Day 71: Pruney hands

What I'm watching today

Hello Dolly (1969, Disney+ streaming) - For a movie depicting simpler Victorian-Era times, I was a little lost watching this. Ok, so I was doing things around the house and coming in and out of the room and missed a lot of the exposition. Young Walter Matthau's style of speaking (and singing) is just as odd as old Walter Matthau. I was surprised to learn that one of the main characters was played by a young Michael Crawford, of Phantom of the Opera fame. Also, Barbara Streisand is in this.

What I'm doing today

Pruning - We have a crabapple tree that's gotten a bit out of control. It's limbs have grown over the fence into the neighbor's yard and onto the roof of their shed. After talking it over with them, I got up on the ladder to do some serious pruning. I took down about four or five medium sized limbs. I borrowed some pruning sealer from my other neighbor to protect the tree. Once I got the limbs down I used a hand pruner to snip the smaller branches into small chunks; I'll be able to add most of those to the two batches of compost I'm brewing. The larger limbs were too small for the woodpile, so they went in the trash bin after being chopped up. The tree looks a little better and is no longer scraping my neighbor's shed's paint and shingles.

Wrapping - The 7yo turns 8 this week, and I have a lot of presents to wrap. I got about half of them wrapped and then ran out of wrapping paper. He would probably not appreciate the Elsa paper I did have. I scrounged up a few birthday gift bags and finished up. Now as long as I don't discover a forgotten gift behind the dresser or in the trunk of my wife's car, we're good to go.

Mailing - I took 15 medium sized boxes to the post office to mail today. Somehow I managed to get in the door and in line without dropping any. The mail carrier was there to pick up the outgoing mail while I was there. Unfortunately, he was not the regular carrier and happened to be a substitute rural delivery carrier. What that means is that instead of a regular mail truck, he was transporting using his personally owned Jeep. He was home free until I walked in. I passed him on the road as I was leaving. His vehicle was stacked floor to ceiling with parcels, including the passenger seat.

Day 91: Cleanliness

73. ✅ Clear out the flower bed in the front yard Two words: scorched earth. Garden hoe: loosen the dirt. (Broke that hoe.) Shovel: remove the dirt. Sieve: Filter out all the crap in the dirt. What was left was a smooth patch of barren soil. I'm sure there are undesirables lurking beneath the surface, so I'll let it lie for a few days before I do anything else with it. 51. ✅ Deal with the shred pile This took days. I've been accumulating junk mail, old bills, and literally anything with my name, a family member's name, or our address on it for several months resulting in a two-foot tall stack of papers. It couldn't be done all at once, because (A) the shredder kept overheating, and (B) I kept running out of places to store the shreds. (They take up considerably more room than the unshredded sheets of paper.) 75 ✅ Clean off the workbench Getting rid of the shred pile was the main roadblock in completing this task, but it's done. And now there's a bike up ...

Lazy Productivity

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