050 RAINY DAYS AND MONDAYS

To quote Karen Carpenter, “Rainy Days and Mondays…”, the song goes on to mention Mondays always get her down, but since I have been retired, Mondays don’t mean anything anymore.  Come to think of it, with the shifts I worked, I didn’t very often have weekends off, so Mondays meant nothing then either.  My Mondays, could have been on Wednesday, or Saturday but rarely on a Monday.

I preface all this because I sit in the office here and stare out the window at a deluge of rain.  Rainy days rarely bother me, although the 4 consecutive months of rainy or cloudy days we endured this past winter, I’ll admit were starting to get to me.  Since the move though, I don’t feel like I’m locked away in a dungeon.  I have lots of windows and lots of things to watch out the window or do around the house.

Today we just about drowned taking Toby for his morning walk and when we got home and dried out a bit, Renee wanted to go to Maple Ridge pool and swim her 30 laps.  So off we went.  While she was in swimming, Toby and I waited in the truck and watched the people coming and going to the Saturday Farmer’s Market.  It was too damn wet though to consider getting out and wandering around.

The only depressing part about a rainy day, is that I always leave the camera behind.  I know they say that this pro model camera is weather sealed, I’m not risking something worth that much money to take photos in the rain.  Besides, rainy days are generally depressing and why would I want to take depressing photos.  I have tried, but my attempts at rainy day photos, look like a rainy day, if you know what I mean.

Instead on rainy days I get busy with other things.  We have had a string of about 7 straight days of less than pleasant weather, so I finally got busy.  After having my last physio appointment for my wrist and clearance to resume full duties, I came home and got busy.  My office desperately needed organizing and so I started on that.  In order to do it, I had to get the filing cabinet I bought from the garage, up two flights of stairs and into the office.  The thing weights about 150 pounds (who knew an empty file cabinet weighed that much) and I have had it for about 6 weeks, but couldn’t find anyone to help.

So, never being one for letting an injury get in the way, too much, I muscled it from the garage into the entryway and then tipped it back and started sliding it up the stairs, one step at a time.  This is the one time I am happy that I had to have carpeted stairs.  It didn’t make it a whole lot easier, but it was better than trying to slide it up wooden stairs.  Slowly, ever so slowly I inched it up, one step at a time and finally got it to the main floor.

But wait, there’s more.  Now I had to slide it along my laminate floor without scratching it and here’s where Toby’s blanket came into play.  I tilted the cabinet and kicked the blanket under and slid it along to the second set of stairs.  There I started the process all over again.  Eventually though, I got the cabinet up into the office and now I had to start emptying boxes and eliminating clutter.  All of my camera gear falls into that description.

I stacked all of the big equipment like backdrops, light stands, tripods and such into the closet.  Cameras, lenses, flashes and bags are off to one side of the room.  Eventually they will be proudly displayed and I have cameras dating back to the first camera I ever owned at age 6, to cameras that my Dad had.  I will display those as examples of how far photography has come and more importantly how far I have come with it.

Finally, I started clearing papers off of my desk and putting them in properly labeled file folders and put them into hanging folders in the top drawer.  I’ve kept receipts and warranties of everything to do with the move.  Once I find them in a box down in the garage I will add various financial and other documents to the cabinet.  I have no idea on how to properly file things and my daughter Caitlin has volunteered to show me how to do it.  The other documents I want to file are documents related to the genealogy research I have been doing for about 40 years.

Anyway, this is the final room in the living area of the house that needs to be cleaned up and organized and once that task is complete, I have to start cleaning out the Indiana Jones warehouse that is my garage.  I do have the boat in there, but the plan is to be able to get my truck in as well.  If I can get rid of all those boxes, the boat can easily slide back about 10 feet and then I can start parking my truck inside too.  A side benefit will be finding my tools.