Spring Cleaning – The Theory

April 21, 2021 ~ JodiLea

I am excited this year to get into the Spring Cleaning! Why? Because when I am 3-weeks from my 2nd vaccine, I will have family visit. I don’t know about you, but after no guests for over a year, my guest rooms do not have any room for anything else, especially guests.

The left one is a sewing and craft storage room, that must be organized to make more sense to me – that one will take a a lot of time.

The room on the right is completely covered with empty boxes. I save the good sturdy boxes in case I need to send packages. Okay, so I have hoarder tendencies. Another thing to blame on the ‘lobotomy.’

I will spend this afternoon preparing for the domestic chores that need doing and plan one thing to spring clean. The “one thing” is not a complete room or big job like cleaning the carpet. An in-depth cleaning of a room means, ceiling to floor, so that room gets broken up into a whole week, with something done each day. I know this is the most efficient way to do it. I have yet to actually do this, but I know it makes the most sense.

Seriously. I am going to do my best to keep this plan, unlike last spring (I did nothing when the COVID lockdown happened), and the year before, I attempted to do the kitchen in one day and after that fiasco, I never resumed spring cleaning the other rooms. To me, Spring Cleaning is the cleaning that is not done on a normal basis. When I was a young, single mom, I could take apart my kitchen, scrub, and put it back together – on my own time. I did not have to use the kitchen if I did not want to. My apartment was in a large town, so I had plenty of options for take-out. No complaints from my daughter either. What four year old doesn’t like junk food?

But I digress. The Kitchen is the room with the most need. Bruce did his part by vacuuming on top of the cabinets, (a.k.a. knocking the dust bunnies up there down to where I can reach them.) It will take me all day to wash the solid oak cupboards and drawer faces with warm Murphy’s Oil Soap & water – to get the dust build up off there and nourish the wood. I (and they also) will feel so much better.

I will let you know if I have success implementing my theory…

TTFN

Silly Things My Dog Does

March 30, 2021 ~ JodiLea

Ziva

Our six year old, 89 pound lapdog.

A constant joy and pain in the butt. Like a child.

Toys and tufts of fur cover our beige carpet, makes me think of the Tasmanian Devil in the Loony-Toons cartoons. He traveled in a whirlwind, leaving debris and damage behind. He was always my favorite character. In fact, I am starting to think that he has secretly moved in here. I cannot keep up with the clutter that is my home, so I have given up and just move it out of my way as I go.

She was so cute as a puppy! Her BMD coloring made it look like she had a mask over her eyes, making her face look like a bandit. She bit people, especially me. I would cry – not because it hurt so bad, but it hurt my feelings. How could my sweet baby bite me? We eventually came to an understanding, that I was the boss of her. This took a lot of training with a professional trainer, but I finally caught on.

Ziva, now portrays a mature and dignified canine. She still loves people and will get all whiny and wiggly when she sees someone she knows, but once she is within petting distance she will sit down (with her behind anchoring their feet) and allow them to pet her. This is a genetic trait for BMD’s by the way.

The I’m at home with just my people Ziva, behaves much differently. She snoozes around the house, in the most uncomfortable looking positions.

**L – fell asleep waiting for dinner** **R – wherever Chloe sits, there’s Ziva**

In the past year, one of her puppy phases returned – Wild Ziva. Around 5:00 pm, a seriously urgent spurt of energy causes her to run full bore in circles around our family room, suddenly stopping in a crouched position to challenge me to play. If I’m busy making dinner, she will attack her toy box and grab one, wrestle with it, then fling it up and away from her. If I accept the challenge, she watches me like a hawk as I retrieve one of her toys and toss it to her. Her reaction? She sits still and lets it hit her. No attempt to catch it or even acknowledge it. She studies me like I am being ridiculous. She knows this is not the reaction I’m looking for. She is teasing me.

Why do I keep doing it? Because every now and then, when the stars are aligned just right, or something, she will play. There are no witnesses to this, so of course hubby does not believe it happened. But she and I know. It goes like this: I toss her one of her stuffed animals and to my surprise, she jumps up and snatches it out of the air. Then she throws it directly at me. If I miss, the game is over. If I catch it and toss it back, she does it again. This excites me to no end because BMD’s do not catch, fetch or interact like other dogs. We do not know why this is. Maybe in Switzerland where BMD’s originate from, they know.

I figured out the other day why playing with her is so heart rendering for me. It is because she does not like to play like dogs do. But every once in a while she will play with me – because I like to. I can see it in her eyes that she loves me.

TTFN

Giggles N’ Bits Thursday

March 25, 2021 ~ JodiLea ~ 1 Comment

Giggles & Bits Logo

Because I don’t know how my week is going to go, Thursdays will either involve giggles OR somebody throwing snits.

In case you didn’t grow up in West Virginia, a “snit” is snotty fit. Unlike the tantrum, a snit is violently verbal, not so much physically abusive, although, a few have been known to morph.

This week has been all over the map as far as good and evil go. It will be more of a middle ground, which is totally not as fun as the other two – for you, I mean.

For those of you who use computers, you will enjoy this story… My laptop is hanging in by a kilobyte and last week it could not find it’s own hard disk (a.k.a. it’s brain). I, a computer technician, immediately went into “rescue” mode and backed up every folder, file, MS Office docs, photos and a gazillion quilt guild files.

After setting up the basics, and trying to get oriented to a ‘Windows 10’ system, I plugged in the back-up flash drive. When ever things are supposed to go smoothly, they do not. I know this, but I was not prepared for the magnitude of problems I got myself into.

First, I did not realize that the ‘backup’ drive (OneDrive) would copy all the files I copied over. It only had 5 GB of space, so it rapidly filled up. This sent me a bunch of error messages, wanting me to buy more room. Forget this! I would figure out the way to control the OneDrive thing later but I needed to get my files loaded and keep working on getting my system ready.

So, I told OneDrive to delete the files. That was the beginning of the disaster that ensued. They were deleting along just fine and when I closed that window, and I saw the second window that warned me “if you delete contents from OneDrive, those files will also be removed from your computer.

WHAT?!?

Who thought up THAT brilliant plan? Obviously Windows 10 programmers. Because said programmers are not stupid, I decided that it was some kind of joke. I was NOT amused.

Not time to panic, I told my self. Now that the OneDrive was turned off, I could download the files again to the computer. BUT WAIT!

The #@$%&*! OneDrive ate the files off of my back-up disk also.

Frustrated and too mad to think, I shut off the new toy and went to bed. This morning, I figured out how to handle this. I got my laptop and booted it up, so I could pull the missing files off of it. It would no longer accept my Windows password. This was my own fault for using the same one for my new desktop. And, Windows website to reset passwords was “out for maintenance”.

Being determined, (a.k.a. stubborn as heck), I logged in using the Guest account that required no password. HA! Take that you little computer… Then it occurred to me that if my file permissions were textbook – I would not be able to access my real account. I prayed that these were messed up along with all the other things today.

They were! The files I needed were in a folder called “Membership Records.” Unfortunately, there were many different folders named just that in a variety of places. I found the ones which contained older versions of our quilt guild’s 2021 Member Roster – Last year, Jan & Feb of this years. Where was the March One? I could not have lost that file! I did not have time to start from scratch, and I just got many member renewals in the mail that I need to update that file with! As the chair of the membership team I was mortified. Embarrassed Ashamed. One thing kept running through my mind – “Diane was gonna kill me!”

After my tantrum, I did a search of the entire hard disk of the laptop. One of the listed folders had a Roster file dated March 22, 2021.

Whew! It is afternoon now. This adventure began in the morning, so I am too exhausted to work on that file now. I am really thinking about a nap, but alas, I have grocery shopping and housework to do. A frustrating morning with a bit of a happy ending.

So I ask you, is this post a giggle or a snit?