A Lot of Hard Work

Today is the first day in a while when both Ken and I have been home and able to get some much-needed work done around the house. I got up bright early around 4:30 a.m. -- but stayed in bed until around 5:30 a.m. -- and decided to get my "mandatory" Saturday exercise in and done for the day. I got on the treadmill downstairs and managed to get in about 50 minutes while watching almost two full episodes of "Sell This House." The good thing about walking and that show is that I desperately need to see the completed versions of the houses and so it makes me keep walking until the end of the show.

While downstairs, I managed to do two loads of laundry and clean the cats' litter box area (sweeping and scooping). Sadly, I discovered much to my dismay that one of the cats had peed in the Kitty Pop Tent and so had to also do a cleaning of the floor and another trip to the garbage to dispose of the now-ruined pop tent. So much for buying them toys! Side note: I must say that my Swiffer Wet Jet is my new favorite cleaning tool for the basement. It's perfect for cleaning and sprucing up a concrete floor after 3 cats.

After that, it was on to the outside where Ken (I made him get out of bed by this point) and I set to work on the yard. It was my goal today to get all the lawn decorations in and get some of the nasty plant stuff put into the yard waste bin. Thankfully, because yesterday was Veterans Day, there was no garbage or yard waste pick up until today, so we managed to get the yard stuff out with about 20 minutes to spare before the truck came around. Victory! Ken went around with the leaf blower/sucker thing and picked up a lot of the loose leaves blowing around. It looks pretty good out there. I should get a fall house picture up to share. Will work on that. Now we just have to get the furniture in the side porch pushed to the middle of the room and covered, and we should be pretty much good to go for winter. Considering we had our first round of snow on Tuesday, we are now aware that this could happen for real anytime.

Tonight we're off to a UNI game with some of Ken's family. His sister Linda is making chicken tortilla soup before the event. Can't wait! Not only do I not have to cook, but I get to have an excuse for not doing any school work for the rest of the day (not like I've started any of course).

On a side note, I thought I'd mention that I've been doing Weight Watchers again for the past 9 weeks or so. My friend Kelly and I decided to do it together. It's so much easier when there's someone who's going through it at the same time. We've been moving steadily along. Kelly hit her 10 pound lost mark on Wednesday, and I hit my 20 pound mark the week before that. My first goal is 25 by Christmas. I'm not looking too far past that at this point. Small goals, right?