Reading update/Things To Do/Apology

I'm finally back to reading regular books. After 3 weeks of sticking with tour guides from vacation mixed with magazines, I have had to give in and actually READ A BOOK. So I'm hoping to update the book blog soon.

Along with the continued data entry of the journal. Wonder when I'll start on the vacation scrapbook...probably not till November at this rate...

Which brings me to Things I'd Like to Do at Home:

1. Catch up scrapbooks. If I did this fulltime, it would take about two months, if I kept my nose to the grindstone. I have so many old photos...not just this last vacation. I've slowly worked back to about 1992, and I've worked on everything up through college and wedding. So that's six years. Plus Sparky's school book. Plus his art portfolio (koff koff) book. Plus everything from the past year. Plus vacation. OK, so maybe four months.

2. Finish vac journal/blog. Uninterrupted time: about a week at most.

3. Organize home office. One or two full days.

4. Organize pantry. One or two days. But first I need to ...

5. ...hang pictures on walls (get giant box out of pantry). One day, but I need assistance in deciding where to put everything.

6. Learn to quilt and/or get started on a knitting project. There's a deadline. Actually two deadlines, since another niece has just informed me this week of her likely wedding next spring. I'd like to give her and this other deadline person something I made (I'm being coy, but if you really want to know what I'm talking about, email me). So like a six-month project at this point, but two of them at once...

7. Christmas shopping. I actually loathe shopping. So I usually try to have Xmas stuff done by mid-October. I'm way behind. Perhaps we'll be doing the ol' gift card/donation-to-charity thing this year... This takes so much time for me: maybe a solid week of 10-hour days. Which is why I hate it.

Those are the highlights; there are other things: painting some of the rooms in the house, making/buying curtains for the downstairs, getting grocery shopping/meal planning sorted out (an ongoing war)... Now that I've made a list, I realize that I really need to quit my job and do nothing but these things for the next year. At least.

That's not happening. See previous entry on Visa bill. The latest minor disaster is that our big, newest TV blew up last night. We lost power. When it came back on it we got a surge. We need to find out if it's a major injury or terminal, but it looks more like death at this point. So I will continue to work and therefore bring home a paycheck. To pay for stupid things like glasses, non-covered "experimental" eye procedures that I've had done for years (grr, insurance companies), Sparky's shoes and clothes, and surge protectors for every-damn-thing in the house.

Anyway. I'm supposed to be picking Sparky up from daycare right now. With my apology sign and shamefaced look.