Yeah, pretty gross.
Since Saturday was spent on the yard and I really couldn’t get much further due to a lack of disposal, I decided to take on another sore spot in the divorce, the patio or as I often call it, the porch. As you can see in the “before” photo above, what a mess! I readily admit to contributing to the sorry state. When trying to lure in feral cats, I just threw the empty cat-food cans anywhere. Other crap was abandoned by the ex-, namely the shop vac that broke yet she never got repaired, some cabinet rotting away; hell, one door rusted shut. Various pieces of limestone, pots for plants, cat beds to comfort the animals I caught and the biggest nuisance, a mud-dawber nest (they’re a breed of super, mean-ass wasps).
Fixing this up took a mere two hours and it included my numerous water breaks triggered by my Watch alerting me whenever my heart rate exceeded 170 bpm. I feared the wasps were going to stay a couple more weeks but I stumbled upon some type of bug spray. It worked as I figured. Those sprays all contain something equivalent to nerve gas and kills insects as it gets into their spicules. I stamped on the buggers who fell to the ground. No luck on this scary spider at the gate catching any in her huge web.
Ta dah! ready for a new set of patio chairs!
Adding a new garden hose to the long-term shopping list at Lowe’s. A nice hosing down could clear out the stubborn dust. No wasps to fear. No more smell of cat piss, I hope it was cat. No more clutter. This is one of my proudest moments in turning my 20-year-old house around. I finally updated the Operation: Manhattan grid I almost forgot about from last year, thanks Jennifer, hee hee. I should’ve put the kitchen in there.
I also added another color code to cover the parts I let backslide. So green is clean and ready. Yellow is in progress. Sadly, blue is for the sections which used to be green (master bedroom/closet) or yellow (guest bathroom) and they’ve regressed. The master bedroom regressed due to laundry and I don’t really sleep there much neither. The guest bathroom is on pause thanks to the good advice I received from Jennifer and Holly to focus more on the more visible, practical areas I want to utilize. The kitchen! It was a sore sport leading to the divorce. Now it’s fantastic! I cook often. Clean dishes are put away in the cabinets. Dirty ones are in the dishwater 90% of the time. The inside of my microwave doesn’t look like a gremlin exploded in it. The floor is nice. The oven isn’t disgusting.
Now, when I’m not squeezing in yard work before it’s too hot outside or we might get the upcoming tropical storm to keep us indoors. I will connect the two bitchin’ green zones!