The new (old) table in place.

After work this evening, I came home and gave in for a short time to the Cubs game that fired up at 6 PM. After a few innings though, the house was a bit too hot inside and I realized I needed to get up and go in the garage and work on other things. I plugged my phone in to the speakers out there and continued to listen to the game, but I, of all things, decided to try and remove the cloudiness from my truck’s front headlamps using the toothpaste scrub method. I applied some toothpaste to the outside of the lamp’s clear plastic enclosure and smeared it around a bit, and then moistened a rag and wiped the toothpaste off. I think it worked. The lamp boxes definitely look clearer. And they smell minty fresh.

After the game wound down and the Cubs pulled it out late, I took down the old table in my front entry way and put it into storage so that I could move the office replacement in. I swept the floor in the area the table would sit at, and then reassembled the office table by where the old table stood. The new table has such a nice large surface for doing whatever on it- reading, writing, gaming, drawing up getaway plans. I still need to figure out what chairs to keep with the table in the house, and where to store the others.

I am trying to maintain my participation in maintenance.

Maintenance has never been my strong suit. I am good at starting, and if time demands it, I am pretty good at finishing well. Keeping things up ad infinitum, though, is not my natural bent. When I write, I don’t take enough time to edit and re-edit so that all the misspelled words are corrected and the grammar is torqued back into shape before I call something done, as these posts probably suggest. I try hard with basic vehicle maintenance, but I am not good at sticking to the schedule. My history with doctor appointments would also tell on me. I am horribly inconsistent at taking care of myself- which suggests I am also not the best at taking care of the things in my possession, though I may marginally try.

And so I started a list about two weeks ago of things I can and should take care of. Many of the items on it are things that I myself can do to improve things around the house, or in the vehicle. Some of the things, I cannot take care of just by myself. The truck has begun to leak some oil. I need to put a new swamp cooler on the house because the old one is a rusty mess. The house needs a new roof.

It is overwhelming. I am not sure how people keep up with maintaining their lives like they do. I know they do, but from my viewpoint, it seems to be an exercise in futility, which at times I feel it truly is.

So I clean the clouds from my truck’s headlamps with toothpaste, if only to help myself to feel like I am maintaining the maintenance.

I’m gonna try to keep it going though.