Three Bags Full

My sister, with whom I share the ancestral family home, is on a cleaning jag, and as can be expected this doesn't bode well for me at all.

She knows nothing of my resolution to do more work around the house because I haven't divulged that little nugget to her. If I did, she'd only hold me accountable. What she's done, instead, is two things I heartily endorse, even though I expect them turn out detrimentally for me.

I've been half-heartedly sweeping up every week or so, but over the past few weeks she's been taking "use it or lose it" time off work and has been here constantly. She's also far more susceptible than I am to the "ewww" factor, so she's been sweeping up every day.

The house is much cleaner, to say the least, and swirling dust bunnies of dog hair are a thing of the past. What concerns me is that sooner or later she has to get back to work, and when she does I fully expect this "sweep every day" mantle to be passed on to me.

I daresay it will fit me illy, if at all.

She also splurged on new curtain rods and curtains, which is both generous of her and much-needed. It also fell to me to install them, which wouldn't be a great task if it weren't for me being the one doing it. Almost immediately I realized that my screw gun is missing, and I have no idea where it is. They're too expensive for me now to just run out and buy, but I didn't have time to clean up well enough to find it, what with her moving the new curtain stuff in places I couldn't avoid.

So I erected them the old-fashioned way, with a drill, a level,a hammer (for the anchors), a screwdriver, a tape measure, and a utility knife. I think that's it. The curtains are now up, and only one of them should be a little higher and needs to be installed again.

We've been enjoying a fierce wind storm, one that my dog doesn't care for, so I was busy with my new lawn vacuum and mulcher. I filled three bags with mulched leaves and attacked the strip just inside the back fence with bare hands, a hoe, a pair of garden shears, and assorted weeder things. Mostly, though, with my hands, and I have an infected finger to prove it, right in the middle of the middle joint of my left index finger. I'd take a picture of it, but I need a new camera since mine is so old people literally laugh at it (one megapixel!).

I hope it's just a sticker / thorn thing and not the last defense of a brown recluse spider, known to frequent the back yard.