Another chunk of months has gone by with no posting. Too busy to write? The pile of puzzles that I broke apart and reboxed last week tells me "no."
I took last week off from the office because I have vacation days that must be used by the end of June. We had granite countertops installed in our kitchen on Tuesday, and I spent the rest of the week admiring them. It was a process that started about two months ago on the coldest Saturday of the winter when we went schlepping through a huge, freezing warehouse looking at slabs of stone-cold stone.
Two bone-chilling selection appointments to finally tag a slab and its fraternal twin with our last name. Then, a technician came to our house and used a laser to measure every applicable point on the surfaces in our kitchen so the countertops would be cut to fit perfectly, even if there were lines that weren't straight. Now, that is useful technology!
On Monday, a contractor came to remove the previous tops and add some reinforcement height to the bank of cabinets that are adjacent to the tile backsplash to avoid a gap in that area. On Tuesday, the weighty granite tops were delivered and installed in the morning, then a plumber installed a new sink, faucet, and soap dispenser in the afternoon. Everything and everybody functioned as scheduled, and the countertops look amazing!
To prepare for all of this, I repainted some walls in the kitchen and mudroom. Climbing up and down a stepladder, pushing a paint roller, and waving a brush are pain-inducing activities at my age. Also, the top layer of drawers in the cabinets had to be removed and the next layer had to be covered for protection from sawdust, so I did all of that, along with cleaning out all of the stuff from under the sink.
I took this opportunity to identify kitchen accessories that were unneeded, including many of the utensils in a tangle in that drawer. There were also bowls, baskets, and Tupperwear, oh my!
These dispensable items, the reboxed puzzles, and an accumulating pile of miscellaneous stuff in Dan's former bedroom pointed to one thing: Subdivision Spring Garage Sale on Saturday.
That's the whoops I did again, although it was fine. No significant financial gain, just the joy of experiencing people paying me to carry away my junk. Oddly enough, my first sale was a set of retro Tupperwear bowls that I gave to my dear grandmother over 35 years ago and received back when she passed. The woman who was thrilled to find them was about my age (nearly ancient) so maybe they brought back fond memories for her. Or perhaps there is an underground market for retro Tupperwear of which I am unaware.
I closed the garage door mid-morning when I ran out of energy for retail sales. I boxed up the rest and Mr. W. took it directly to our favorite charity thrift shop. All in all, we got rid of quite a bit of stuff and that is a good feeling.
What is not a good feeling is going back to the office tomorrow! I woke up this morning with "what am I going to wear to the office" anxiety. I have adapted well to my four-day workweek, except it is actually five days worth of work that I have to complete in four days, instead of an adjustment on the volume of work that I expected. I'm doing the best I can to keep up; overworking me will only send me out the door to full retirement faster.
Wryly in Wrytirement by the next post? Who knows?
