Ten Things I Did Yesterday

1. I hoisted Dave's new stock pot up to a rarely-used cabinet above our hallway, finally clearing it off the living room floor.

2. I called my life insurance company to ask them why I received a bill for $1.35 in interest on a $21 "loan" I'd allegedly taken out against my policies. (I never took a loan and I pay my premiums in full.) Turns out they'd billed me in error during the last cycle and thus I didn't pay my full premium. They offered to eliminate the interest and take the shortfall from surplus earnings in my insurance account. Why they didn't do that in the first place is beyond me.

3. I delivered a note to our next-door neighbor containing the contact information for our managing agent. The neighbor is once again making noises about pruning the cypress trees in front of our flat. I asked her not to do anything herself and to contact the managers, and informed the managers of her comments. Why she thinks our trees are hers to maintain, well...again, it's beyond me.

4. I took down the garden cam and downloaded the roughly 267 pictures it's taken during the past three weeks. We got about 193 pictures of Dave gardening, 42 pictures of me and/or Dave playing Kong with Olga, 28 pictures of Olga alone, 1 picture of me and Dave clowning around, 2 pictures of pigeons, and 1 picture of a magpie -- from behind.

5. I got our sheets washed. This involves minimal effort on my part because I'm still routinely taking them to a laundry for a "service wash." The sheets for our American king-size bed are too big for our little European washer-dryer, and thus emerge damp and must be draped all over the furniture a la the Addams Family for 24 hours before they can be folded and put away. No more of that!

6. I repaired a place in the floor of our entry hall where a tiny wedge-shaped chip had broken off a floorboard. This involved fighting with the dried-shut applicator nozzle on the Gorilla Glue bottle, before finally giving up, unscrewing the lid and applying said glue with a screwdriver.

7. I watered the amaryllis bulbs. Three of the four have sprouted. Flowers soon, hopefully!

8. I discarded the rest of the haggis. It's been sitting in the back of the refrigerator, where Dave abandoned it a few weeks ago. I was growing afraid to touch it, much less eat it.

9. At work, I re-shelved about 100 books which have been sitting around the library on various carts for various class projects, including lots of American literature that I feel guilty for never having read (John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Kate Chopin).

10. I finally got through all but one of my accumulated New Yorker magazines. And I made the sad decision not to renew Harper's, which I've been getting for more than 15 years. Maybe it's me, but it seems to lack the zing it once had -- and besides, we get it in the library.