Moving day, rain, travel

Today is moving day at work. Every so often management will get the wild idea to relocate, regroup, or rearrange personnel at the office. This will be my fifth such move. Although to be honest, two of those moves were of my own choosing. In this move, I will return to the spot I originally occupied when I hired into this company almost four years ago. Whether or not that will be my final move remains to be seen, but I am inclined to believe it will. All this will be accomplished while normal business is still carried on.

It is always a challenge, but the company tries to lighten the stress by allowing us to enjoy the commotion versus hurrying us through the process. The entire move should be completed before noon even with the meetings we have scheduled during the move. It is humorous to consider the fact that once I have my new desk set up, I will not even be at that desk for a week. One of those hurry up and wait situations. But I will hurry to get relocated because someone else needs my spot.

The rain soaked us all day yesterday. We are expecting more of the same today. So far, we have about an inch and a half of rain accumulating on the ground. It has been steady and gently. Soaking deeply into the ground until we are now fully saturated. We have not really dried out since the rain and snow of last weekend. That might allow us a really good Spring this year. Time will tell. For now, we still have light freezes several times per week. That is good. It keeps the trees from budding too early by letting them know Winter is still here. Though nothing else shows signs of life, I have been amazed by the blackberries. The plants have stayed green throughout the freezes we have had and actually seem to be thriving. If that is true, we should have a bumper crop this year.

I am not sure what I can get done tomorrow, but I need to get some cleanup done. I need to clean up the pig building where we have five weanling goats. It is starting to stink. I need to clean out the coop. Mama and I will be traveling next week, so that will not get done during the week. It could wait a week, but Mama and I would like to have it clean when we leave for Honduras in a couple weeks. After our trip to Guymon and Amarillo, we will have only one week at home before leaving for Honduras. So, we need to plan carefully for our extended absence. We are putting a lot on Victoria. We do not want to unnecessarily add anything to that burden. Besides, Mama like to keep things clean. It is often a challenge, but so far, we have managed.

In preparation for next week’s travel, I am washing a couple loads of clothes. A chore I very rarely participate in. But I would like to get some of the laundry done since Mama will only be home for a short evening Saturday and all day Sunday before we have to leave for my teaching assignments. After driving the five or so hours from Brittany’s to the farm, she will not be overly energetic in getting house chores done. Besides, Sunday is nap time, so chores are usually put on hold through that day. Whether or not I will mess up any clothes is a fair question, but I will certainly try to do only what I am almost confident I can do properly. If Mama were to write a procedure for us to follow on how she does the laundry, it would be a really large volume of instructions with copious footnotes of exceptions and special applications of the “rules”. When she has explained the process to me in the past, I have tuned out at the second exception every time. It is not a simple process in Mama’s eyes. She does not mind doing the laundry. I do not mind her hording the task to herself.

One of those trade offs that rarely causes an issue.