I love the idea of having a shop!

That's part of my hope in cleaning out the garage, that we can actually use it as a shop haha.

And oh Shane, Shane, Shane.

Also, just out of curiousity.. how many W-2s did he have? LOL

I have filled the easter eggs. Stealthily, so Isabelle didn't notice. >.<

Went on a hike today! Husband said it's a walk, but I uphold if we walk for more than 2 hours it's a hike, and it was 3 hours today :D

I'm finally doing the load of laundry I've been procrastinating on, and once that's done and I've hung it up to dry, I'll take a shower and change my sheets. Chores really are the neverending story of adulthood, aren't they?

Mieke I hope you get the shop of your dreams! It sounds like a super nice idea to me too :D nice job on stealthily filling the easter eggs too haha. I hope you will all have a good time with that.

Kat that sounds stressful - mostly for Shane. Ugh! Not having those records is... oof. I do know the feeling of owing taxes because I always do, I'm paying off last years currently. With the next pay check those will be done. And a good thing too! I need cash on hand for the upcoming comic convention where we will travel and use a hotel for a few days. And that is so expensive, whew!

6. Yes. Six. Six w-2. PLUS a 1099-LEC or something for the period he was a "owner operator". Sneaky Mieke! :P I tied the bag up that has the strawberry things Nathan bought for me so I didn't see which he chose. And I have the other stuff for their baskets in my closet, but Shane was with me when I bought it so....eh.

Errm, Yeah. 3 hours is a very LONG walk and a bit of a hike!! Guess to me it would depend on where you were walking? Like just around the mall or the neighborhood, or on a walking track, I would say a walk, out in nature, on a nature trail, uphill on a mountain, thats a hike for sure! :P

I have a lot of plans for that "shop"....and most of them will probably never happen. I do plan to finish cleaning it up - Hey Mieke have you ever heard of the Bagster Dumpsters? You buy this big green dumpster shaped bag, fill it up, and then they come pick it up for a fee. The fee for one bag is $250, additional bags picked up at the same time are less. Each bag costs $30 at lowes or home depot or maybe even walmart. I've seen a small dumpster for rent for $250 and this bag is about the same price.... And I can fill it at my convience and not worry about how long I have the bag (well other than it killing the grass its sitting on....)

Anyway, I could finish cleaning up the back house, remove the sliding glass doors, park my lawn mower in there. Thats the main plan. I will use a large tarp as a door blocker. I want to put the two shelves that are back there near each other and put all my tools and things on them neatly. And store all the other yard work stuff in there too. There is one room that is completely drywalled in, but has no door, and only a small part of drywall cut out at a window - I have thought about putting an inflatable hot tub in there once its cleaned out hahah! And lastly, should I EVER become rich (yea, wishful thinking) I could restore the house to be gasp an actual house. one or two bedroom (it was originally two but I would probably make one of those a laundry room or make the bathroom bigger or something). I've also thought about tearing the entire thing down, fixing the foundation a bit (leveling it out mostly) and putting a regular type shed there to park the mower/put the yard stuff in.

Yeah, we had one once but my grandmother never called anyone to pick it up >.< I think I ended up throwing it into the real dumpster we got once haha. For me, it was a much better deal to get a big dumpster each time, plus the ones I've gotten gave you a week or two.. but what I did was try and get everything together, and so it was filled in a day both times anyway LOL.

Oooh ooops lol Well, yeah. I mean whatever works best for what you've got to get rid of. I have a lot of smaller stuff. I've been debating tossing it into garbage bags and taking them to the dump but they'd be so heavy. I was thinking about trying that Bagster thing. At least once. I do need to find a way to get rid of the last two grills, plus the dishwasher/microwave as appliances aren't allowed in the Bagster. But I could just simply remember to haul them to the bulk dump one day .... if I could just REMEMBER. Well not the grills, they won't fit in my car, but the dishwasher and microwave would.

I was debating asking Ryan to help me take off the grills and the sofa frame/mattress springs.... As I will be calling him to come pick up a check anyway - once the old mortgage is closed, they'll send a check with the escrow amount there - and I thought why not just give it to him (since it will be in his name anyway) to pay off most of the lawnmower money I owe Ashley's parents? :P And then when he comes to pick that up, ask him to haul the stuff to the dump for me hahaha!!

Good morning folks!

Kat absolutely you should ask Ryan to do that. Sounds like a reasonable request, and this way you don't have it cluttering up your space!

My Dad is a bit of a hoarder - not in the house, which he keeps very orderly, but the garage is a big mess. He already told us kids that we should get a dumpster when we eventually need to clean that out. He's so far refusing the idea of doing a "death cleaning" together, where before anyone's passed, we would get together to declutter the garage. I think that would be much better - I probably won't even know what half of the things in there are and don't relish the idea of having to go through it and make decisions.

Ahhh yeah. That's my moms house. She however has been attempting to clean some of it up. But she has SO MUCH. And if she doesn't finish going through it, yes. We will get a dumpster. We already know a lot of it is old clothes and old toys, so a lot of it will go. I will want books and photographs, and maybe some sentimental items if I see any while going through stuff. I would like to get her rocking chair - but one of my brothers would likely end up with it. Really though, my brothers - ? Who knows if they'd want anything at all. The oldest might. The other two? I doubt it, but I could be surprised. Its a three bedroom house, with a garage, and an added on den area, plus an outside building/shed. All of it stuffed pretty full of junk.

I do kind of agree with your dad, if you don't know whats in there, get a dumpster when he passes, if he doesn't want to go through it now. Most of it will likely just end up in the dumpster, though it can be hard to go through it all. Its only knowing I want certain things that will make me want to even go through my moms stuff at all. (because there is SO MUCH JUNK). But what I am saying is, if you don't know what it is or what its for, that makes it easy to just toss it in the dumpster. or if it looks usable, to donate. I know it still won't be super easy, and I understand not wanting to do it yourself. If you have siblings, they can help. Hopefully

I will also be getting a lot of stuff from my dad, eventually. ALL of his books, all of his photographs and probably his genealogy stuff (I'm not really too interested in that but am willing to keep it in case anyone else gets interested in it in the future). His photographs include boxes of photos from ancestors :P From the geneology and collected from who knows how many relatives. It will likely all just go into storage. I am supposed to get most of his guns too, to give to my kids, but since my divorce he's been talking about giving a few of them to other people. I really don't care what he does with them, I don't want the guns myself, but was taking them to pass on to my kids, as they might be more interested, and their dad (Ryan) has/can teach them about the guns and how to shoot them if they wanted to learn.

The issue with asking Ryan - is that specific dump is only open on Saturday, and he usually tries to come by my house before going home on Fridays (he lives an hour plus the other direction from me). He probably would if I asked him to, but it means going out of his way on a day off.

Happy Easter, everyone!

I think it's fair to ask him to take the stuff, especially if the dump is closer to his house? (Also, I wish we had something like that here! Would make things SO much easier!)

We got up and left the house by 5:45 this morning to go to the sunrise service at the park, as Lily was doing special music and preaching. I will admit, I was not thrilled at leaving the house so early on a day off, but I'm glad we went, it was gorgeous out and everyone was in a good mood.

AND THEN we took a walk around the lake. Even though it was raining a bit. But it's was glorious, and we saw lots of ducks and coots and I loved everything about it.

Then we came home and opened Easter baskets and looked for eggs while Alex made breakfast :P Our traditional breakfast is french toast with the centers cut out and eggs in it.. except Lily gets her eggs on the side, and Izy and I just eat shaped french toast haha.

That sounds like a beautiful morning, Mieke! Glad you are having a good time.

And that's true, Kat, a dumpster is not a bad idea for doing that kind of clearing out, if we do end up having to clean up, I will definitely suggest it to my siblings. There's three of us, so at least I won't be doing it alone! And if the dumpster is out of the way for Ryan, maybe you can do something for him in exchange, or leave it as an IOU? If you feel that's necessary, that is! You've probably done enough, but sometimes the conscience demands more :P

Nope. He lives in like Madison? (some M city). He works in Jackson. I live in Griffin. Griffin is 20-30+mins from Jackson in one direction and his city is 30-40+ mins from Jackson the OTHER direction. That bulk dump is sort of but not really on his way back from my house to Jackson!!! It's off a side road down a ways out of the way. :/

These dumps are more like, garbage collection sites ? There is an actual like, DUMP dump, where you can pay to take in truck loads of stuff, and the trash trucks take the trash to be dumped and the collection sites take the trash to be dumped. I love that we have them, but they've been slowly closing them down. So there is 4 regular ones in the county, spread out. And only the one that takes bulk items now (they used to all), and each of them is open on various days, only 3 days a week, none being open on Sundays or Wednesdays. So the closest one to me is open Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. As is one other. The other two are open Mondays and Thursdays and Saturdays. The bulk dump (which would make 5 dumps sort of) is only open Saturdays. And of course, all of them are closed on any holidays regardless of the day they fall on.

He does do more for me than he should. But I have no one else to ask and he knows it and promised me he would always help if I needed it (for like cars or big things like moving furniture or whatever that I can't do myself - like buying a new sofa or whatever is what I mean by moving furniture). He told me Ashley's a little annoyed by it. :P oh well. He doesn't care; he grew up with his stepdad doing the same for his mom after they divorced and plans to continue for me as long as we are both good with each other about it. - Especially since my family is all 5hrs or more away so other than Nathan I really don't have ANYONE I could get to help. I should probably do something nice for him in return. Bake him some bread or something, I dunno.

[edit] 450pm Ok peeps. I have added a few last photos and comments, and finished writing up the self-analyzing section. I emailed it to my professor asking if I should turn it in. I am so ready to be done with all this. I wish she'd grade my work!! :P AND do my assessments that she came out to observe for!

Hope everyone had a great day! Kat, you got a lot of work done!

We had lamb and roasted veggies for dinner, and it was soooo yummy. I could have eaten a lot more veggies, tbh :P

This morning I got up and went to Sams, Walmart, Target, and Hobby Lobby yuck, but it's our last craft store :/ then home to pick Lily up and to the church to fill some eggs for the egg hunt and get her to sign more donation request forms.. and then we went prom dress shopping! AND we found one, it's gorgeous and perfectly her.. and has POCKETS. AND it was on clearance, and only $101! So that was super exciting.

I'm super exhausted though, I left at 7:30 and got home at 3:30 LOL

Morning from Europe friends! It's a Tuesday that feels like a Monday for me, since Monday was work-free. Like a mini-vacation.

Mieke that prom dress sounds like a DREAM 🤩 happy for Lily! Having pockets on a prom dress is so cool. Maybe she can wear it for other occasions as well! I don't know if that's done with prom dresses, I only know prom from movies 😆

Kat that sounds like a good idea to me. Bread for a favor!

No actually...I was very lazy yesterday and plan to be today too LOL I mean, ok I did finish that assignment, but it wasn't a lot left to do on it. I did go to the doctor (blood work to get my prescriptions), the sheriffs office (to get the incident report) and the pharmacy (to pick up the prescriptions that were now available - one is not yet, but I have plenty of it still - i'm annoyed by that, ALL of my prescriptions are 90 day ones, but they're all ready at different times thanks to dose adjustments or something-I keep telling myself to ask the dr/pharmacy if I can adjust how many I get one day to even them back out and be able to pick up ALL of them at the same time again). Oh I also went to Ross, and got some black flats for graduation, and two new pairs of work pants. I need to stop spending money, but it was stuff I needed, so... eh. Its ok. (and it was only like $45 at Ross for those three things!!) I took a nap yesterday. It was AWFUL. I was tired so I decided to go rest in my recliner. I was cold, so I covered up with a blanket. And then I had one of those "waking dream" episodes, where you know you are asleep and you are trying to wake up, and every time you "wake up" and move and go do something you are suddenly back in the bed or wherever (The recliner in this case) knowing you are sleeping and trying to wake up again. This one got weird, in the dream some of Nathans friends came over and were talking to me, trying to get me to look at them and recognize who they were, leaning down over the chair - and I kept telling them "I can't look at you, I'm asleep, please!! WAKE ME UP!!" and they kept going "you are awake, you just have to look at me!!" SO WILD and WEIRD!!! Shane called and that ACTUALLY woke me up. Thank goodness. Then I felt tired the rest of the afternoon. Ugh.

Whoo for Lily's dress!! With pockets!! THE BEST!!

Morning Berry!! With me on spring break (no work) this week, I totally feel you, in that one day feels like another. I KNEW it was Monday yesterday but when I was talking to Nathan at one point i was like, today...monday? Sunday? Uuuh whatever day it is...." lol

Your definition of being very lazy does seem to still include a lot of work, chores and tasks, Kat! I think that's not true lazy 😉

Sorry about that dream - that sounds like a proper stress dream, the kind that you wake up from and feel worse than you did before you went to sleep. That's really rough! Lucid dreaming, maybe? Or even sleep paralysis! It sounds scary for sure. I hope whenever you nap next you only have the most peaceful boring dreams that you forget the instant you wake up, stress free!

And yes, without work it's hard to keep on track with the days. I have a medication that has the days printed on the packaging, that's the only way I can tell when on vacation 😄

Well the rest of the day I didn't do anything at all except read! :P Today I plan to do some laundry, do subeta, and read. No plans for anything else.

Tomorrow I will do the closing for the house, clean up the house (pick up all trash, vacuum, sweep, finish all dishes), remove all trash from the house, pick up the car rental, pack the car, and be ready to go early on Thursday morning!

How about we call that medium rare lazy? Just like I like my steak /jk But how do you like to order yours? Just out of curiosity. It's been AGES I've gone and ordered a steak anywhere 😂

Spring break is for lazing! So doing LESS is your job right now haha 😄 and leaving on Thursday! How exciting! Hope the preparation goes well.

I just printed out a little poster looking for a catsitter. I'll hang it up in my building and hopefully will find someone who loves cats and has time to take care of my little one when I'm gone three days in May, fingers crossed 🤞🏻

How do I like my steak? Same as any meat for me. Well done. I don't like pink, and I hate bloody. Yuck. And I've found I prefer steaks cooked at home to ones at restaurants. Ryan spoiled me. Nathan learned from him (well, when Nathan does it right anyway lol). Well done but still VERY tender and juicy.

Looking for a cat sitter - Ooh I hope you find one. I'm very grateful to my neighbor, who will watch my cat and dog for me. I take care of her dog for her too when she goes places or just is gone for the evening.

There is a teenager (well probably early twenties now? like 20/21) that I sort of know and I've thought about asking her for when I'm gone longer time periods - but she's at college a lot, pet sitting is her part time gig when she's home....she's usually not home when I need someone LOL So that just hasn't worked for me yet.

I was also very close to asking Nathan to get one of his friends to come stay at the house with Belle....because I think someone she doesn't know as well would do better STAYING here rather than going in/out like the neighbor can. Belle knows her well enough that she'll be fine going in/out...but anyone else, I'd have to trust to STAY in my house with the animals....and I'd be very picky about who I let do that. Thankfully my neighbor was ok with doing it for 3 days.

Oh those homecooked steaks sound amazing!

And thank you! I did talk to a vet assistant who would be willing to do it, the rate is high but I think it's worth it. And I suppose it makes sense that someone who works at the vet would have a rate for pet sitting. Luckily it's just a few days!

Almost time to leave for you! Is everything ready?

Just got back in a bit ago from picking up the car rental. Got to love that they don't tell you everything you need to know. I needed to show them my insurance (not sure why I didn't think of that, thankfully I had printed off a copy and put it in the car when I switched). And then there is a $300 fully refundable deposit I had to pay today too, but will be returned when I return the car :/ Thanks for letting me know about that in advance. Good thing I upped my credit card limit. I still will have to pay the hotel too when I get there/leave or whenever. Might see if I can do that on my debit even though I reserved it on the credit card. The good thing is, I am getting that $1100 ish back from the new mortgage loan, so the credit card will be paid right back off.

I plan to leave my house around 6am. No subeta time for me in the morning. I may get on briefly during the afternoon, depends on who all I end up spending time with after I arrive, before I can check into the hotel and before I go to the rehearsal/dinner. I've had the dress clothes in a clothing bag ready to go for a few days. I just packed up the rest of my clothes, except my bras which are drying (air dry/hanging in closet). I will toss those in and zip it up/grab it all in the morning and we're good to go. Going to make Nathan pack up this evening too, since I'm sure he hasn't. And grab a charger in the morning too. I will pack a walmart bag with some snack things (granola bars/chips) and water for the trip, though I expect to be eating out for just about every meal while we are gone - hopefully the hotel has breakfast so I can save a bit on that, if not, granola bars or eating out :P

I'm sure you're now on the road, maybe already arrived? Wishing you much fun!

I have a friend coming over soon! Feeling nervous, that's the first time I invite this friend over, haha. Did some last minute cleaning which seemed like the best thing to do with the nervous energy. Was very unfocused at my work today, but there's days like that. I'll try do better tomorrow, actually get a review done, move on to the next. That's the plan at least! :P