Getting Things Done

I have a list of things I'd like to do around the house a mile long. And I know that as I get things finished I'll think of something else I want to do around here. It's a never ending process. Stupid home ownership. 

Anyway, today I took care of some business in my basement. MacTroll purchased a cross-training elliptical machine in 2004, and he used it religiously for 6 months... and then kind of flirted with it. I'm pretty sure since we've moved in here in August 2007 that he hasn't used it once. Part of me just wants to Craigslist the sucker, but instead I pushed it into the basement storage area to get it out of the frequented kidzone. I've been meaning to do it for months, but it haven't been able to get to it until now.

Our basement is also where our 19" TV is. It was our only TV since we moved back to Illinois in 2003. And watching Lord of the Rings on it was amusing, since the horses were like as tall as my pinky finger... and we were watching it from 15 feet across a room.  But it's also where our only DVD player is... and it's the in the playroom. Before we got the new LCD and the Apple TV in the living room last November, if we wanted to watch TV, we went to the basement. But now it sits dormant down there.

The basement truly is a place things go to die, except maybe in the case of a tornado. The next electronic recycling day we decided it's time to say goodbye to the TV, which means we'll have a small entertainment center from Target to donate to Habitat for Humanity. See, more stuff to do...

This morning I went to the basement with a mission: Find all the places Looseyfur, who had kidney failure, and Maya, who had a UTI we missed because we assumed the inappropriate peeing was Looseyfur -- and clean any area I might have missed during prior cleaning sessions. Mainly whomever the culprit was kept to one wall on the east side. But I took a few hours and tried to do a thorough job. However, even with the power of Bissell cleaner and Nature's Miracle, I'm afraid that if I reopen the basement to the cats, they'll still smell it and think it's okay to pee there. I think, down the road, when we put the 4th bedroom into the basement, we'll just cut out that part of the carpeting and padding, wipe down the floor and see if we can get that section of carpet replaced. 

After the carpet was dry, I vacuumed and rearranged the furniture. I moved all the seating area into a mini living room-like section and then brought X-man's Melissa and Doug kitchen center and his Workbench into the basement from the family room. I had been saving some food packaging so he could play grocery store in our basement. So now he has a little house set up on one side, and a store area set up on another side. I'm guessing a lot of "check out" play is in my future. 

Then I started pulling toys out for a CARE meet up I'm having at my house tomorrow on sensory growth. I still have to make the signs to put up in various areas and put away all the "non-sensory" toys. I'm quite excited about tomorrow, particularly since I'll get to make my own batch of non-newtonian liquid. 

If you don't know what that is, it's water and corn starch. When you get the right consistency it becomes both a solid and a liquid. That is, if you put your hand in it and grab some it feels like bread dough, but as you squeeze your hand tighter it slips through your fingers like a water. 

College campuses all over the place make baby pools of this stuff and then run across "water." Science is seriously a good amount of fun.

I'm also having a "what sinks and what floats tub," an area of bubble wrap for kiddos to step on, some flowers to take apart and look at with a magnifying glass, a sensory library, musical instruments and much more. 

It's going to be a fun hour, because at 12:30 p.m. I have to run out the door and pack up a bunch of food to take over to A Woman's Fund from Curves of Savoy. They just finished a month-long food drive with their members and collected over 700 lbs of food that I offered to transport for them.