At one point in my life I was a clean nut and drove everyone crazy. Everything had to be just the way I fixed it and believe me you talk about stress well I certainly had it and gave it to everyone around me. It took me along time to get out of that then I realized there were more important things to stress myself out over. I think that was the only thing I could control at that time in my life and it became compulsive, now a little dust and dog hair doesn’t bother me… maybe a little.

I straighten up here and there and dust when I feel like it although Bill has asthma he hasn’t had an attack for a long time. Our house is old and when I first moved in we did a lot of DIY projects, it’s much better than it was, but it still needs a lot more work. I keep meaning to start new projects, but I’ve been having problems with my lower back and the older I get the worse it gets and I don’t want to go to the doctor right now so I take it easier. I’ll get around to them there’s always tomorrow and I’m not a clean nut anymore.

Sometimes I feel older than Bill and it’s harder to get up and down the stairs just like my Shadow with his bad hind legs. Maybe when Bill retires we’ll get more done and who knows we might just sell and move into a little cottage with no steps. Of course we do need to finish the basement it still has a dirt floor, we keep saying some day. However we probably wont move because I really don’t see the economy getting any better for quite some time and we have no mortgage and just have to pay our taxes so I guess we’re luckier than many.

I have two crappy vacuum cleaners, one for upstairs and one for downstairs because it’s too hard to lug around, but I will soon need a new one so I’ve been checking out the Dyson, Hoover, Kirby, Eureka, Oreck, Dirt Devil, Roomba, and  Miele vacuum cleaners. I’d love to have that system that is like your central air where you don’t have to lug anything around and it filters the dirt out automatically, but I guess that would be better suited to a new home and would probably cost a fortune.

At any rate I do count my blessings and I’m very grateful for what I do have. When I get too feeble to get up and down the stairs I’ll face that when it occurs which I hope will be many years down the road. Might be a problem since the bathroom is on the second floor. I don’t ever want to be in a nursing home and of course I do think about those things because I don’t want to be a burden. I shudder at the thought of wearing diapers in my old age and someone cleaning me up like a baby…too much for me to think about right now so have a great weekend.