Projects at a Glance, Pool Season, and The Great Spring Furniture Migration

I have had a few down weeks; my Crohn's disease often leaves me flat. I struggle to be functional beyond walking the dog or folding the laundry. I am thankful my guy sticks it out, as my functionality follows no regular flow. I am crashing for a nap when he is ready to go out. This week, my meds kicked back in, thankfully. I did my best to participate in rearranging our apartment.

Think of the great herds of Karabo moving to summer feeding grounds, and you will get the vibe of our yearly summer reset.

Queue David Attenborough, "This week on Nature, we watch the old Mo's rethatch their nest."

Last week, it was a bit cold for us to sit outside. Also, we have been trapped at home while the building is getting a facelift with new steel railings and fresh walkway coatings. It's been four weeks so far. The railings are up and signed off; on Tuesday after Memorial Day, the lath work gets inspected, and I can see it taking another three weeks before the whole project is done. Cabin Fever is setting in.

"Clarity isn't about knowing what you want to do with your life. It’s about knowing what you want to do this week. You don't need to have it all figured out. You need to know your next step." | James Clear, 321 Newsletter, May 23, 2024

To paraphrase James Clear, it's not what 10-year-old sitcom you watch eight seasons of; it's what season of that show you watch this week.

Week by week, we entertained ourselves during the remodel. In the first two weeks of May, we rented an apartment and sorted out why my meds were weeks behind in delivery. Then we watched all seasons of Brooklyn 99. Last week, I tried creating a chore schedule, so we both had things to do. I am calling it 85% successful. I need a new template that we can read without our glasses. Managing the building is all about one of us being available on-site. We are running out of tasks and ways to entertain ourselves. Being stuck at the building in our apartment while this demo and construction goes on, chunks of plaster fall around our front door, and the noise complaints mount.

What to do next? Let's upend our living space and move everything. That will keep us busy for up to two weeks into June. First, Mark's office was in the back room while working for a law firm. He wants to shake that memory off, so he got a new setup in our bedroom with a cabinet that folds tight to the wall when not in use.

Next, in the last reset, we placed my desk/ productivity menagerie in the prime living room area next to the front door and window. It was fantastic for me. But it squeezed the living room furniture into a smaller footprint. The sofa was the only place to sit. The dog has long claimed the couch as her own space. It has been awkward to make the dog move. So, on Friday, I herded my kit back to Mark's office, vacuumed up all the dog fur from where the furniture had previously sat, and collapsed into bed wholly drained. Mark worked on it without me. The living room turned out better than expected. It feels huge. I would give it a 92% success score. We need to work on the lighting and agree on where the TV remote will live. We are air-tagging the remote while we get used to the new seating arrangements. If only I could find my phone and ping the air tag.

On Friday, I will be back on my meds for a whole week. I feel rested and ready to tackle my new workspace. Mark suggested using some fold-up steel Origami shelves we had stashed around our place early on. I don't see how they will fit with how things were laid out when I had my office back here. It made me cranky to look at all the stuff I had to sort and store and not enough places to store things.

Saturday morning, I realized that my plan to set up my workspace the same way it was years ago wouldn't work. If only we had steel Origami shelves stashed around the apartment and under beds, I could use them to reset the back office functionally.

Doh!

This is a brilliant solution. If this were Brooklyn 99, Mark would be the winner of the Halloween Heist. The shelves went up, and the log jam in the room found order and purpose. All my clutter fell into place. The shelves allow me to lay out my future projects. I use shoebox-sized bins containing the parts, plans, and notes to see what I have next week and the week after. Also, it gives me a place to store building-related supplies I need to access regularly, as well as long-term storage like you would have with a garage, only in an apartment-sized space. It turned out to be a good move. I have too much going on with physical items not to have more dedicated storage than I could have in my last office space.

There was some purging, too. My thirty-year-old Amron dry suit went away. I remember the Olympia, Washington, scuba dive shop guy telling me in 1994 that I would never need another dry suit. He was right.

Speaking of water-related activities

It's the official start of pool season here. I did not think much of it, mainly because it rained Friday morning. But Mark was excited to fire up the pool heater for Memorial Day weekend. Due to my medical devices, I have limited access to getting wet. However, my IV comes out on the weekend, and my ostomy is safe in the pool so that I can get in the pool. There were some questions as to the proper pool temperature for this season. I did a Google search to compare pool temperatures. The Rose Bowl Aquatic Center is around 82*f, while Olympic competitive pools are 79*f. I put on my new swim trunks this afternoon and dipped in the pool. I felt like an Olympic Swimmer. Happy Summer, everyone.