Pecked to Death By Ducks

On days like today, I wonder how I ever managed to get any real work done when I had a day job. There are a bunch of tasks that I need to do something about but can't actually finish, so they don't go away. I need to keep all the balls in the air, remember where I'm at on each task, and what I need to do next. My to-do list (my heroic but inevitably futile attempt to keep cats herded and ducks in a row) looks like acronym soup: ING, LTD, FAFSA, IRS, LoC... and sounds like a recipe for disaster. I'm getting pretty darned whiny about it.

Most of these tasks aren't even interesting or fun. One that's a little out of the ordinary involves calling the power company to tell them my bill is too low. According to them, we have used no natural gas for the past two months. None. Imagine that. Since we have an on-demand water heater and a daughter who doesn't get out of the shower until she runs out of hot water, this seems unlikely to me.

After several weekends of nonstop shoveling, Scarecrow and Tuffy have laid bare the entire living room and dining room floor. We kept more junk than we probably should have, but in our determination to make our belongings fit in the available space, we got rid of a lot of stuff, too. There is one item, however, that has us stumped. Where do we put the passenger seat from the van? It doesn't look that big when it's in the car, but it sits on a riser to accommodate the lowered floor, and when you take it out of it's natural habitat it's ginormous. It needs to be someplace relatively clean, relatively dry, and vermin-free (whippets excepted). We don't have a basement or garage. The seat is too heavy and awkward to haul up the narrow pull-down stairs to the unfinished attic-y space. This being Seattle, the carport and outdoor shed are too damp. It's currently looming over the rest of the furniture in our front room. Bareit thinks it's wonderful.

Assuming we can figure out something to do with the stupid seat, the final step in the remodel-that-wouldn't-die will be getting moved into new office. I jumped the gun a little, putting up a sign I displayed prominently in my office before I retired. I still like it.