The past ten days or so have been a bit of an experiment... I decided to not make any plans at all but to seize opportunities if I see them. Last Saturday, around noon, I turned to the Emperor and said "let's go to Nearby Regional City and do that shopping we need to do," and we sprang into action. Since NRC is half as far away as the other Regional Cities we'd been trying to get to, we could go and come back in a half-day, and we did. Except for buying furniture, we got nearly everything done that we'd been trying to do since August. The only reason we didn't get everything done was that the Regional City we visited didn't have all of the necessary destinations, but most is better than none. Making no plans at all worked well for accomplishing a goal.
So for this weekend, I'm not mentioning any plans at all, to the Emperor or anyone else. What we ought to do is mow the yard, and it will be cool enough to get it done without killing us. What we ought to do is clean the house. I might need to bring something to a colleague two hours away, but I won't know that until later today and I won't mention it to the Emperor until tomorrow.
Do you hear me, Universe? I am making No Plans At All. I don't even know what we're having for breakfast.
Meanwhile, in knitting knews, I finished making one more dishcloth for a total of three. By the time I started this third one, I found I had memorized the pattern! When that was done, I got out my cone box and resumed work on the Hana Lace Scarf -- when I had to put it down, I had gotten to the point that the fiddlyness was gone and I could knit quickly. Yesterday, I was back to fiddly-town, spending as much time keeping the needles in my hand as I did making stitches. Eeh, I'll get it back. I also plan to get out those Bed Socks and finish them for the Emperor for Christmas.
... a week later ...
We actually got some of our chores done, although not the ones I had in mind. The Emperor chose last weekend to get rid of a big barrel full to the top with weeds that had been sitting in the side yard of our house since we moved in. We got it onto our hand truck, intending to wheel it into the back yard so we could deal with its contents, but it was too heavy. After some musing, I suggested to the Emperor that I thought it might be full of water. He got out his drill and drilled a good-sized hole in the bottom of the barrel. Out gushed a huge quantity of brown, stinky water! It gushed for a good half hour before slowing down, and the level of weeds and things in it sank down by half. Even when the gushing seemed to stop, the barrel was too heavy to move. I turned my attention to cleaning up some of the shrubbery next to the neighbors' house while thinking about the next step in the cleanup. We mused a little more before I suggested that we put down a tarp, turn the barrel on its side, and use a rake to take the stuff out of it and divide the load into manageable weight. For some reason not known to me, or even to himself, the Emperor managed to turn the barrel over on its side -- without the tarp -- and could not pull it up again. He went over to the neighbor's house to apologize for the small chaos in their viewshed and came back having learned a couple of things, besides how nice our neighbors really are (they really are).
First, that barrel has been there for years. As in more than five years.
Second, that the neighbor is so nice he offered to take the barrel to the dump for us when he could get a friend to help him heft it into a truck bed. Said neighbor is in his late thirties and pretty strong himself. We are appropriately grateful, and when that barrel disappears, I'm going to bake them something like a pie and take it over to them.
On top of everything, I finished the weeding in front and even mowed the front lawn. During the week the Emperor met a lawn care service person who used to take care of this house, and learned a few things about how to take care of our plot. As a result, I'm hoping that next year we can achieve and maintain a neater-appearing yard.
In moving news, I got all of the clothing off of the guest room bed and into closets. Now comes the fun chore of going through it all and putting all useable items into a box bound for our local charity store. This morning I've been looking for my bread machine, but to no avail. It is somewhere in this house and I'm going to find it, but the question remains, will I find it early enough to bake something for supper? In all likelihood, no, but the search continues just the same.
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