Another week in the life of us

My cleaning of the storage room has blossomed into having Mount Methuselah in my living room. You see I have decided that my life should be more organized. Why in the world at age 43 I should think anything should change now, I have no idea. It could be the constant stress that I feel trying to keep track of everyone's stuff. Possibly it is the daily "do you know where this is" from everyone in my family and very often friends too. It could be that I feel that I never quit cleaning. My mantra seems to be "if I am up and out of bed I should be cleaning or doing some odd job". Those are all very good reasons, but I think truly my reason for doing all of this is the California fires. All those people had just a little time to get out of their houses. Although some had hours, others had minutes. What do you take? It poses a big question for me. If a disaster was to happen what would we take?

For most people the answer to this question is "the things that cannot be replaced" and there in lies the rub for me. As a family genealogist and somewhat of a family historian, I have many priceless things. Great, great grandmother's quilt, pictures and all kinds of other paraphernalia are scattered all over the house and in rub*ermai* containers in each storage room. My idea is to figure out where all of these things are and have the IMPORTANT stuff either copied onto a CD/DVD or have it available in a known place. All pictures can be on a CD etc.
So here I am organizing, sorting and cleaning all at the same time.

When you add in all of Will's tools that were misplaced when we turned the garage into an apartment, it's a pretty tall order to fill. So.... the only way I could think to do it, was to bring everything out of the storage rooms and every closet etc that does not belong where it was . Now I have a huge pile of stuff that I am sorting through. If I do not find a place for it, I am not keeping it. It is taking awhile and the house is a disaster in some areas, but my plan seems to be working and I hope to have it finished soon.

Our concert last night was very interesting. Good but interesting because you see our pianist hurt her arm and could not play. We tried to cancel, but they had advertised it in 2 or 3 papers and about 5 churches. They did not want to cancel and so they "found" a pianist for us. We were game to try and so we all trooped down to Richland Center (about 1 1/2 hours away). The main problem being that our normal pianist has a degree in music and piano, so we have taken MANY liberties with music and in most songs have changed the key, tempo or chording to suit our tastes. Now here we were with a pianist that we had never met and we had no idea what her abilities were. We threw some songs out of the plan because of numerous key changes. Some we sang accapella, some we sang like the music says, some we did our best and two our regular pianist played as best she could while in extreme pain, so that we could sing them because they were so difficult to play. It all turned out good in the end, so it was worth it. As I said it was interesting.

Today we have a chance for snow and 50 MPH wind gusts. Let me tell you this is an exciting way to deliver mail. Do you know what can happen to post cards when the wind is blowing that hard? I have to be very careful, or I end up chasing the mail across many lawns.

Then after the mail route it's our monthly go and play/sing for all of the nursing homes in Tomah. That should be fun. Sometimes it can really feel like a chore to do it, but it means so much to those people that are stuck there in those homes, that I give myself an attitude adjustment and get on with the job.

Well time to wake up Jacob and get on with life. Of course there is more sorting to do today before work. Life goes on whether I want it to or not. I don't think I'll ever catch up so I guess I'll just have to hang on and fly by the seat of my pants.

Have a great day!
Deanna