Weekend Assignment #117: We all have to do chores around the house. Which chore do you like to do the least?
Cleaning in general is a problem for me, particularly anything that involves sorting through stuff, throwing half of it away, and finding a place to put the rest. Hardest of all is the ritual Sorting of the Mail. Oh, I can throw away the newsprint ads, the pool cleaning offers and "Have you seen me?" blow-ins (with transmission service ads on the back) without much trouble. But I have a real problem with the rest, identifying and dealing with bills I pay online anyway, credit card offers that have probably expired and been replaced by newer ones, church stuff I ought to read before I toss it, and so on.
Weeks ago, I promised John I would sort through the mail while watching Route 66. After putting it off and putting it off, I finally did about an episode's worth. The stuff I managed to toss filled our Fallout Shelter water storage drum just a little bit:
And this is what was left: definite keep stuff (particularly the items on top), and stuff I need to actually open and read before I toss, file, or otherwise deal with it.
And that was not all the mail, by any means.
I hope to get this chore finished this weekend, after which (if get it done), John promises to take over the task. Yay, John!
Extra Credit: Do you recycle?
Yes. We have a big green bin that John periodically empties into an even bigger blue thing on wheels. We get curbside pickup, which makes it easy.
Some of the recycling is a little less easy, though. Christmas trees must be discarded to a certain place by a certain date, for example. And at this moment, in the back of my car, there are several grocery bags full of cans and bottles. I brought them home from the office just yesterday, probably a month's worth of recycled Diet Cherry Pepsi and (red) Diet Mountain Dew containers, hand-carried across the Crosswalk of Death to my car.
Oh, look at that. I'm over halfway through this entry, and it's only a little after midnight. Good. I desperately, desperately need to sleep tonight. Part of the reason is that I had trouble getting back to sleep after my late-night blogging Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Soon it was 5:30 AM, and I was taking pictures of something I try never to be awake to see:
Yeah. That was dawn in our back yard Thursday morning, or a little while after dawn. Between the mountains, neighbors' houses and the cloud cover, I don't even really know whether sunrise was mostly over with or not. I will say that it sure wasn't as pretty as the average Tucson sunset. Even when I fiddle with the color saturation, as I often do with the sunset pictures, the result is a little disappointing:
Oh, it's all right, I guess. I think I mostly just resent the dawn, because it means I've failed to take care of myself. See, it doesn't mean I got up early. That would never happen, short of a specific obligation that morning. No, dawn means that I just stayed up all night. Or, as in this case, I got some sleep, got up, and failed to go back to bed in time for the earlier sleep to do me any good.
Speaking of things I don't get done, I haven't done a proper promo for next week's Round Robin Photo Challenge. The topic is "Flower Power." I know a lot of you are big flower fans, or like to take pictures of them, or both. They're extremely photogenic, with their delicate, contrasting colors and not-quite-geometric shapes. I'm personally not a flower fan, not even a little bit, because of allergies and melancholy memories; but even I take pictures of them from time to time. This one, for example. These plants are all in front of an office building on Wilmot. The building went up fairly recently, but already it's shaded by a nice variety of huge flowering bushes, with ground cover in front of that. It probably helps to keep out some of the 110 degree heat, even though I'm sure the windows have special glass to block most of the sunlight. (The glass doesn't block bullets, though. There was a drive-by shooting here one night recently, that broke some of the windows on this building and at least one other one.) The flowers also provide a bit of privacy for people on the first floor, or when they smoke or eat on the corner patio. Oh, and the flowers are pretty, too!
So, have you some great new flower photos to share? How about some other interpretation of the them "Flower Power?" Were you a hippie? Are you still a hippie? What does the topic mean to you? Go over to the Round Robin blog, if you haven't already, RSVP at the Flower Power entry, and get ready to post your entry on Wednesday, June 28th. We'll see you then!
Karen
Technorati Tags: Photos, Round Robin Photo, flowers, Weekend Assignment, Chores, Scalzi, Sunrise, Tucson
3 comments:
Hey Karen
Yeah, I have to admit I procrastinate when it comes to the deluge of useless mail we get once a week. One time, our mail person actually brought the entire contents of my mail box to my front door and asked me if she had done something wrong, because I hadn't cleaned it out in weeks. Most of our mail mail goes to the PO BOX. LOL
Great promo for the next Round Robin Challenge. You will do well, you always do. :)
david is the one with the junk mail at this house. And it's partly his own fault. He tries to be nice and contributes to causes now and then .. from that time on they send constant junk mail asking for more money. In the 6 yrs I've lived here I'd say a good sized forest has been cut down just for david's junk mail.. I'm sure they've spent more money "asking for money" then he's ever sent them... kinda stupid if you ask me.
Ah ha! Another thing we have in common. We just got home after being away for almost a week and John promptly handed me a big old stack of mail to weed through. Bleech. Since I'm still on a budget, I was able to throw almost all the catalogs away with only a twinge of desire to flip through them. No use window shopping when you're broke. Too depressing. LOL
Too funny... I got sucked into a Toon Town black hole and I think Wiki has turned into your current black hole. :-}
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