4 Miles

Yesterday, we also went up to my parent's house. My grandfather was in town (from Arizona) for a few days and I wanted to let him meet Alex and see Will. We drove up after lunch, and had a nice afternoon and evening together. We spent a good deal of time outside—Will's favorite place. Dad has a fish pond he's created with Goldfish in it. Each year, he has to get rid of the brown fish, or they would continue to mate and all the fish would be brown (Dominant trait and all…I could go on, but won’t). So, while we were there, he and James worked with a net to scoop out some brown fish. They caught one, and let Will see/hold it, as you can see by the pictures. Will kept saying, “Hi fish. Hello” Then he asked it, “Are you sad?” I just view it as a great science lesson (my mom was more sympathetic to the fish then I was).  You can now click on the pictures to see them larger, if you so desire.

I decided to clean out the microwave & the fridge yesterday. Our microwave needed it after an unfortunate Spaghetti Reheating Episode. (The paper towel covering the bowl came off and the microwave became coated with red sauce.) My friend, Krisha, had told me about a tip she'd learned where you cut up a lemon & put it in a bowl of water, then microwave it for about 10 minutes. Then you can just wipe out the microwave and the mess is gone! She said when she did it, she then used the water to wipe out her fridge, and it cleaned it as well. So, now when I clean out the microwave, I clean out the fridge as well. First step for me is to get all the containers of food that have spoiled, out (I’m working on getting better about not letting that happen). As I was washing those, I went to get the lemon water started. I got out the bowl from the cabinet, and discovered a bug/weevel in it. As I looked more, there were bugs in the cabinet (probably in the whole wheat flour I had in there—the ONLY thing not in a zip-lock bag!). So, I took everything off the two offending shelves and cleaned those out. While I had everything out, I decided to get the shelf paper I'd bought out and reline the shelves. (When we moved in, I had gotten the 'no stick/no skid” plastic stuff and lined the shelves with that. I quickly learned I thought that stuff was CRAP, and got rid of it. I'd bought the new lining paper a long time ago with the intent to do the shelves, but that was pretty far down on the “To Do” list.) Oh, and I did manage to get the microwave and fridge cleaned out as well.

All that to say, I now have two beautifully lined shelves that mock me every time I open that cabinet, reminding me I have many more shelves to do now. So, we're going to try to do it in “Baby Steps”. Today I tackled the one that holds the Tupperware/Rubbermaid (HA! Like I actually have Tupperware. More like Rubbermaid and Glad/Ziplock plastic containers) , and did what I'd been saying I was going to do for the last month: organize the plastic containers. I bit the bullet, and decided to get rid of any containers without lids or vise versa. I sorted them all, and had 21 lids with no matching container. And one container with no lid. How in the world did that happen?!? I don't just toss the containers when they're dirty or anything! The pack rat in me was thinking, “Save the lids, you never know when you'll find the container that matches!” The realist said, “This is how you got this mess in the first place, chica. Toss them!” So, I saved 5 lids and that one container for the sand box, and threw out the rest. And I have one more clean, nicely lined cabinet to show for it!