Productivity, la-la-la-la-laa-la-la-la

(Sung to the tune of “I feel pretty” from Westside Story)\par
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Yes, today was a productive day, possibly the most productive day within the last couple month for the simple reason that today we got ride of a LOT of junk and trash. We ended up in this house because of a failed joint-living situation with my grandmother: first she bought the house and we lived with her for a year, then she moved to an assisted living place, and we bought the house from her at a bargain – which was very nice, financially speaking. However, part of buying the house involved some leftover junk of hers that she had hung on to for who knows how long. Most of that’s been gone for almost a year, since my mom and her sisters graciously came and threw it all away!\’c3\’82\’c2\~Some of it remained however, in the form of smelly ancient pillows and rugs and old alarm clocks, and half-used hotel botels of shampoo, and pieces of wood from who knows where, and shards of pottery in the back yard, etc. That was only a small part of the stuff that we threw away today, however – embarrassingly, much of it had been generated by us, or been left by the people who owned the house before we lived here. So today, I rounded up all of the obnoxious trash from around the house and around the yard, saved what I wanted (not much), and put the rest in a pile BEHIND the van (that way we couldn’t possibly put off taking it to the dump, right?!) Michael obligingly loaded it into the van on top of a tarp that smelled like cat urine, and delivered it to the metro disposal facility, conveniently located right in our own town.\par
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This was a big accomplishment, but wait, I’m not done!\par
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After Michael drove away I got the blower out of the scary shed (I’ve been hearing about local spiders lately, and am disinclined to be bitten by one inside our leaky, moldy, dark shed) and blew away ALL of the leaves and accumulated dust, dirt, etc that had gotten lodged around the junk-that-is-no-longer-there as well as around the doorway, etc. I did stop and look at my work, and it looks soooo much better.\par
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But the tale goes on. Later in the afternoon, I backed the van around and vacuumed out the floor, since all but one of the car seats had been removed for hauling purposes.\par
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After that I pulled out the things that I had saved from being thrown away and cleaned them off with a hose and disinfectant spray: our stroller, two beach chairs, our large cooler, a litter box, and a cat carrier. I also cleaned the tarp, spraying it with bleach for good measure so that it will hopefully no longer smell. I intend to keep most of these things inside in the future, to avoid the markings of neighborhood toms. Also, if they’re not disgusting, smelly, and covered with cobwebs and leaves, we might actually use them!\par
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So this\’c3\’82\’c2\~is where my self-congratulatory story ends. I had been wanting to do this project for a very long time, but my procrastination\’c3\’82\’c2\~lobe in my brain had easily over-powered the productive part of it, which makes the accomplishment seem so much bigger to me – after all, if I just ran out and did it when I first thought of it, it wouldn’t be such a weight off my mind as when I do it after thinking about it for months, right? Uhuh. Not surprisingly, one of my goals this year is to develop my ability to “DO IT NOW.”