Massive weekend recap!

Because it was awesome!  And I wanted to write about it.

Friday, I worked in the morning, but when I got home, we got a lot accomplished.  We cleared everything away from the side of the house so the guy coming to pressure wash would have space.  Justin mowed the lawn, and we started cleaning up the house for guests arriving later in the day.

We ran into town for our chiropractor appointment, and, as we were leaving there, I called Dad and talked about how he wants me to handle the rent checks for the property in Toccoa.

We grabbed a quick bite at Chic-fil-a and then we went to Lowe’s to price out folding doors (the dehumidifier committed suicide), get a new welcome mat for the front of the house, and look at paving stones for putting under the fire pit, since it’s killing all the grass there.  We didn’t buy anything other than a new mat, since my car won’t fit a new door and we couldn’t decide what we actually wanted with the firepit, but now we have an idea how much it’ll all cost.

After that, we went to Best Buy to drop off a couple old printers, a dead monitor, and the broken dehumidifier for recycling.  And then past Publix (our grocery store) to get everything we’d need for dinner and a birthday cake for Jessi, since her friend completely flaked on getting her a cake for her birthday on the 10th.  We had hoped to do a homemade cake, but we didn’t have time. 

Jessi was at the house when we got back from our errands, so we lit candles, sang to her, and then sat around eating cake and chatting until we realized that it was 6 pm and we had guests arriving at any moment.  So we all ran around putting the house in order – I vacuumed the floors and got the house looking presentable inside; Justin and Jessi got everything put back up against the wonderfully clean and no longer green sides of the house outside.  (Seriously, the pressure washing did wonders to the siding on the back of the house!)

Guests started to arrive not long after that and we had a delightful evening sitting around and chatting, eating pasta for dinner, and playing a game called “Werewolf” around the fire outside, a game where everyone pretends that they’re villagers and have to determine who the werewolves are and kill them before they kill everyone else.  It’s tricky!

Saturday I slept in; Justin got up to play Mass Effect 3 a little bit.  Then we ran down to Savannah to get Justin’s haircut – we wanted him to look less shaggy for the wedding coming up.  We went back home and I worked on getting the kitchen cleaned and he worked on putting together character sheets for a D&D game that we’re joining. 

Mario is moving away and between him and another guy leaving, it made space in a game that Brenda is running, so she asked Justin and me specifically if we’d be interested in joining.  It’s 4th Ed., which is the version I know best, and the characters are 12th level, which is higher than I’ve ever played.  Plus, it’s in person, actually on a table top, instead of online, which is also something new for me.  I’ve only ever played online.

It was a lot of fun!  The characters Justin and I are playing are ones we used at another game – I’m playing a gnome rogue with double cross-bows.  (Tiny, but fierce!)  They got petrified somehow and the adventurers in this game got us un-stoney and then we followed them until we found this nasty gateway to another dimension-thing.  Mario’s character heroically sacrificed himself to close the gate (it’s his last game, so he had to go out with a bang – literally, it turns out) and now we have a picture of the Big Bad and have to figure out how to, you know, keep an army from breaking through into this dimension and subjugating all of Eberron.  Awesome!  The game lasted about 6 hours, Brenda made dinner, and I really have no basic math skills, especially late at night.  Seriously, adding at 11 pm is HARD.  Time to play more Brain Age and work on my math again!

So we got home late and crashed into bed.  Justin had to get up early to help with the Presentation Team at church, running the computer from the back.  I was naughty and stayed home from church because I knew that the worship pastor is out of town and the guy leading the singing was a guy that really bothers me and I would have been distracted the whole time.  And apparently, it didn’t go very well at all – he didn’t do the right words, his lack of rhythm continued and completely frustrated the drummer, and he started giving his own sermon in the middle of the songs that the lead pastor had to interrupt.  Plus, there were kids in the service because we meet at the high school and the kids usually go to the cafeteria, but they had Prom on Saturday and the cafeteria was still all decorated from that.  So there were kids in the back shouting into a decibel-meter and I would have had no patience for that.  At all.  But since their dad was running the sound board, I wouldn’t have been comfortable telling them to shut up, so it would have been really, really annoying.

So I stayed home and was glad that I did.  Instead, I got up and cleaned the house because I hadn’t had time to do that after Friday night and other than the dishes in the dishwasher and drying on the counter, the house was still a wreck.  There were chips crumbled on the floor of the dining room and clothes piled up on the floor of the bedroom and the whole place needed work.  So I took care of all that while Justin was away. 

When he got home, we climbed up into the attic and worked on organizing that.  We pulled down all the bedding and towels so we could sort that out.  We moved things that we don’t need for a while (old plates and yearbooks and light fixtures) toward the back and things that we do need (his mom’s box of stuff) toward the front where it’s easier to access.   We hung the backpacks from the rafters to clear up limited floor space.  We threw away a ton of boxes that aren’t good for packing and were just taking up space.  We found yet another printer to recycle.    We ended up with a box of extra towels for when guests come and two boxes under the bed with nearly-complete sets of extra bedding.  We’re going to garage sale the six other sets of sheets that we found up there, plus a handful of other things.  We have a whole box of hand towels that we’re going to sort through next time we do laundry, which might be today, and figure out which ones we want to keep, since we have about twice as many as will actually fit in the drawer.

By the time we wrapped up, around 6pm, the attic was much, MUCH more organized.  You can get up there and have somewhere firm to set your feet.  The suitcases are easy to get to.  The seasonal decorations are super easy to get to.  And all the random stuff that Jessi’s left behind is all in one place so we can grab it next time she’s here and throw it all into her car – or drive it up to her storage unit and drop it off there.  Whichever works.  As long as it’s out of the attic.

But it’s great!  We know where things are now and we’re getting rid of things we don’t need.  We cleared a bunch of space in my office because it was stuff waiting to go up into the attic once we had space for it (MIL’s boxes of bedding, dog stuff, etc., and the winter bedding that needed to get boxed up for summer), but it didn’t fill up the attic because we cleared out so much space first.  We actually know where to look for bedding if we have more than one person sleeping over in the house.  It’s such a relief to have it organized!  We still have some things to take care of — the box of hand towels and all the clothes I have stored in the suitcases — but we’ve made incredible progress and it feels WONDERFUL!