Yes, he woke up, stared a bit at me, then took a kitty bath!

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Decluttering continues. Ugh! I’m ready, now, to run a lot of papers through the paper shredder. I bought an office-level shredder several years ago when I got tired of a little one that took forever to shred and you put it on the edge of a trash can. Just getting that out of the way makes a big difference. Papers and books are the worst clutters, I think. They accumulate and require almost a paper-by-paper check to determine if they can go or not. 

Anyone who has followed me forever will recognize this as my original blog photo heading. Once kitties became my thing, the heading needed to reflect that. I like the current one a lot!

“Hey, Andy!” I call Andy by name.

He responds to it and…

…assumes there are Greenies in it for him. (Of course, he got some!)

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I took several bags of cat litter (used – ugh!) to the dumpster. I’d put it off for too long, assuming they’d be a hassle to lob over the rim of the dumpster once I got them there. They turned out to be easy enough to put into the dumpster, thankfully, so that was an incentive to not accumulate them in future, thinking they’d be a hassle. The hassle was having so many piling up inside, taunting me! LOL!

I double and triple bag the used litter for security purposes. I single-bagged one once and it developed a leak when I picked it up. Of course, that was a delight to clean up off carpet.

I put Andy’s litter box “contributions” into a small container that grocery store plastic bags fit over. When it’s full, I slip a plastic bag over the container, invert it, let gravity transfer the waste into the bag by lifting the container out. Container out, I tie the bag off. Lately, instead of trying to stuff a full bag into a second one, I’ve doubled empty bags to save the hassle. I think I’ll start bagging “it” before the container is full in future, though, to make them easier to handle. A full bag must weigh 20 pounds/ 9 kilos!

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Decluttering continues. It seems endless some days. Perhaps it is! The goal is to be more careful about buying things that seem to be necessary but turn out to be minimally useful. I tend to be a sucker for those sorts of gadgets! Cat toys are an especially good example of things that are money wasted. Andy is very fussy about toys, rejecting most of them.

“Hey, Andy!”

“You left one.”

~~~

“So?!”

Andy is a cat.

I think Andy’s tired of this!

Andy and I didn’t do anything constructive today. For the record, Andy’s “horns” are up in the last photo. I think kitty “horns” are too cute!

It’s Andy’s “Treat Time”! Hey, Andy! Come get your treats!

~  nom! nom! nom! ~

Let me get that “Andy leaves the auditorium” shot before you go, Andrew! 

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I got a very late start this morning. It is rare that I haven’t put together one or more posts before the day they show up in your feed, but it happens. Anyway, Andy and I are “here” (alive; above ground; warm; not dead yet; amongst you still), though Andy wasn’t happy I pointed the camera directly at him for the establishing shot, below:

The little rascal blinked in time for the shot, a residual behavior going back to when my little Nikon digital camera blinded him with a flash. Too bad, though, because I like to have at least one decent photo of my kitty boy in each post!

The smartphone camera function can flash, as Andy suspects, but there are enough lighting and editing features on the newer technology to take care of most photo editing issues.

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My apartment cleaning continues, though a full dumpster stalled progress for the past few days. No point in creating bags of crap that have to sit around till the dumpster is emptied today. (There is a half-dumpster load waiting to be taken out now!) When I started this clearing out last January, I thought I’d be done a long time ago, but I hadn’t counted on obstructive heart disease and a hospitalization wiping me out for a time.

After release from the hospital in April, I began a life of fighting oxygen cannulas and tripping over the oxygen line, which (to top it off) always got tangled on things in the apartment and my walker. You’ve never heard such strings of vulgarities in your life as those uttered from my mouth. (No, my mother never heard me say such things!)

With the new obstacles to continuing the decluttering of the apartment, I thought I’d have to hire a cleaner, so put things off till I realized I could work smarter and get the task done by myself. Yes, it is possible to vacuum sitting on a walker! Or clean up clutter. Or move trash bags to the door and toss them out to the back of my car, parked on the grass by the front door. The trick of using smaller trash bags, lighter loads, proved to be a great one, making this a much more viable option. 

The kitchen is largely decluttered and organized now; the north bathroom and south guest bedroom and bathroom are reasonably decluttered, with some touch up to do; the front room is my current project since most of the decluttering is on the computer desk and by my glide rocker – minor pickup and sort work; the dining room table and the wall behind it is a mess that might take a bit more time to do because stuff there probably will have to be trashed or put away in different places; my bedroom will be last, I think. It used to be where I “hid” things when company came and I didn’t have other places sorted out then. Some obsolete electronics, for example, are there, waiting for me to believe there is no point keeping them! 

It sounds like a lot left to do and it is. I am comfortable, though, knowing that I’ve worked out the way to do it so I don’t leave a mess for someone else to do after I die or am moved to a care center. Have to be realistic about these sorts of things!

Andy says it’s time to stop writing about it and time to start cleaning and sorting!

Sleepy boy.

Time to start the day with a nice kitty bath!

Rub-a-dub-dub!

Ready for Freddy! Andy’s all prettified for the moment if not the day!

Andy stopped by for quiet time.

So he was quiet!

I thought he’d conk out and have a nice snooze.

But he put his paw on my hand to let me know he just wanted to enjoy the quiet.

Here’s seeing you!

~ wink! ~

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It’s been a busy few months, off and on, of sorting and trashing stuff. I’ve lived in the same apartment for almost 19 years. I recognize that someone will have to empty and clean this apartment if I were to die or move to assisted living or a care center. I recognize, too, that my general health now allows me to do a fair amount of cleaning and trashing, but that could change any day! It’s imperative, then, that I continue to neaten up the apartment and do the cleaning necessary to make it suitable for habitation! 

So far, I’ve pretty much filled three or so dumpsters full of trash and things I no longer use. Yes, I could have a yard sale, I suppose, but I have better ways to use my time inside. I have another half dumpster’s load staged inside for after trash pick-up Friday. At least two other people use the same dumpster, so I left some space for them. I could have overloaded it, no problem, with what I have staged inside! I was tempted. Once, someone put a sofa in our dumpster, making it impossible for others to add much to it that week.

Coincidentally, the landlord’s doing apartment inspections in the middle of September, so I’m glad I’ve got a good start on cleaning, creating concealed spaces for things that had been on counters and any other available surface, and getting rid of clutter. I still have a great deal to work through, lots of dusting, lots of spider webs in high places that need knocking down, washing, and floors to sweep, vacuum, or mop.

Andy refuses to hurry up this morning.

Maybe later he’ll liven up…if there are Greenies in it for him!

He has his standards after all.

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I told you yesterday about how I somehow lost my new glasses, possibly by getting them tangled in the oxygen canula, a frequent occurrence. I noted the cost of replacement, how I found my old ones were just fine in the interim if I decided not to replace the new ones. I was hopeful, though, that I would find the new ones because, well, money-to-replace does matter! 

Derreck Knight commented: “Join the search for your glasses when they are on your face club. I hope you do find the missing ones.”

The truth of it is sillier than that, though consistent with having a senior moment: At some point after stewing for hours about losing them and double checking outside in a rainstorm by the dumpster where I’d put several bags of trash, inside my car (I have to use it to transport trash), by the front door where I took off the portable oxygen and switched over to the inside supply line, on the dining room table, in the pockets of the jacket I was wearing, and, yes, on my face to make sure the glasses I was wearing weren’t the missing glasses, I had an epiphany: What about the top of the CD cabinet by my bedroom door?

When I got up, I never put them on in the first place! Yes, that’s where they were!

That’s incredulous me in the photo. Those are the “missing” glasses on my face. I’m 99.9% sure of that!