finally got around to printing and signing them but one thing he'd missed reading in the email is that she wanted a copy of the current lease. The most recent lease was signed the week between final exams and graduation, and I knew it was tucked inside one of twenty spiral-bound notebooks somewhere in my living room.

Graduation was kind of a big deal.

Now, I'm nowhere near as bad as Great Aunt D. I've actually been compiling things like the kids' school records and our birth certificates and immunization records and putting them all in the Babaloo's briefcase. Because I'm totally on top of things, right? Three times in the last month, I'd run across either the lease or the briefcase but never both in the same day, so it never got properly filed.

This is the point, this morning, when my coffee hadn't quite kicked in yet, that I pitched a minor hissy. I put a new liner in the kitchen trash can and set it right in the middle of the living room floor and started going through every piece of paper on the bookshelves. I ended up with a half bag full plus a short stack of items to put in the briefcase plus a dozen unused notebooks and file folders. In the end, the Babaloo was the one to lay hands on the lease. (He was just looking for spiral notebooks, while I started at the top of the shelf and methodically worked my way downward.)

Imagine four of these dollar-store baskets filled to the brim. 

This is what was left after the purge.

But not before I'd reached that critical point of exasperation and flung my fit. "Why do I have to be the one to keep up with ALL our paperwork?!" I mean, really. I manage the bills, I handle the taxes, I renew car registrations, keep track of deeds and titles, plus all the stuff that I've tracked down to keep in the briefcase.

I know, I know. Big freaking WAH. It's what adults do. It doesn't make it any less frustrating, though, because when I can't put my hands on something, it's MY fault.

The Babaloo made a good point, though. Having both spouses manage documents is kind of like both spouses working out of a solitary, joint checking account. That never worked for us, either. He did volunteer to go to the post office to mail the documents, which I appreciated, and the good news is: I purged a lot of paper today.

After a horrible-yet-productive start to the day, my sister brought me a loaner microwave (ours broke two months ago and I just couldn't bring myself to buy a replacement, given the timing) and an awesome turkey-cranberry sandwich. And then I went grocery shopping for only shelf-stable items that, hopefully, we'll use in the next month. I'm really going to miss Super Doubles when we're gone.

Spent $20, saved $60.