Something Good

mood: disappointed

I knew this month was going to be tricky, as far as working on my Big List.  We took nearly a week’s vacation to the Nevada/California border, and I didn’t have a chance to do much of anything “productive” during that time.  I also have a really, really big work project coming up.  And, I might as well throw in that I’m seven months pregnant and not getting around so well.

Still, I’m so in love with this project and all of the progress I’m seeing that I wanted to pick some items off of the Big List to work on in June.  Some of them have already gone a little haywire, but I’m still working on it. 

Some of the categories I’m working on this month include:

·         Marriage Stuff – I am failing miserably at doing the things I put under this section.  With traveling and being really sick for the last several weeks, this section has sort of taken a back seat to simply trying to make it through the days intact.

·         House Stuff – I’m focusing on decorating and reworking the entryway of our house.  Unfortunately, the painting that I had the whole design planned around is no longer available!  I have purchased the paint and masked off the moldings, as well as taken the closet door off the hinges.  Unfortunately, getting someone else to paint the tiny little space looks like it’s going to cost my $100 at least, which seems insane to me.  So, it’s just sitting there all masked off while I figure out what to do next.

·         House Stuff – There were actually two things in this category, and I’ve managed to follow through pretty well on getting the energy audit done.  We’ve decided to move ahead on several of their suggestions, although we’re not going to replace our not-so-efficient boiler system at this point.  Hopefully, the insulation, gas hot water heater, air sealing, and heat pumps for the upstairs will make a big enough difference for now.

·         Gardening – Oh, boy, have I fallen down on the job with this one.  I have a whole kitchen window full of vegetable/herb starts (like, hundreds of them), and I have yet to get any of them transplanted into containers or the garden bed.  I did plant most of the garden space last month, but it has been so incredibly rainy here that I’ll be surprised if the weeds don’t completely choke everything else out.  I’m feeling like a big old failure on this whole gardening thing. 

·         Financial – I did manage to order my credit reports, despite the fact that the credit bureaus seem to make it as complicated as humanly possible!  I’m really happy with how my credit has improved over the last several years, but I won’t really have a clear picture of our overall situation until Darling Husband Rob orders his, too.  Cross your fingers!

·         Financial – This is the thing I was most excited about this month, and I’ve just managed to get pretty much nowhere.  I’m attempting to get all of our important documents together, to gather all of our accounts (bank, insurance, retirement, etc.), and all that jazz so that we can go to an estate planning attorney and get our wills, powers of attorney, etc. taken care of.  Unfortunately, I got overwhelmed by it on pretty much the first day, and I’ve been steadfastly avoiding it ever since.  This might just have to become my sole focus for July, as there is so much that needs to be done.  (Like, I think we’re going to have to figure out how to get multiple birth certificates from multiple states, have SS cards reissued, etc….See, I told you it was overwhelming.)

·         Data – I meant to track down all of my old internet accounts and close them.  I haven’t used my Flickr account in forever because I can’t figure out how to log on since Yahoo took over.  Oh, and I have two Yahoo mail accounts that I also don’t know how to access.  I don’t use my iStockPhoto account, have a LiveJournal account that I haven’t used in years and don’t need to keep, and so on and so forth.  I haven’t done any of that.  On the other hand, I did follow through on part of my plan, and I purged my FB friends and applications, as well as getting myself unsubscribed from a ton of newsletters that were filling up my email inbox.

·         Getting Ready for Baby – The biggest part of this is getting our soon-to-be-middle daughter transitioned into a big-girl bed.  I spent two weeks (at least) hunting down the perfect bunk bed so she and her big sister can share a room on the same floor as my bedroom.  I took on extra work projects last month so I could afford it, so I refuse to guilty about spending more for the bed with a staircase instead of one with a ladder.  Now, we’re working on getting the little one to sleep in there (we’re on night three, but Rob or I have been sleeping with her the last two nights to help her transition).  Next I’ll need to move her clothes into the drawers and probably bring up the newborn clothes to put into the nursery.

So, I’m not nearly where I hoped to be at this point, but it has been a very difficult month for me health-wise.  I’ve been kind of focused on all the setbacks, so it was nice to make this list and see that I really have accomplished quite a few things, too. 

It’s time to put my axe to the grindstone and see how many more of these things I can maybe mark off the Big List before it’s time to turn the calendar page!