100 Weeks of Thankfuls

This is big, people! This week marks the 100th week of Ten Things of Thankful. 

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My thankful list this week leans toward the domestic. For starters, I'm in a purging mood, and I plan to be ruthless, especially with other people's stuff. I plan for many, many bags of trash to leave this house, along with many, many boxes of items for donation. Here's my list:

1. On Sunday, I took the electric mattress pad off the bed. This means I really believe warm weather is here to stay! Bring on summer!

2. As I've mentioned before, I live in an old house that lacks closets, among other things, like a garage. We have no linen closet, so we use an old armoire as a surrogate linen closet, and it's stuffed to the gills. I pulled the non-electric mattress pad out, but when I laid it on the bed, it was obvious it wasn't big enough. Somehow, I had my son's full sized mattress pad in my armoire/linen closet. I looked in his pigsty room to see if mine was in there, but to no avail. It wasn't in the basement laundry area, either. or anywhere ELSE in the basement, and I was out of options for a place big enough for it to have hidden all winter. HOW DOES SOMEONE LOSE A QUEEN SIZED MATTRESS PAD? I went ahead and made up the bed without a pad, resigned to the fact that I would just have to buy a new one.

A few days later, in preparation for the College Boy coming home for summer vacation, I waded into the Superfund Site he calls a room to trade out HIS electric mattress pad with the regular one and change the sheets on his bed before he came home. When I pulled the electric pad off, however, I found his regular mattress pad was still on the bed UNDER it, so guess what that means? The mattress pad in my armoire WAS MY MATTRESS PAD THE WHOLE TIME. It just LOOKED too small, because it had been scrunched up in the filled-to-bursting armoire all winter AND because it's quilted and stretchy - duh! Mystery solved!

3. I'm thankful I found my mattress pad, because only a crazy person loses a queen sized mattress pad in her own home, AND I'M NOT CRAZY.

4. I made the much-needed purchase of a new vacuum cleaner this week, and I LOVE IT! It's a Shark Navigator Lift-Away, and it has already changed my life in magical ways! We have all hardwood floors with area rugs, and keeping ahead of the cat hair is a miserable job. My old vacuum cleaner (PSA - never, never, ever buy a Panasonic vacuum cleaner) weighed a ton, fell over and cracked me across the back or head or shoulders whenever I tried to use the entirely too short hose to clean under furniture, etc., and was less than efficient at picking up what a vacuum cleaner is SUPPOSED to pick up, although excellent at grabbing curtains and cat toys and sucking them up quicker than I could react and turn off the power. My new Shark Navigator is SO AMAZING that my husband came to witness it for himself, and I had a total Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence moment when HE started vacuuming the rugs, just so he could see how well it picked up. Oh, and the Lift Away part of it means you can detach it from the base and carry it to the stairs to vacuum them or reach up to clean cobwebs (not that I have any of THOSE *cough cough*). If you need a new vacuum cleaner, GO BUY ONE OF THESE!

5. I bought a new shower head for the shower in my bathroom, installed it myself, and NO DRIPS OR LEAKS. Added bonus, it feels absolutely divine! The perfect amount of pressure without feeling as though needles of water are being driven into my skin.

6. The weather has remained cool enough most nights that we have been able to sleep without bedroom windows open (our room only; the rest of the windows in the house are sealed shut with 90 years of paint layers). Last night, the temperatures dipped down into the 40s, which is unseasonably cool.  I woke up about 3 a.m. and really needed to go to the bathroom, but I was also FREEZING (and very UN-thankful at that point that I had removed the electric mattress pad only days earlier). I didn't want to get out of my cold bed into an even colder room to go to the bathroom, but my bladder finally settled the argument by INSISTING I get up and go, and when I did, I realized it was not only raining, it was raining IN the windows. Thank you, bladder, for your moment of weakness!

7. I keep a blanket folded up on my side of the foot of our bed even in the summer, because occasionally, I get cold in the night with the air conditioning, but more importantly, because the cats like it. Most nights, the blanket is a revolving door of cats coming and going (seldom can more than one share it without a fight), but after washing the blanket with the rest of my bedding when I removed the electric mattress pad, it was still in a laundry basket on the floor near my bed. When I came back from my (freezing) bathroom trip, I plucked the blanket out of the basket and spread it on my side of the bed, where not one, but TWO cats joined me, making me the filling of a kitty sandwich. I was warm WITHOUT the benefit of my electric mattress pad!

8. We moved the College Boy home for the summer!

They are trying to take the back off the recliner that my son took to college with him.
My job was to hold the seat of the chair down, and I think it was an insult, but
at least I didn't get my fingers pinched, although they almost pitched me
into the desk head first.

9. Every single thing the College Boy had in his dorm all year is now in my living room, but he SWEARS he is going to use a backhoe and clean up his room and get rid of many pounds of junk and old clothes and very large but worn out shoes over the next two days. I am thankful for his optimism.

This is only part of it.

10. This one's for YOU, dear reader. I am going to quit talking about electric mattress pads now. Until fall, that is, when I put it back on the bed and take delight in its warmth on the first cool, fall nights. Unless I lose it, for as much as I'd like to say that won't happen, well, yeah.

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