'Bout time.

We moved into this home two years ago, on Memorial Day weekend.  I've spent two years trying to get a handle on the house.  It's not been helped by six months working while doing everything else (I worked fall semester 2017), and it took another six months to recover. 

And this while trying to figure out how to work within the constraints of an actual disability--not a handicap, a disability.* 

That has been helped, as much as it may be, by getting on the right thyroid medication (a much older one) and the right dosage.  Yes, I still wind up doing too much and having really, really bad days, but I'm also having good days.  And days where I can do a little more than I used to be able to. 

Like recently.  I started in on the garage.  I'm finally unpacking the last of our stuff from the old house.  I'm sorting stuff to be thrown away, given away, or put away.  More of the first two categories than the last, honestly. 

We've already done one trip to the recycling center with broken down boxes.  We've run four 13 gallon bags of give-away clothes to the DAV, and there's more.  More boxes (a pile knee-high of flattened ones, and a dozen more to be flattened), some electronics, and a busted cookstove for the recycling; more clothes (two more bags so far of give-away clothes, with more waiting to be put through the wash, and more to be found), an old but still functional TV, and a portable dishwasher to go to the DAV; and something like eight big black trash bags of broken, worn out, mouse-chewed, or otherwise trashed papers, wires, or things I honestly can't recognize. 

We really need to make a trip to the dump.

This has taken a week to do.  There's at least another week (maybe more) of work.   And then...then, we'll be completely unpacked.  All the boxes emptied and dealt with.  All of the paperwork found and dealt with.  All of the knick-knacks found (and a lot of them donated, because I've never been one for most pointless clutter), the books brought in and shelved (finally, even though a lot of the shelves are double stacked or more). 

And the garage...the garage will be mostly empty.  Unusable as a garage,** but empty.

And I have plans.  That garage will be half (or probably less, considering) workshop for Odysseus, half play/art room for the kids.  I've been promising this for the two years we've been here.  The imp wants to move his Hot Wheels tracks, launchers, and wooden blocks out there to build cities, because a carpeted bedroom isn't the best for the cars to keep going.  Both the imp and the pixie want to move all of their art stuff out there, and would like to be permitted to paint.  Which has also been promised. 

It's been more than two years since I first made that promise.  I'm finally keeping it.  I'm finally able to keep it.

Best part?  I can throw a lot of the worst of the mess in the house out into the garage, which will make it easier for me to keep the house presentable.


*A handicap means you have a harder time doing things, but that you can do the same things that others can.  A full on disability means that you're limited in what you're capable of.  Having a bum knee is a handicap, because I'm still functional, but slowed.  Chronic Fatigue Syndrome removes function.  And lays you out with a fever and severe joint pain if you do one thing too much...even something as little as showering at the end of the day, some days.

**One of the overhead doors is altogether broken.  As in, we likely could get it up, but the brackets holding the rails are breaking and/or broken on one side, and the whole mess would probably come down on our heads.  The other problem is that the truck is too long to fit in the garage, and we likely couldn't open the doors if we put both the truck and the Subaru in the garage.