Made it to Wednesday . . .

Okay - first of all, Lizzie is fine.  Her vet checked her teeth and they are just very slightly out of kilter at this point, so we're going to wait until the winter vaccination session and then file them down again. 

She was no longer foaming at the mouth, of course -- which was the reason I made this appointment to begin with.  (We've decided that it WAS no doubt an accidental taste of toad.)  But while she was here, the vet did clear out those lines that run from her nose up into her eyes to help reduce all that eye discharge she's been having.  She said the problem, though, was more likely some sort of allergic reaction.

Of course.

I think MOST of us have allergies of some kind or other around here.  Me.  Joey.  The cats. 

And now Lizzie.

Sigh.

I was hoping to get the house cleared out a bit before everyone comes back today for that purchase agreement tomorrow, but alas . . . that hasn't happened.  Well, that's a fine project for while Mark is home this next time.  First of all, we need to empty out the kitchen where about 3 feet of the counter space is filled with who-knows-what-sort-of-tools.  When he plans to do "something" he gathers up the necessary stuff and puts it there in the kitchen where it's handy. 

And then it stays there for months.  ;-D

As for me, I stick everything I want out of the way but don't have time to put away (or don't have a place for) inside our closet.  That closet is 8 feet X 20 feet!  It's an ENORMOUS closet!  But at this point I can barely find the floor in there!!! It is an unbelievable MESS!

Oh - and then there's that 8-foot counter along the side of the dining room.  That's also covered with project "stuff" (mostly mine, I must admit) . . . at the moment, a 100-foot roll of shadecloth for the back screened porch, various and sundry items cleared out of that white cabinet the other day that I don't know what to do with . . .  all sorts of things that just need to be put away "somewhere"!

What we SHOULD have is a giant garage sale!  But I doubt that we will ever get around to that.  So I guess what we really need to do is just set everything we don't need (and everything we haven't used for more than a year!) out on the front porch, then when that 50-foot porch fills up we can just call the Salvation Army or someone to come get it all!  Then we can continue the clean-up and fill it up AGAIN!!!  (I'm thinking 3 or 4 "porch-fulls" should do it.)

Another incentive is the fact that someone from Merry Maids will be coming out on July 24 to give us a bid on house cleaning.  If I don't want to pay them a fortune I better tidy the place up by then!

Darned good thing they're coming, though - without an incentive I would probably never clean anything.  I'm hopeless.  So having a maid come once a month, say, will work well for more than one reason.  True, they will clean.  But before they do, I will have to put things away!  That's probably worth way more than they're going to charge us for the cleaning!