Happy October. It’s still warm middle of day here but looks like that stops soon. I got my annual pumpkin. It’s actually a white ghost ornamental gourd so not edible. But, it’s lovely.
This was a hard week post-wise. I had something I was testing, but I simply couldn’t get a sane, solid post out of it. Then, I tried another topic. That fell flat.
So, we’re just looking at the time of year.
When my child was school age early September was the weird back to a new term anxiety and excitement. It was actually a slightly nauseous-making time. Plus, the weather here in September can never decide a direction. It’s not quite end of summer, it’s not quite proper autumn – maybe it will rain, maybe it will just be impossibly humid and heavy. Drying laundry gets to be a real challenge.
So far, autumn also seems to have ended up being task time this year. I think March asked in a post about cleaning: clothing clear-out, major cleaning if one is so disposed (someone I used to work with always steam-cleaned her kitchen in September); finding and arranging tradespeople to do stuff. This year has been/will be front of house painting, finding someone to do blinds for the big roof window in the kitchen (fulsomely recommended company coming to visit this week), looking for someone to instal a heat pump in place of my current gas central heating. First company comes tomorrow (Wednesday). I am profoundly aware of how much energy prices are rising. Once all this is sorted I will start to look for someone to sort the apex of my roof so that solar panels can be installed. But, that’s for next year. I have a load of company recs to wade through for that.
A task I bit the proverbial bullet on was finally getting my 11-year-old laptop to show its screen long enough to transfer files on to a thumb drive and allow me to wipe the system and do a reset – so the little machine went to the recycling centre’s electronics dump. I ended up taking off the back and removing the hard drive which now resides on a shelf and will be disposed of later.
A small bit of sadness as that was the machine that took me through freelancing for eight years. It visited NYC when we saw my father so I could still cover early AM stuff. It was the first time I actually dropped serious money on a computer (buying a MacBook Pro a few years later put that expenditure in the shade, but I have to say I lurve my Mac – and everything is synced with phone and iPad…).
A further task was the booking of annual (flu) and semi-annual (covid) jabs/shots. Flu jab was last Thursday, covid is later in the month.
I feel productive.
So, how’s your autumn unfolding? Projects in process or on the horizon? Pic is off the estuary in the next town over before the boats go into drydock for the winter.
Pics: mine, pexels