Down to the Wire

Then invitations were mailed out yesterday, and I'm beginning to panic. It sounded like a good idea a few months ago. I remember saying "this is just the motivation I need to get some projects done". What a crock!!!!

Now it's down to the wire-- I've invited about 100 people to come to my house to celebrate my 40th birthday. Most of these people have never been to my house, so they don't have a clue how life in this Burnett household really is. I think people have the perception that I'm neat and clean. Not the case! I appear to be neat and clean when I'm expecting visitors! At those times, I just pray that no one looks in the closets, or under the beds. I keep the lights down low so that no one notices that I haven't actually cleaned a thing in my house for almost 6 years!

I remember when I bought the house, I made a list of all of the projects that I wanted to do. I would check off the list whenever I got any of the tasks completed. The list included items like:

* Remove the carpet and expose the hardwood floors (done)

* Knock out the walls in the hall and make it wider (done)

* Replace light fixtures, install washer dryer connections in the laundry room (done)

The list became overwhelming, so I added some easy things to the list, just so I could feel some sense of accomplishment:

* Mop bathroom floor (undone)

* Dust pictures (undone)

I created a new list of projects for the upcoming party-- one of them was painting the sunroom. The sunroom is the largest room in my house. I got the walls painted in less than a day, but then the trim looked so bad that I've devoted every waking moment to painting the trim- including 10 floor-to-ceiling windows. Last night I was working on the windows-- I removed one of the storm windows so that I could paint the areas around it. In the process, the window fell and broke. Great timing, huh-- it's been 60-70 degrees outside for months, but the one night that I broke the storm window, the temp fell to the 30's. I wanted to get the broken storm window out of the way, so I took it to the dining room. On the way there, the window hit the huge mirror on the wall and knocked it off- sending it to the floor in a million pieces. I cleaned up the mirror damage and then cleaned up the window damage in the sunroom. I decided to clean the carpets in the sunroom while I was at it. I sprayed it all down, waited an hour and vaccumed it up. It looked great. Within 10 minutes, one of the dogs came in and peed on the carpet. Now I have to go rent a steam cleaner, replace the mirror and the storm window, and try to finish painting the trim around 8 more windows without breaking anything else. I also need to repair some gutters, cover the rust on the front door, paint the front stairs, repair the leak in the roof and and the ceiling in the sunroom that that leak caused. There's also a 100' tree in the back yard that's threatening to fall any day. Oh yeah, the tiles on the bathroom wall are all falling off and water is leaking from the tub into the crawlspace. Oh well, I have three weeks til the party and it will all be taken care of by then. I will be glad when the party is over- by then I will have everything finished. I guess the party was good motivation after all-- otherwise most of these projects would be on the back burner for years.