Happy May

May is such a great month! Even though we're only a step away from winter, and we can still have snow, it isn't looking like it. I just checked the weather forecast for the week ahead and every single day and night there is a chance of rain -- except Monday, for some reason -- but all the chances are little, like 20% and "slight chance." What that usually means is that it will rain, but only a little bit. This sort of weather is my favorite. Not too hot, not too cold, and things stay green without watering. 

Our only flowers so far are dandelions, grape hyacinth, and the two onions in the picture above, but lots more onions are coming. Alliums, I guess I'm supposed to call them. The iris are always a surprise: will they bloom? how many? what color? You can't tell yet. And the lilac won't bloom for weeks yet. Meanwhile, I need to plant flowers, but I'm holding off until next weekend.

I put up my hummingbird feeder, but haven't seen a hummer yet. One day when I was working in the yard I thought I heard one (our hummers make noise), but then it was gone and I never saw it. Still, must be ready. I'll change out the sugar water tomorrow, even though I don't think this batch has been tasted. You have to keep it fresh.

I had a very productive week, though it didn't start out too well. On Monday I picked up my kit for the sleep apnea test, and that night I put all the apparatus on and tried to go to sleep. It was terrible! I can't remember a worse night in my life. I had an awful time falling asleep and I kept waking up again and having to start over. The worst part of it was the little tube I had to have in my mouth, part of the cannula that was making it possible to measure my oxygen levels. I found it terribly irritating. I really wonder what the test is going to show, and whether the results will be accurate. Still 9 days to go until my next appointment.

Aside from that test and how tired I felt the next day, I did have a very good week. As I mentioned last week, for May I have simplified my weekday schedule into four main tasks: FlyLady, writing, the files, and yardwork. I figured out quickly that I needed to switch yardwork to the morning, because by the middle of the afternoon (a) it can be quite hot, (b) a thunderstorm may be threatening, and (c) stinging insects are more likely to be flying around. At 10 am, none of that is true, though later in the summer I may have to start even earlier.

I'm so excited about my progress with the yardwork! I don't have a "before" picture, but I think you can see from this one what I did. The junipers were formerly almost completely covering the path -- they were touching the cellar door. Now we can push the lawnmower through the yard around to the front yard, so we can mow. That was my goal and I achieved it.

I filled a leaf bag every day. On Friday, Teen A stayed home from school because he had a bad cold, and he came out and helped me (to earn $5). He also mowed the front yard yesterday (since we now have a path for the lawnmower). My plan this summer is to offer both boys a chance to earn $5 a day by helping me with the yard. They don't have to do it, but if they're eager to earn money, as Teen A always is, here's how they can do it. Otherwise I'll just work along on my own.

This coming week I am going to work on this lovely bush. She -- I think of this one as female -- is so much bigger than she's supposed to be. I'm trying to get the bushes back into the confines of the landscape edging that they have burst out of. For so long, this has seemed like an impossible task, but now I see that it isn't impossible if you just keep going. I work half an hour a day, with weekends off. So much gets done, it's amazing.

Task #2 of each day was writing, and I did it -- I actually finished the draft of my middle-grade novel! I carefully printed it out so that I have a hard copy if anything happens to the electronic file, and I keep picking up the hard copy and smiling at it.

Of course, I haven't done anything else with it. At some point I have to sit down with it and start the editing process. But I think it's OK to give myself a little time off. I spent the last few days of the week planning the next novel in the series -- I can't remember if I've mentioned that this is supposed to be a mystery series and there are 12 planned novels in the series. I doubt I'll actually write 12 novels. I'll be lucky to write two. But the first one now exists! I'm tickled. This isn't the first novel I've written -- when we lived in Ridgecrest I wrote two novels and started a third, none of which will ever be published, because they're awful. So I've done this before. But it's been several years, 10 to be exact, since I last put much effort into novel writing. It was very hard to get going again, and it's taken a long time to write this one. My brain just isn't as quick as it used to be. But I did it!

My third task of each day was the files, and that was pretty successful too. The problem with the files is that they're time consuming. I assigned myself to work on the first file cabinet, the one I consider the most important. Monday through Thursday I worked on drawers 1 through 4, and on Friday I spent some more time on drawer 3, which was the most messed up. Next week I plan to move on to the second file cabinet and follow the same schedule. But I could easily spend another week on this first file cabinet. There's a lot to do.

Rocket Boy's old organization plan for this cabinet was as follows:

1. Monthly bills or obligations
   
2. Quarterly or bi-yearly bills or obligations
   
3. Yearly bills or obligations
4. Empty folders 

 
My new plan is similar, but different:

1. Our three properties and things related to them: monthly bills, insurance, repairs & upgrades, rental information
2. Bank statements and earnings -- pay stubs, that kind of thing
   
3. Investments, retirement accounts, and all legal stuff (the trust, our wills, any court cases)
4. Taxes (and empty folders)
    

The second file cabinet is more of a mishmash, and I expect to play with the organization as I go. Right now, this is what the drawers look like:

1. Medical, vision, dental records for all four of us
2. Other beings: all our pets' veterinary records, and files related to Rocket Boy's brother, his parents, and our old next-door neighbor (from when RB was his personal representative)
3. Vehicles and their paperwork; files related to places we used to live (i.e., Ridgecrest) or properties we used to own (i.e., my old townhouse, a mine that RB used to have back in the day)
4. A bunch of Rocket Boy's old files on pointless things that we don't need to keep and which I will very carefully have to thin and then gradually get rid of. Eventually this drawer will have other things in it. For example, it could be the twins' file drawer.
   

It is going to take more than a week to get this file cabinet straightened out. But I'll do what I can this week, and then the third week in May I'll work on the third file cabinet, which I am intending to have absorb all Rocket Boy's important stuff -- his teaching files, his grad school files, all that stuff -- which is currently taking up space in three different file cabinets.

In some ways it would be helpful if we had another flood, but only a flood that affected certain drawers in certain file cabinets. Since that's not going to happen, I'll keep working along.

My fourth task of each day is FlyLady stuff, and I have found that putting that last is a problem. It's so easy to say oh screw it and not do the work. Much easier to do it first thing in the morning and get it over with. But the yardwork really needs to be first thing in the morning. And after the yardwork, I'm tired. I need to do a sit-down thing, like writing. Then after lunch, when I get a second wind, I work on the files, which actually involve quite a bit of running around. I work on them at the card table in the living room -- no desk space in the "desk room" since all the desks have computers on them -- and then go back and forth putting things away in different drawers.

And when the file hour is over, I'm tired again. I do not feel like starting a cleaning project. This is why the kitchen floor did not get mopped this week (though I did vacuum).

Possibly it would be OK to spend less time on cleaning this month, just do the easy stuff. Once the kids are out of school, I won't be able to work on the files as much. In fact, I really want to have that job completed by the end of May. And I won't be able to do as much writing over the summer because it's hard to do that without a quiet space for myself. So the summer can be mainly devoted to yardwork and cleaning -- and reading. And helping the kids with their stuff. Teen B will be doing a PE class, so I'll be heavily involved in that. And they're both going to get their driving permits in early June, so then we'll have to practice driving. Horrors.

So, that's where things stand. Not much planned for the week ahead, other than TRYING not to catch Teen A's cold. I hate getting sick in May, and I usually DO get sick in May. Last year we all got Covid around this time. When I was teaching I always came down with something as soon as classes ended (or as soon as I finished my grading). So, bottom line, if it happens, it happens. I'll still love May, even if I have to scale back my activities.

I keep thinking -- the twins are almost done with their first year of high school! This blows me away almost as much as having them start high school did. Our bedtime book for the past month has been These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder, which I thought they might like because Laura is 15 at the beginning of it, though she turns 16 soon after. By the end -- and we will read the last chapter tonight -- she is 18 and getting married, so that's harder for them to relate to. They were highly amused by her activities in the early part of the book, especially the fact that she began teaching school at age 15. The book covers more ground than the others in the series -- about two and a half years in the space of one book. But those years do go quickly in real life.

When it's my turn to pick next, I'm thinking about reading them Heaven to Betsy by Maud Hart Lovelace -- about Betsy and Tacy's freshman year of high school. But maybe they won't want me to read it, because they're going to be sophomores. We'll see. It's Teen A's turn to choose next, and then Teen B's. I won't get to pick again until maybe July.