Staycation Day 5

Neither rain, nor cold we keep me from my appointed round to the local landfill.

I love the landfill!  Its very organized with individual dumpsters for different types of junk.  There's this wonderful feeling of satisfaction with dumping a contractor bag full of junk into the dumpster and watching it get smooshed.  I love it!  For bulk stuff, you get to heave the items into really big dumpsters situated below a wall.  Its like your very own little world of stress relief.  The big burly guys who work there always try to help me toss my stuff, but I wave them off.  That's the fun part and dammit I'm gonna toss it in the bin!

I had two runs to the landfill, the second being some dry wall that we had in the very back of the back room (for some reason), and to make it fit in the RAV I had to break it up.  If you've never broken dry wall, I highly suggest buying a huge sheet of it, leaning it against a wall and karate kicking it.  It breaks really easy and makes you feel invincible.  I also got to toss in the huge glass screen door pane, but I was totally disappointed that it didn't shatter in a zillion pieces.  Even when I purposefully tossed the dry wall on it... nothing.  Now that's glass!

Next it was a drive over to Salvation Army with a huge contractor bag of clothes and purses, and then off to Starbucks... because its Starbucks and I needed Starbucks... seriously, I have to explain that?

On the way home I went to Lowes, where I bought the last two plastic (edible) shelving units... which means I have to go scout out another Lowes for more.  One major complaint with Lowes:  your self check-out needs one of those scanner wand things.  All of the other stores have them, so I have no idea why you don't... do you know how hard it is to scan a huge plastic shelf?  Well, it looked really hard because the guy in charge of the self checkout had to do it twice.

By the time I got home it was now POURING rain, so the only thing I could do (other than nap) was continue purging the back room and minimizing the kitchen counter stuff, so that's what I did... and frankly as I was working in the back room the only thing that came to mind was: "On this episode of Hoarders... Penny suffers a hernia and goes insane".  I did manage to make enough room to put up the two new shelves and stock them with boxes.

Did I mention it was POURING rain?  Yep, for hours, and hours, and hours, and frankly when the water level in the back yard was getting alarmingly high... I wondered if Katia was ahead of schedule (apparently we're getting Lee... which needs to go to Texas), and we were getting a rather disturbing amount of water coming into the outside back porch... duh because I had accidentally knocked the drain pipe off the back gutter, so I went out in the POURING rain to fix that.

During the POURING rain, Meeshka decided that she wanted to stay out in it and dig for grubs, taking a break once in a while to bang on the door to come in, shake her mud everywhere, then go back out.  So it was generally a few hours of moving heavy boxes, getting showered with wet husky, moving heavy boxes, more husky shower, Loki wanting out, then in, then out, then in, drying feet, and finally Sam joined the grub hunt and it was three soaked huskies versus me.  Whoot.

I gave up and did some Angry Birds relaxation, read (Dick Cheney's book... which is really good so far), and watched some tv.  Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up and saw an infomercial for a chair-like device with handles that you sit in and wiggle around and tone your midsection.  I was a bit disturbed by the claim that kept scrolling at the bottom, and yes, in the middle of the night I got up and took a picture of it:

Frankly, I don't think I want 7 pounds of fat running loose in my body

Staycation Day 2

On day 2 of staycation, I dragged Lobsterman to the airport.  Of course, we stopped at the airport Starbucks, where (despite saying it three times and spelling it) I became "Betty"

To be fair, when they asked what Lobsterman's name was for his cup, I told them Ralph.

Once Lobsterman was violated and irradiated by TSA and on his way to his departing gate, I fled the airport and headed for the grocery store to buy enough food to last the week.  As I was on staycation, I wanted quick, easy to prepare, nutritional foods that would sustain me for the entire week.

I think this will last.

Thanks to Tropical Storm Irene, the grass in the backyard had grown to such a length that Loki kept getting lost, and Meeshka would glare at me because when she did her "bizness" the grass would tickle her delicate po-po, so I mowed the back yard.  It was approximately 99.9% humidity.

Since I was already grotesque and sweaty, I dove into organizing the back room and throwing all of Lobsterman's prized heirlooms away (just kidding honey).  I also did some laundry.

Later on, I made a huge vat of goulash, which was a childhood staple whose recipe we got from my depression era grandmother and pretty much consists of hamburger, macaroni, and diced tomatoes, but its tasty, and comforting, and you can reheat it in the microwave.

Sam demanded to go out (as usual) around 8:30, then demanded his creaky bones, then demanded his bedtime cookie, then demanded to be lifted onto the bed (he's very demanding), so I watched tv.  Unfortunately I got sucked into watching a Hoarders marathon until midnight.

Staycation Day 1

In light of the dismal jobs report (and subsequent tanking of my 401K), I decided that I needed to go invest in some infrastructure jobs by going to Lowes:

While at Lowe's, I created/saved one job by asking an "associate" where on earth they hid the Ziploc Totes, which are the best invention since the spleen and are much sturdier than the stupid Space Bags that are made out of cellophane, rip if you look at them wrong, and leak the moment you suck air out of them.  Space Bags: expensive pieces of crap.  Ziploc Flexible Totes: manna from heaven.  Dear Ziploc, I can be bribed with freebies.

When I got home, I assembled my infrastructure:

Please note that the packaging had very large notices that these shelves are made from "green" technology.  So not only am I investing in infrastructure projects, but I am also supporting "earth friendly" products that create flimsy plastic that is made from soybean products that began to decompose the moment I removed it from the plastic wrap (made from normal plastic and was much stronger than the shelving), and in a pinch I can always eat the shelves.

Please note that on the right hand side now blocked by the shelving is a treadmill, which demonstrates how serious we both are about staying in shape.

The rest of the week will be spent going through the crap on the other side of the room (out of view of this photo for fear that one of you will submit our names to the Hoarders people), and most likely visiting the dump on a regular basis throughout staycation.  I have already found drywall and a glass screen door insert for a door we no longer have.