Chore Day, Rest Day

After two day-trips to Galveston this past week, I faced reality yesterday and stayed home to catch up on chores. 
 
I can’t claim that I personally accomplished all that occurred at my little stick house yesterday.  I gave up on heavy yard work several years ago when my back declared “I’m done!” 

I’m thankful to have found a reliable “handy-man” that I pay, on occasion, for help with some of the heavy-lift work.  And so my little backyard looks fabulous this morning after yesterday’s handy work of pulling weeds and putting down 15 bags of mulch. 

After all the rain of summer, my shrub beds were sorely hurting for mulch.  I landscaped my tiny backyard a few years ago in a way that got rid of all grass; in a way that only holds native shrubs that are drought tolerant.  Both decisions were single minded:  long RV trips.  The Mockers are especially fond of the Yaupon Holly's winter berries, never leaving enough for the Cedar Waxwings to stop by for one of their epicurean parties.

But I myself really did take on a good set of chores yesterday.  Bathroom, kitchen and general housekeeping were given my full attention.  I’m not good at much, but I could win a national contest when it comes to cleaning toilets!  (That’s not an offer)  I keep hoping that some bright, engineering-minded young woman will introduce a new toilet design.  Seems someone would have reinvented them by now; especially since a failure of one plastic part inside the tank can flood an entire house.

Yesterday also found me doing a LOT of new, important laundry—washing all the new bedding for my upcoming RV!  One hint on this new RV:  it has a corner bed.  I HATE corner beds in RVs!  But everything is a compromise—and I decided to live with this one.

But I had no mattress pad; no sheets; no heating blanket or other bedding materials that would work for this corner bed. It is much bigger than a twin size, but not quite a full mattress size.  And I decided to design a home-made “sheet-bag” that should limit the number of times I have to remove a fitted sheet from the corner bed mattress.  This “sheet-bag” was a learning experience from my Sportsmobile days.

And so a trip earlier in the week found me spending a ridiculous amount of money (for items on sale) at Bed, Bath and Beyond for outfitting this corner bed configuration.  And yesterday found me washing everyone of them (except for the foam pad, although I did remove and wash its cover).

 

I’ve never been one of those lucky individuals that can buy clothing or towels or sheets and just wear them or use them.  I break out in a rash all over.  I have to wash everything before I wear it or use it. So yes, I even carefully washed the electric blanket.  My washer and dryer deserve a rest day much more than I do.

But since today is Saturday, I’ll probably not leave the house.  Too many people will be out and about.  So I’ll declare today a rest day for my washer and me.  I have a mound of photos to develop and four more two-hour episodes of the recent PBS series about the Roosevelt’s.  The first episode was really good.  Today I’ll give the second a try.

Before filing them, I thought I’d post a few of my Great Blue Heron photos from my most recent trip to the Texas City Dike.  As most folk know, these big birds don’t let people come too close (smart ones, they are).  So I was pleased with these “action” shots, as this beauty slowly and elegantly walked along the dike’s granite boulders; a quite different approach from my childhood jumping and hopping from boulder to boulder, leave scars on my hands and knees that bare witness to my not-so-elegant approach. 

Have a wonderfully birdy day!