Spring Break, Front Doors and Next Vacation

By Management

I spent last week on spring break from the paying job and had big plans of marking things off my internal to-do list. That’s the list I carry around in my head of things I want to accomplish. I add to that list profusely as I’m riding around in my big brown truck, but it is absolutely amazing how I can misplace that darn thing when I am home and can actually do something on the list.  All I know for sure is that I had YELLOW at the top of the list. It’s been on the top of the list for a while now and it was the one thing I could remember for sure that I wanted to accomplish on my week off.

I wanted to paint my front door yellow. I’ve visualized several different shades of yellow, but I had at least narrowed the color down to yellow. Yellow front doors are just happy in my opinion. One of the best things I like about my job is that I get to see all sorts of front doors. Running up to a front door with a package in my hand, I have checked out sidewalks I like and do not like; bushes I want to plant, porch surfaces that hold up well and are not too slick and have selected the perfect wreath for every season. This job is even better than the internet because I can see it all in 3-D up close and personal. However, mind you, I have seen a few too many things up close and personal—like the overgrown boxwood that hid a yellow jacket’s nest, the front porch with the tile that crumbled when I pulled my hand truck over the edge of the step and the baby gate at the top of the steps that caught my shoelace and pitched me back down the steps. All of those items were marked off my list of things I want for my house.  The yellow front door has remained a top contender. Now it is just a matter of sequences to get that door painted. I’ve needed to wait until the weather warmed up so I could leave the door open to dry. I have to wait until I don’t have the grandbrats running around or the front door won’t be the only thing painted yellow. I can’t paint when it’s supposed to rain since the door may get damp and now I need to wait until the pollen is gone. So the door did not get painted last week.   I moved onto something else on the list: the garden.

Ahh. . .at least I got outside in between the showers. The only problem was there were a lot of sequences involved in this project, too.  I had my garden spot all defined, but hubby pointed out that it was too close to the barn. I proceeded with my plans anyway because I had a handy water spigot pretty close by that would make watering so much easier this year. After getting the area prepped and ready for the tiller to break the soil. . .and ready for the tiller. . .the tiller. . .is dead.  A dead tiller is just darn clumsy to handle by the way, but I did get it loaded to take to the local small engine repairman where I quickly got put on his list of things to do, which unfortunately looked an awful lot like mine.

Next item on the list: clean the house. OK—that needed to get moved down on the list. Next. I headed out to my flowerbeds. Somewhere between Monday and Friday a whole pile of weeds jumped up. How did that happen anyway? I had mulched very heavily in the fall to cut down on the weeds. That didn’t seem to work very well, or possibly I just imported a whole new set of weeds in the mulch. It doesn’t much matter now. I tackled the flowerbeds and headed off to the chicken house to share the fresh greens with the girls. Oh dear, the chicken house needed cleaning. These girls have been keeping me in fresh eggs for a while now, that’s the least I can do. Little did I know that would be an afternoon-and-a-half project; however, the girls are now living in luxury and my flowers are too. I’m not sure I can count this as something being marked off my list when it was not actually on it.

This week I’m back to work, mentally adding things to my to-do list for my next vacation sometime in the summer. I really ought to start writing things down so I can feel like I’ve accomplished something. I just delivered a package to a newly painted front door when I think, “Wow. That’s a sharp looking green!” Now I remember what I like about an uncompleted  mental to-do list! It changes all the time and no one is the wiser.