Today was a friend’s 50th birthday and he usually keeps that sort of thing quiet. I call him on his birthday every year, though. Who else is going to do it? I’ll buy him breakfast tomorrow (today).

I had what I thought was a huge list of errands today and I didn’t finish them. I never do, really. But I did finish most of them, even with my poor start. I usually mop the gym floor but when new mop heads can leave a lot of lint on the rough rubber surface. Instead of mopping, I vacuumed. It can take me 45 minutes to mop the floor if there’s a lot of equipment out of place, but vacuuming took me an hour and a half. I almost missed one of the time-constrained things on my list: buying more cardboard boxes, but I made it with half-an-hour to spare.

I got lunch and when I got home my next door neighbor needed help with his garage door. Fortunately I had the wire strippers, crimps, crimp tools, and staple gun necessary to fix it all. After that, it was list time. I should have been like my brother-in-law and put “eat lunch” and “shower” on the list so I could cross them off.

The big item on the list was the only non-house-maintenance chore that my mom wanted me to do while she was gone: washing her car. She parks it in the driveway where it gets little winter sun, and it grows algae in the winter. The algae dies and turns black. I went to the “Washman” carwash and got the $49 package with extra external cleaning. It takes an hour, but my neighbor was there doing the same thing so we sat and chatted and the time passed pretty quickly.

Then it was time for easier items like “laundry”. My sister added “buy a new kitchen table” to the list. I’m spending a lot more than I’m making lately. Stupid renovations. Well, that goes on tomorrow’s list which, by this time, is today’s list. I better hit the hay.