Cooler Temps and More Plodding for Week 38 (Decluttering and Simplifying 2010)

A temporary break in the heat made for a nice week here in North Texas, and I couldn’t have been more ready. (And yes, this is week 38. Last week’s incorrect week number is fixed now. I knew that would happen eventually.)

Our air conditioners have caught up and have even been off quite a lot of the week, saving money and allowing these overused machines to rest after three weeks of constant use. Tuesday turned out to be cool and rainy, and since then, highs have been in the 90s and lows in the upper 60s and lower 70s. That’s quite acceptable to me.

As soon as we got home from a day of book shopping and errands on Tuesdays and found that it hadn’t actually rained at our house, I headed for the lawnmower. Now, the weeds that were getting as tall as our car in the front yard are gone and a small patch of the rest of the acre is back under control.

(And that’s a good thing since one of our neighbors seems to have built a fire pit despite a county-wide burn ban. That is in place because of dry vegetation and our major city’s decreased ability to produce water after “catastrophic” damage to its only water treatment plant.)

If you don’t live in an area with extremely hot summer temperatures, you may not fully appreciate just how important this break in the weather is to a lifelong Texan.

Two days of rain in the Dallas-Fort Worth area slowed down my book shopping for resale a lot, and I’ll have to make that up next week, if that’s possible.

Decluttering is still is at a virtual standstill, but I’m not making any negative progress, so that has to count as a small victory. The other projects I need to do around the house are standing still, too.

I could write a whole piece about the silliness of aerobic septic systems, the type that’s required where I live. But who would want to read that? The short version of the story is that we owe $275 for repairs to a septic system air pump — a repair that we’ve been told is necessary every two years. We last had it done — let’s see… oh, yes, here it is — two years ago. These systems have many flaws and performance issues and are generally a very bad idea, but we have no other choice as long as we live here.

Of course, we could move. Except we have a mortgage. And that’s another story for another day.

I wrote a piece about plodding several weeks ago, and that seems to be what I’m doing this week — plodding along with no real forward momentum.

As a side note, I told you last week that I “rested” the blog during week 37 and didn’t post anything new — just a rerun of a guest post I had written for another blog. I was really surprised how much I missed the writing process, the comments and the interaction, so I may not be doing that very often. In other words, this blog and the experiences related to it have become important to me.

For today, I’m happy that my office is cool and every aspect of my life is stable. Stability is one part of simple, deliberate life.

But I could use something to shake up my world just a little and get me moving forward more seriously again.

2 comments

  1. I can sympathize with you about the relentless heat. Here in AZ the 110+ temps have finally taken a break and they’re down to the high 90’s and low 100’s, cooling off delightfully to the low 70’s in the early morning.

    As for a lack of momentum and ambition, I think the heat is responsible for a lot of that – now that it is getting cooler I hope to be a bit more ambitious in my own minimising and maybe even get back to writing on my rather neglected blog.
    Mike recently posted Minority By Choice

  2. Yes, we’re having some similarly nice weather now, too. Thanks for commenting, Mike.

    It’s a cool but humid morning here in North Texas, and I feel great. I hope it is as nice where you are.

    Gip

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