Busy day

[spritechan]

After the protest, Bethany and I got Cossetta's takeout (I ordered a mastaccioli for me and Steve and then a slice of pizza for Steve; Bethany ordered two slices of cheese and we laughed about how big they were) and went back to my house. We talked about a ton of her vaccine fears and even though I wasn't trying to convince her either way, just questioned, she said she had gone for a 10% vaccinating her kids on Friday at their appt to 40%. Her biggest issues, other than the horror stories she reads in her Mom groups, is that Clyde get very sick every time he has vaccinations and she swears his anger issues developed within 2 weeks of one of his vaccine doses. I obviously can't argue with her on her experiences. I don't know what's best. She says she wishes that vaccines were not combined (ex. MMR) and she would feel much more comfortable if they were individual.

After she left, I had a little bit of time to work on picking up the house (I just had extraneous items around that as yet don't have homes I needed to figure out). Stepdad Paul came over and spent the next like hour and a half replacing our garbage disposal. Nothing was wrong with the disposal itself, but the gasket and housing material leaked really badly and rusted everything through. Despite the rusting, it was a bitch to get out. Instead of unscrewing the unit he had to basically bend up the metal in the actual sink and drop the disposal down. It was kind of funny but a lot of physical effort. I was mostly worried about him cutting himself and bleeding out because he's still on blood thinners. Also Tetanus.

While he worked on that I set about organizing our additional kitchen storage drawers (ie hand mixer, pizza cutter, ice cream scoop, etc.). He also had brought a battery charger and got my car's battery to a place where we could jump it, which was awesome because I haven't driven it since June. 

I had to run to Menards to get Plumber's Putty, as we purged what we had. The new disposal is beautiful and makes me so happy. No more stinky swamp bucket under the sink! 

Once we jumped the car, Steve came with me and we drove around for 45 minutes to let the battery charge. It was so weird being in my car again. The passenger seat is still perma-wet from spilling dishsoap in it last April so that's cool. Steve put air in my tires and we drove around talking — I took us through Maplewood and St. Paul (Battle Creek) to 61/10 and drove us almost to Hastings before getting off on 95 and taking it all the way back to 10th Street. <3

I was so tired all day that I went to bed a little early. 

As a general update, once I finish taking care of the few items in need of homes, I will officially be done cleaning and purging the upstairs. It's SO nice up here. So many improvements. This weekend I worked on the bedroom and it ended up taking the entireeeee day which blew my mind. Clothes, when you're seriously going through them and trying on things if need be, takes FOREVER. But I'm much happier now and everything is beautiful. I also replaced the shitty see-through red curtains with the soft purple blackout curtains I'd had sitting around for awhile. I got a hand steamer for Christmas from Paul's mom, and I put it to GOOD use. I steamed some dresses that are too complicated for ironing, and I steamed the wrinkles out of the curtains. So good.

Other little quality of life things, like putting up a command hook for Steve's CPAP, getting some poems into frames, and we went through ALL of our "important papers" and threw out 90% or more. It was lovely.