Hours of hunting and I’m STILL not sure I have found the right nut for the plumbing problem, and I can’t afford to risk money and a wrong choice. ** Frustratingly the only one 100% a match is a kind specific brand of tub fixture and they are charging $50 for it! So I need to find one that will do the same job…oh for a local hardware store!

Okay, so job hunting for a bit. The ONLY jobs a available to an unqualified nothing like me require standing or walking for the entire shift. Unfortunately, to save money, I had forced myself to wear my old ankle braces and boots longer than I should have. I have done damage to me feet. While I hope some of it I hope will recover not that I finally made my “good” boots my “everyday” boots, right now I am struggling with incredible pain walking. Like breaks every few minutes to keep it endurable. How can I apply for a job that, right now, I would be physically incapable of doing?

Everything I “need” to do run into problems like this. Things I need to figure out. Things I need to research. Things I need to buy. Things I need to fix so I can fix that so I can fix the other. Things that I need help with, but without help I have to come up with a way to do it anyway. Things that are a new problem I have to deal with. While hurting. While sleep deprived. While enduring this hot, miserable summer. While sad, overwhelmed, and worried, worried, worried….

So I let myself get sidetracked.

Ah, my brother is being grumpy about my stuff being in his old bedroom. Maybe, to keep the peace during a particularly difficult time that could have catastrophic repercussions, I should move what I can to that smaller bedroom.*** I can move Mom’s massive old steamer trunk!

The steamer trunk has been there for, I dunno, 60 years or so. Simply because it was way too big and heavy to mess with. So now I have to find a place it will fit and I can get it to.

And then I have to move the stuff in that space.

And then I have to move stuff from his old room to the front room.

And then, in the process, I find some storage containers I hadn’t been able to get to in years. I should look for some missing papers….

And then I find some stuff that urgently need to come out of the containers. As in, they need air and to get the heck away from storage mistakes like putting seashells with lingering sand inside in with other things, or OMG what the heck happened to that candle??

But now I need a place to put a bunch of fragile things, and I have already filled up all the cabinets and shelves.

AH! When I was a child we had these modular glass fronted bookcases, back when we lived at grandma Paxton’s house (**sniff** poor house!) We had to move everything out in a frenzy during the days of thieves****, so those bookcases (packed with bools, of course) have spent a few decades at the back of one of those upstairs rooms. I can remove one of those shelves and use it as a display cabinet!

A day spent moving stuff to get to the shelves, moving everything stacked on top of the shelves, everything off the shelf itself, move the shelf downstairs, and find a way to restack everything.

Now to move things where this “display case” can go. The good news is I have a place. The bad news is I’d used it to display action figures, dolls, etc, packed as much as possible. Now I had to move them all.

Oh, dang! The glass door on one side of this thing has a peg that isn’t fitting. Gotta sort that out!

And a dirt dauber nest!! Gotta clean this thing out….

And now for a few hours of trying to get everything out of these storage containers and arranged for they’ll fit…

They don’t quite all fit. So now I have to find a home for the left overs.

And some things require hanging! I used to have lots of places to hang things in my room at the other house, and none in this. Now I need to find at least tacks and such and figure out places to put them….

But if I get proper hanging hardware for these tricky walls I can also hang a couple pictures I’ve got stored in my brother’s old room. Or maybe one. There really isn’t much exposed wall space at this point.

So I spend an hour researching to see if I can A) find something that will work and B) find it for around $5.

While I wait to get those I can get all these figures, dolls, etc back on and around this display case…..

Wait, I was supposed to be working on the plumbing!

And the floor!

And the zillion problems with the kitchen!

And researching what to do about the rewiring do I can get electricity!

And the leak on the porch roof!

And the stupid grass is getting to high for my stupid manual mower so I need to do that ASAP!

And…..

And there you go. I don’t work on important stuff because whatever is in front of me becomes important once my brain gets fixated.

So sometimes I stay very, very busy doing very, very important stuff, and sometimes I stay very, very busy doing stuff that, while maybe making my life a little more pleasant, feel like a very, very big waste of my limited time.

Okay, not exactly a “waste”. In this case getting some of my stuff moved might keep from angering my brother, and being able to put beloved things where I can see them will make me just a little happier.

Still, after days of work I am no closer to fixing the major problems.

Sooooooo….maybe I better work on finding that damn nut again! LOL

**The giant nut had split right in half. No wonder water went everywhere! Despite being turned off at the street all these years, the water had been seeping all these years from the leak. Somehow not enough to ever turn up on the water meter, but enough to rot all around it. Never could turn it off enough to stop that seep. On the plus side, I could use aluminum foil to channel the leak water down the hole through the floor so the wood finally dried out. On the negative, I’ve got a damn hole in the floor the water can drain through.

***Best I not move my stuff to any of the rest of the house. I half own the house, but he is super sensitive about the idea I’m trying to “take it over”. Though, TBH, it doesn’t feel fair. He hasn’t slept in that house in more than 20 years, and has even set foot in it maybe four times since then. I have been half living in that house most my life and I moved most my things into it when the floor collapse started in 2015, years before Mom’s stoke. The reason my stuff ended up in his room that we had kept off limits all these years, was because he demanded I get all my stuff out of the other bedroom when he thought he might move Mom in there. I told him at the time I’d have to use his old room, but now….it’s an issue.