It's in the Genes

While in Nebraska, I was telling my mom about all the things I want to do to our house now that it's really ours. Technically, it's really the bank's. I think we own the whole front doorknob by now. It's been something like nine months after all. But just because the bank really owns our house doesn't make it any less ours to me, and being ours means we get to do all the maintenance and improvements and back-breaking tasks like that.

It would take me the whole day to list all the things I'd like to do to this house short of demolishing the damn thing and building a new house. I will never live long enough to do all that I think needs done, and I will be a crazy cat lady by the time I do all that really does need done. But in an effort to at least get started on the big long list that caused my mom's eyes to glaze over and drool to run down her chin as she listened to only a portion of what needs done, I decided I better actually write this list down rather than attempting to keep it in my tattered memory.

I finally got around to starting that list today. Right now, it's pretty house specific, but as my lists usually do, it will morph into a catch-all list of everything in the whole wide world that I think I should do, until it grows so very large and unwieldy that I conveniently lose it in one of my large-size piles of clutter and just as conveniently forget about it. Do you have any idea how many abandoned lists I find whenever I get a hankering to declutter? Strangely, they always seem to have the same things on them too.

I'm quite happy to say that I got off my ass after starting the current list and did two, yes two, of the tasks on that list. One of those tasks was spraying my roses for black spot. It promptly rained not fifteen minutes after I sprayed, most likely nullifying my effort. It didn't look like it would rain so soon. I thought the stuff would have a chance to dry before the afternoon rain that was predicted. It was sunny out, after all, and I was sweating my ass off, so why in the world would I ever think it would rain not even a full hour after I decide to spray my roses? Maybe I should rent myself out to drought-stricken areas across the country and go do chores that require dryness. I seem to be quite effective at bringing rainfall when I really don't want it, like when I fertilized my lawn in the spring on a day it wasn't supposed to rain at all.

My next chore was not dry dependent like the rose-spraying. In fact, I did part of the job while it was raining, cursing all the while because of the rose incident.

Something like two, maybe three months ago, I replaced the screen in one of the panels on our screened porch. The foster dog we kept before we got Kaya tore a big hole in that panel about two years ago this very month, trying to get back in the house. Fixing that screen was on at least two other lists since that time, but I never get around to it. It looked to be a lot less easy than most screening jobs, and I wasn't looking forward to it. I was right too, because when I went to put the new screen in, I got no less than three cuts and gouges in my hands from trying to get that stupid screen installed. I ended up leaving the top section of spline unfinished for fear of needing a blood transfusion by the time I was done.

Feeling rather brave today, I climbed up on a chair and started cramming the spline into the little track. The planets must be aligned correctly for screening today, because I managed to get the whole thing done in less than an hour (That's what a bitch this job is. It took nearly an hour to do a three foot section.), partly in the rain, with absolutely no scratches, cuts, bruises, or missing fingers. I think I'm going to recreen the door to the same porch while I'm on a roll and knock off yet another task on my list.

I usually do pretty well the first day I make a list, but it all goes downhill from there. I get lazy the second or third day and think of all kinds of other things to do that keep me from more important things. Making the list is always so much more fun than doing the list, and I often add things to the list well beyond the time I am getting anything at all done.

My mom has listing down to an art form. She has lists of things to pack for trips, lists for camping, temporary lists, permanent lists, event specific lists, filed lists, lists on sticky notes, lists in notebooks, lists for herself, and lists for others. The only thing I think she doesn't do is color code things, which is something I would think to do because I like playing with the pretty colored paper. She, on the other hand, actually does the things on her lists and doesn't bother with the aesthetics of her list making. So she passed on her penchant (and let's face it, need) for lists to me, but she did not pass on the productivity. Just like she passed on the packrat gene to me but not the organization gene. I end up an unproductive, list-making, messy clutterbug.