Tree is down and boxed up

I still have boxes all over.  Have not taken down the lights draped along the fence.  I kind of want to leave them up longer.  I could bundle everything else back into the attic and just put that light string in the shed for storage.   See what happens.  I've been working on some garage cleanup.  Finally tossing some stuff.  I still feel like I have to tie up bags with broken crap in them and get them in dumpster before dad notices I am throwing broken or now useless item X away and insists on keeping it and I'm probably correct.  But he is at a point where he is not likely to notice some specific item he was holding onto because he might fix it someday has disappeared.  The other impediment to decluttering is my own emotions of "but but but, maybe I could repurpose this or fix that someday"    But slow progress is okay as long as progress is made.  Every last item dealt with now is one less thing when I want to clear the place out to sell it later plus I feel better not having crap stacked up all over the house.  I am super happy that I finally used the internet to track down someone to send pictures that got left in Ed's condo 20 years ago.  I feel a bit badly that I forgot their existence and didn't do that 5-10 years ago; but the family will have the pictures when the USPS gets them delivered and any quarantine period is over.  

Back on the decluttering track

 It is partly just a procrastination tactic.  Avoid the mental and emotional stress of trying to set up a side hustle or change jobs because "I need to get this done first."   But it truly does have to be done and it would absolutely suck to be trying to learn my may around a new job and have dad die or end up in a nursing home and have to deal with all this physical mess of stuff before I could sell or get a roommate or whatever I decided should be done.  

At the same time I've been meaning to take down the Christmas tree but not getting to it for over a week.  I need to go ahead and get that done.   Not that the tree takes very much space, but I want to get all the Christmas decoration boxes put back up in the attic so I'm not working around them while dealing with sorting all the stuff still in the porch and garage.  

I guess I should try to find a new job

Or perhaps try to set up a hobby sideline.   I'm not in fear of losing the job and in fact I feel like I should go more in the Galt direction of putting in bare amount of work to support myself since the commies have come to power, aided and abetted by the media and with the law refusing to act in the face of the fact that the commies got tired of trying to persuade people and just used massive election fraud.  

But the job is my mental refuge from the yucky aspects of living with an 80 year old anti-Fauci.  Morally it would be worse to run away from that home situation than to be aiding the commies via the gub'ment funded job.  But the better moral path would be to find another way to distract from the ewwww yuucckk stuff so it doesn't drive me batty.  

Going to wash that year right out of my hair

 I thought I might do this last night after the UTC rollover before heading to bed, but ended up in a fire drill when clocks were failing.   Boss was working on them too and it turned out to be a weird bug with year rollover, although I had needed to do the copy of a file to 2021 from the last 2020 version as well.  

But all the computers at work are doing their thing this morning and aside from the symbolic good riddance to the year of the 'pandemic', the illegal shutdown orders for businesses that were by and large complied with, as no one realized right away that it wasn't about public health but just the power of the state, the in your face election fraud with MSM crowing about their victory instead of asking questions about all the obvious fraud because they were in on it etc etc  I need to wash the last few days of grime out of my hair.  

I am grateful to have the modern bathroom with hot shower, lots of heat, and a blow dryer.  Stupid useful idiots for the commies have NO idea that these conveniences might go away if the commies prevail and put in their green new deal and so on.  Some of the useful idiots have never camped long enough to miss these marvels made possible by cheap energy.   I'd love to ship groups of them to Venezuela to live with common folk there for a couple weeks and learn the truth about socialism/communism.   

Enjoyed my day off

I did a bit of cleaning in the living room.  Made chex mix this morning, washed the coverings on Dad's recliner, sprayed it with febreeze and sprinkled some baking soda on the carpet and then vacuumed the traffic areas.   The carpet is getting so threadbare but with pets and dad I really don't want to replace it cuz pretty sure it would have to be replaced again to sell the place.   Gawd that sounds bad, but having pretty carpet doesn't mean much to me.

Dad had to run to town for prescriptions so I delivered cards and a bit of chex mix to 4 of the neighbors and had good visits with 3 of them.   Then I took Toby for a walk and it was still decent amount of light out and the weather was nice and mild so I burned some branches and weeds before feeding the horses.   

Ate a bit too much for supper and then wandered to next door neighbors looking for dad and Toby.  They are so nice to us, especially lonely dad.  I have taken to doing some goats head spraying in their yard in the summer as something I can do for them.   Plus we watch the dogs when they go on trips.   With the covid he has had more free time this year so they took a longish trip at thanksgiving and are going to take maybe 5 days to see friends that moved to OK and then attend another friends wedding in KS in January.  

I will bake a ham tomorrow for Christmas dinner.  I think I'll make dressing as well as taters to go with the ham gravy to have with it.  

I must get the Christmas cards out

 I was good and wrote up the letter a week ago, but have been slow getting cards addressed.  I'll probably have to really skimp on adding personal notes to get them done today.  Monday might be OK, but would be pushing awfully close for delivery before Christmas.    Perhaps I'm stalling because of reading online comments about the form letters being tacky.  I don't think its tacky; feels like almost everyone else puts crap up all year long on social media but the way the feeds are one misses a bunch of it and I've always enjoyed reading everyone's letters and I take some care to not just have a brag list or list of woes,  just give a 1.5 page overview of our life since the last one.  

I put up the tree and dad and I put up the usual outdoor lights.  I think I'll just skip putting out the extra stuff.  I have let the decluttering and cleaning slide so much, and I just can't find the gumption to tackle it when we aren't having anyone visit or anything.   I enjoy the lights and the Christmas tree, so doing them seems worth the effort.   

I need to go DO SOMEthing.

 I'm having  a hard time breaking away from the computer today.  Partly I am in a funk because B never replied to my text last week.  I should call her, its quite possible the text just never went through or she saw it, went 'well riding at IC with M and J, not barefoot or hoof boot friendly' and figured she'd just wait until some time she is at loose ends for riding and contact me.  But my autism spectrum side, or whatever has been going "she's mad at me or tired of my company for some reason, and I don't know why"   

I'm also pretty close to stalled on my decluttering, keep a cleaner house, efforts.  Almost all the super easy "just burn this or put in garbage" things are gone.  I'll figure something out in a bit and I have been doing a bit of laundry or yard work and crap and not just totally shutting down on cleaning and removing clutter but progress is slow and I feel like I need to get more done.   

I did go out with the pole saw and take a few droopy branches off the Elm, plus got a dead and detached branch that was stuck in the tree cut into smaller pieces and pulled out of there.