For some reason I woke up again at 5 am. Hannah was also awake so we decided to go for an early morning walk. The weather was perfect. The rain had cooled everything off and it was cloudy so we didn’t even feel like it was the end of June.

We stopped at the creek and actually saw a cool looking snake. We only walked 2.5 miles but it was enough to energize me for the rest of the day.

Today I decided that I would clean the patio. The city is finished with the road work and the walls, corners and floors were a dusty, cobwebby, dead bugs mess.

Our house will never be perfect. It was built in 1961. The patio (it’s actually a carport but works better as a patio) needs a new coat of paint, but it’s not on my “I really need to do this” list. It took a lot of brushing and going up and down the step ladder what seemed like a million times, but I got it done. I vacuumed the rugs, wiped down all of the furniture and Hannah did her summer chalk art.

It was great to not be in direct sunlight for this project. It was still hot and humid though. I think I found my sweet spot of how long I can work outside and then still have enough stamina to get the things done inside that I need to do.

This was just the cleaning day. I still have lights (the ones on the table and in the laundry basket) that we need to put out.

I still have plants that need to go out also. The jack o’lantern bucket is for our cat Monkey to drink out of. She’s very picky, only likes certain things and that’s one of them. Another storm was blowing in when I took this.

The sun hits our yard in such a strange was that I’m always moving plants around so they don’t burn up.

I’m not fond of the metal shelves and would love to find a wooden cabinet so everything isn’t all out there, but for right now this works, even if it isn’t very pretty.

By 4 I realized that I had only had some granola for breakfast. If you go to Aldi these chip/crackers are so good, especially with hummus. I used the Yuka app to scan in the barcode to see if they were healthy and they both got good ratings.

The kitten wanted to go outside because the other cats were out there. We can’t just let her out yet so I remembered we had this harness when we were taking care of the baby possum. She didn’t fight it too badly.

I am really enjoying the “do something to improve your life by 1%” daily challenge. Did I really want to brush down and clean every surface today? Not really, but I’m so glad that I did because it just makes me happy to get it done. It makes sitting outside so much more peaceful without looking at the dust and dead bugs hanging from the ceiling. I love the space especially at night.

You don’t need a fancy house to have a cozy, happy life. You just need to make it a place that you love to be.

P.S.

Donny brought home this cool Tshirt for me. He ran to Schlotzky’s to get one of his salespeople a sandwich and asked if the sold them because the workers were wearing them. The owner was there and he just gave him one. I think it’s a pretty cool shirt.