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Friday, April 20, 2018

A Day in the Life

When I was working, we sometimes kept a log of all our activities in a day or a week as a way to see who was doing what, if duties needed to be shifted, or for A Day in the Life of the Library--an annual count that libraries nationwide participated in to show the kind of variety of services a library offers.

Today I thought I'd give it a try here at home, since I knew we didn't plan to go anywhere. I stopped here and there to make this record of A Day in the Life of Two Old People.

So here's what we got up to today:

7:00 am: up and at 'em! Made tea and coffee, tidied up the kitchen, put things away, checked the weather report.

8:00: stripped the bed, started a load of wash, breakfast, listened to the news on the radio, caught up on Facebook.

9:00: Larry ran the sweeper and made the bed; I cleaned up the kitchen again, scrubbed an old suitcase and polished a silver butter dish.

10:00: checked email, Facebook, blog and ebay. Packed up sold items for the mail. Larry fed the dogs, cats, chickens and birds and took the packages up to the mailbox. Reported he'd used up the last of the chicken feed (why does he always wait til it's gone to say something? I was in town yesterday, could have picked it up! Never mind...his ways and mine sometimes just ain't the same.) I made up a mash for the chickens of oats, wheat, corn, stale bread and scrambled eggs. Larry took that to them along with some comfrey from the garden. I researched the possibility of homemade chicken feed (too expensive, probably). We'll go out tomorrow to get more feed.

11:00: coffee break, discussed plans for the day--never a lack of something to do around here. Larry went over the hill to look for morels. Talked to my son on the phone, checked online to see about using wet towels to take the warp out of a tabletop. Read some poetry and researched the poetry form ghazal. I might give that a try.

12:00: I started painting the head of an iron bedframe; Larry was still in the woods.

1:00: started painting the long deacon's bench Larry sanded and repaired yesterday. Kept thinking over the movie we watched last night (Victoria and Abdul) and musing over the relationship of the Queen with a Muslim servant. Why did his family keep his diary secret for over 100 years?

2:00: still painting. Larry came back with one mushroom; he loaded chairs to be painted next, to haul them from the garage to the painting area.

2:30: still painting. Lots of birdsong for accompaniment. Larry made fried potatoes and ramps, ham and lemonade for lunch. Break time.

3:00:  finished the deacon's bench painting. Started on the rest of the iron bed. Larry washed dishes and began spray painting the corner shelf he built, and the chairs.

4:30: finished the bed, rummaged around for hardware for handles for the chest of drawers I painted yesterday. Painted the handles. Larry still spray painting.

5:00: break for an apple and some porch time in the rocker. Thought about what I'd learned the other day about arthritis; feelin' it today.

5:30: paint a shelf? Why not? I'm covered in paint anyway.

6:00: the hardware for the drawer handles are missing pieces. More rummaging to find something that might work. Failure. Add this to the trip to town tomorrow. Larry finished up his painting, went up the hill to get the mail. I put a second coat on the shelf, saw places I missed on the deacon's bench. Touch-up tomorrow.

6:30: Larry found something in the garage that might work for the missing parts on the pulls. Yay! Second coat on the shelf. Porch time, even though it was chilly out. Everything so green and the trees starting to bud at last. Back inside to check with a Facebook group to see if anyone has casters for the cast iron bed.

7:00: ordered business cards for our selling business, Bird in Hand, from Vistaprint since they were running a sale. Revised the old ones, added a 20% off coupon.

7:30: reviewed my list of stories and songs for this summer's library programs. What to add? What puppets and other props do I want to use with the stories? Sent a message to a musician friend about providing a tune or two for the CD I've been working on. It's getting close to being finished, I think.

8:00: quitting time! Shower, brandy, fire and a movie.

That's pretty much how a lot of our days at home go. A little of this, a little of that, but the whole ball continues somehow to keep moving forward.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

10 comments:

  1. I love accounts of other people's days. Yours seems to be very busy, if today's anything to go by. All that painting. It's nice the way he makes meals and you are both generally partners. Sounds good. What movie did you see?

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  2. Tonight we watched Owd Bob, a boy-and-dog family movie, set on the Isle of Man. It was good, beautiful scenery and a happy ending of course! Victoria and Abdul was really fascinating, and got me researching a bit more about the facts behind that story. It really did happen, although the movie romanticized it a good bit. Now I want to see Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown, about another man in Queen Victoria's life. She was much more interesting that I ever thought!

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  3. Love daily lists - I often keep them of my day just to feel the satisfaction of having accomplished so much. Sometimes when I do something extra that was not on the list I add that in - just so I can mark it off. I adore lists! Sounds like you had a great day.

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  4. Maybe I should try that - if only so I could figure out where all the time goes! Prince Duleep Singh, the last Maharajah of the Sikh empire who was brought to Britain when he was only 10 and raised as an Englishman, is always described as a favourite of Queen Victoria. Maybe she had a thing about turbans. Prince Duleep's assimilation was so complete that he never seemed to resent being plucked from his homeland and prevented from mixing with other Indians, even his own mother. He had two sons called Victor Albert and Frederick Victor Duleep Singh. Freddy, as he was known, was such a staunch Royalist that he had a picture of Oliver Cromwell hanging upside-down in his toilet.

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  5. John, I will need to read about him. Victoria seems to be much different than I thought her. My idea of her was that she was a stiff and prudish old woman, but I never actually ready anything about her life.

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  6. JoAnn, I like lists too. At work I always had a to-do list, along with a file of things needing to be done filed by color order of importance. That helped me do the things that I'd put off otherwise! I haven't made many lists since I retired, except for the mental ones. I might start doing that again--but Larry hates them. A list makes him feel pressured and like I am telling him what to do, LOL. He won't make them for himself either. So if I did one, it would have to be just for me!

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  7. Yes it was, Joy! Today will not be like that, since we have to go out. I might convince Larry to take a little drive too, since it's such a beautiful day.

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  8. Very busy! I don't know how you had time to write the list. It makes you feel good when you accomplish a lot. Did you eat the molly moocher? We haven't looked for any yet.

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  9. Not yet, Janet. We'll fix it tomorrow, after he goes and has another look. If it's the only one, I'll just cook its lonely little self.

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