Yesterday de-cluttering was physically hard work, as well as mentally

There was a giant lawn bag of rolled up carpet padding foam stuffed behind the water heater downstairs.   Mice were nesting in it.  Yuck yuck yuck.  I got it wrestled out, got some garbage bags over both ends where it was open, just tied at the top and eaten through on the bottom by the mice and duct taped the bags in place and wiped off the excess dust and wrestled it up stairs, into dad's p/u box and then the dumpster.  Also got my heavy dipped gloves and picked up the dead mice that were underneath it and swept up back there.   Also bit of old rolled up carpet that I was sure was also full of mouse piss.  

 Later went on internet and we have field mice, aka deer mice that can carry hantavirus and you are supposed to just mop up with a bleach solution because sweeping can increase inhalation of the hantavirus that is found in mice piss and feces.  Oh well.  Hantavirus is pretty rare.    Still smelled like something dead when I first walk downstairs to clean Tux's litter box and feed him last night.  But progress is being made on removing crap and doing it now gives me the benefit of a nicer living setting vs it being only a monster chore trying to get the place salable later on.   

Today I will probably take it easy.  I want to sew a belt loop on pair of corduroy pants that I got a button sewed on Sunday and I have a set of tabs open:  CL, an animal shelter and a scouting outfit.  If I can get one contacted for donating or one CL ad written it will be good.  I also need to get ahold of the Eq. dentist.  I don't know why I keep punting on contacting him and on getting the horses wormed.   No good reason for procrastinating on either of those things but I seem to have a mental block on both. 

Decluttering is hard

 I don't have a huge problem parting with things.  But I am over the top on wanting to re-home things that I think are still useable vs just putting them in a dumpster and it is bloody hard trying to figure out who to try to give those items to.   

No progress on the "how can I give these disaster blankets (cheap wool) to homeless folks"  Nor have I mustered myself to put mom's sheet music on CL.  But I did finish getting pics from my office cork board put into photo albums and the box on the flower bed.  The tulips did so well last year after being covered with plastic from the patio project dad had done that I decided to cover the flower beds again this year.  I don't know where the plastic sheeting is so I am using cardboard boxes and various dumpster stuff that I figured could serve as winter mulch first and then go in the dumpster this spring.   

Today laundering dad's bedding.  Yuck, but part of the de-cluttering is to make it easier to manage cleaning.  He loves to talk and might actually enjoy the company of being in a nursing home but with their lockdown policies they had last year with covid I'm sure not going to try to nudge him to consider going into one, and if he did go to one then I would have carve out time to visit him, and do 100% of the house and farm care w/o being able to sell and move unless he decided he wanted to get into one in WY or near sis in ND.  

Going to try to declutter again

 I did hardly any decluttering in 2021.  I had gotten rid of stuff that was easy decision to burn it or toss in trash and didn't feel so much like an episode of hoarders even though the house was still pretty cluttered.  I did get some outside stuff done, burned weeds that had been caught in back corners for over a year, had to replace quite a few fence posts, seeded where the utility company made the weed strip, mowed the pasture, cut down trees that died etc. 

But lately there seems to be dead mouse smell from downstairs, so I decided I need to get rid of a bunch of that crap down there, as I can't see dead mouse.  So I'm trying to get back on the get rid of 1 thing every day habit that worked pretty well for me before.  If I try to clear a whole room I'll burn out before I even have one room completely dealt with.  Plus having cleaned out office at work I have to remove clutter upstairs to make room for that stuff.   I did throw away a lot of crap when I packed up the office but its still a lot of books and things that need to go somewhere.  Also I need to make room for Christmas decorations in the storage shed as I don't want to lug it up the ladder to the attic.  I gotRdone getting stuff down without asking dad to help me but my knees were unhappy the next day.  

Nobody loves me, Waah Waah Waah.

Dang I did not START out feeling all weepy, but  feel all whiney after posting a response, even on the big very busy blog to someone going "haven't seen various nics in a while" and one of them was the all lowercase version of my nic;  and then I got zero acknowledgement.   I can't bring myself to go all CAPS and post an attack or an "everybody is ignoring me" tantrum, one of the reasons to have the big busy blog be my social media is because it is big and busy and no like buttons or crap so I won't take it personally when no one directly responds to some drivel I've posted.  I don't need to feed my inner narcissist and realized after I gave it up that FB was a big meal source for my I.N.  

I was all "Well I know they need me, at work, whether they like me or not" cuz I had to fix something this morning.  Sent a quick email about it at 10 am.  At noon the youngster that is officially on call so had to fill out the forms "there is an issue blablabla"   Well he is very young, so probably partied in the NY and is  a bit hungover and I did just dash off the email with minimal details.  

Durnit.  I don't want to give up the big blog but I think I need to step away from it for a bit.  I'm wrecking myself with envy lately when the various IN cliques get to bantering with each other.  So silly of me.  I have a very jerky posting style.  Often I can't resist digitally blurting something out right before I have to go offline for a bit.  And at times when I think I will be around for a conversation if one starts, some work thing I thought I would just check quickly is down so I have to fix that.  So with so often doing the drive by posting I should expect zero to hardly any responses whenever I post.  But sometimes I still want to do the little kid "look at me, look at me" thing.  Well have to stop moping and feed horses.  Farrier is coming tomorrow so I need to drag myself out and feed reasonably early.  

Christmas in the books.

 Dad seemed pleased enough with his waffle iron.   I was going to get him some humorous books but never got around to it.  Kind of feel like I don't *need* to buy him stuff since I do the cooking and cleaning.   Not that I keep the place spic and span but still I spend plenty of time to keep it bearable. 

I baked a 10 lb Sugarland ham.   Quite liked it.  It was not as watery as a lot of hams are, enough drippings to make gravy though.   And just did instant mashed taters.  They came out better than the ones I made from scratch on Thanksgiving and got too watery.  It is nice to have a palate that likes easy foods just fine and Dad likes the instant packets fine too.  I think these Idahoan packets are way way better than the old boxes of instant taters used to be.   I have 4 hunks of ham vacuum sealed and a the bony hunk in a big ziplock, not vac sealed for ham and bean soup.  I'm get this weird joy from getting lots of meals out the holiday turkey and hams.   I don't NEED to be so frugal.  But eating cheaply makes it easy or easier to not worry about cost of the farrier or cost of fuel to haul to a ride for fun.  

I rode Tanza yesterday before baking the ham.   I hadn't been on him in 3 weeks.   Someone was target shooting and he got all angst about he noise so I turned around, then had to keep telling him "I turned around but you don't need to or get to bolt"  Lots of  forced laughing to keep breathing and get through that instead of feeding his goofiness.   Then when I was going down the section road the wind started gusting a bit so I cut the ride short, but it was a nice bit of saddle time before cooking.  

Hopefully when I get back to riding more regularly I can insist that we do not make a big deal out of someone enjoying their Boomstick toys.  I don't need Tanza to be mounted shooting tolerant but he doesn't need to get silly because of someone 100 yards or more off doing some plinking.   

Oh Yay I may have broken the vacuum cleaner.

 Was being so good and emptied it out so it would not overfill and cause it to overheat,  and Forgot to put the filter cone on.  I blew crap out of it with air hose and will see if it will start after it cools off.  Trying to keep perspective.  Vacuums are plentiful and relatively cheap and we even have another functioning one upstairs but I  feel like bawling.   This was supposed to be:   Do some cleanup and then maybe do the Christmas decorating.    Of course cleanup was mainly washing covers from Dad's recliner and then a load of jeans because he has lost so much muscle in his legs that the disposable underwear don't catch everything,  yuck, and he won't rotate to clean jeans even after I bought him 3 pairs for his b-day,  I have to either wash em or at least throw in the hamper myself when I feel like I need to force him to use a clean pair.   I guess biology kills your sense of smell as you age so you aren't so grossed out by your own emissions you kill yourself.  

Thank heavens I bought an ozone generator in early 2020 when the stores were constantly having runs on bleach and cleaning supplies.   I don't know how effective ozone is to kill viruses but it certainly does help with odors.  I bought a second one this fall, so I can run for 20 minutes in my bathroom when my morning constitutional stinks it up and so I have a hot spare in case the one in the downstairs bathroom/laundry room breaks.   I will never build a house with that stupid combo, but haven't go to point of spending tens of thousands to add a bathroom or split the space etc in this 70s house.  I am no longer in germaphobe mode at all, but it sure is nice to have the odor killing machine.  If it was not dangerous to run with people present I'd probably move it around and run it several hours a day.   

p.s.   The vacuum cleaner is alive.   I only put it on for a few seconds so don't know if it is going to have an issue with quickly overheating from the crap the filter was not there to catch.   I got decorations down from the attic.  Proved to myself that I didn't need an extra body to do this.  I put a few of my usual mini lights along the fence.  Will put more up tomorrow.  I suppose I'll put the tree up tonight.  Not right now with the FNM program blabbing.   

Rode Tanzaknight today.

 He is getting pretty good at home about standing for me to get on.  I've been working on not being impatient myself and having him stand for several seconds after I'm set and then he gets a cookie before I ask him to walk off.  I've been doing a lot of forced laughing when I ride to keep relaxed when he is being the double speed energizer bunny.   Bee is in good weigh so I can and probably should cut back even a bit more on their feed than what they are on right now.   I'm tending to overfeed Tanza because he got too thin  for my tastes a couple times when he was younger.  But I really don't need him to be having tons of excess energy from getting more concentrates than he needs.  

The senior software engineer is having a cow because I copied old version of code he modified because the mod doesn't work with one specialized mission.   Well whatever,  if he wants to force the new code to work (I think to skip the one code function that fails for it he can.  I didn't want to mess with it on a weekend morning.  

I am late to feed the horses and get ready for bed.  Sometimes I am tired but can't seem to break away from the computer chair.  I am so weird.