Settling in

Last Sunday I completely committed to The Dump. I had previously mostly committed to The Dump, but was still staying a few night a week at Mom's house. All that changed when mom hit the limit with the feline's nighttime antics. So, Mali and I have taken up semi-permanent residence. I haven't moved all my belongings in or anything, but I'm essentially living there 100% of the time now and will do so until the heavy lifting construction starts. At the rate I'm going with actually choosing a contractor, that won't be until spring.

This means I needed to make some adjustments to the house so that I could maintain some semblance of order. Last weekend I cleaned out the bathroom drawers and lined them with fresh contact paper. This weekend I did the same with some of the kitchen cabinets so I could actually put stuff away without feeling like I was contaminating it.

I also scrubbed the floor again and then did a quick pass with Mop n Glo to make it shiny and extra clean looking. Then I did the thing that I had been avoiding...I cleaned the stove. Nasty, nasty, greasy, grimy, sludgey mess that it was, it cleaned up pretty well. There is some very cooked-on gunk by the pilot lights, but for the most part that is going to have to stay. Since it's all clean and I'm going crazy from not being able to cook a decent meal, I went and got my pots and pans out of storage. I grabbed my toaster oven too since I have no intention of firing up my match-light oven.

In other news, my semi-blighty neighbor must realize he has some stiff competition for the cutest house on the block award. He's been BUSY out in his front yard for the past two weekends. Last weekend he was pruning the heck out of his citrus trees, and over the course of the past week, his concrete sidewalk disappeared. This weekend he was out there laying a new stone walkway. We chit-chatted a bit and he's amenable to the work we need to do to the slab that is between our houses. Now if only I could get him to do something about his garbage cans that are in his front yard....