What I did on my summer vacation

In June, when summer vacation started, I thought of hanging up a sign on TheFridgeDoor that said, "Gone Fishing" to let you know that it would be a summer with lots of time of us being away. Except that, well, we'd have gone camping, but you get the idea.

But the idea of telling people online, the whole Internets, that we wouldn't be home creeps me out, so I didn't.

So we went camping, saw a bunch of bears, then came back for a week. I don't think either of us was able to download our photos onto our computers to edit and post; we were doing mountains of laundry and re-packing for another trip!

A short week later, we went on our big trip (without a laptop) and camped for almost 2 weeks up and down the West Coast.

Imagine the pile of laundry from THAT trip! And all those photos! Yes, there were (are) lots of photos.

We had just about finished up the last of the camping laundry loads, and barely started to think about going through photos and paintings … then one of us got inspired and we: emptied out my storage unit (no small feat) and then reorganized the whole house (even bigger feat). The WHOLE house. I think we each took out ALL our stuff, edited it down, then re-stored everything. EVERY. Thing. Clothes, shoes, kitchen gadget, art, photo, sewing, quilting, camping, books, stuffed animals. Everything!

For almost 3–1/2 weeks.

NON. STOP.

J also cleaned all the windows (the outsides, too. You should note that we live in a two-story place), blinds, put in new fixtures in one of the bathrooms, built and installed a row of work cabinets in each of our offices, vacuumed out the dryer exhaust line, reorganized the garage (he does that every summer, though) … and a whole humongous list of other things. We delivered car loads of donations to the point that the guys at the local Goodwill recognize J. We shredded decades worth of old documents, processed and got rid of a ton of STUFF.

For almost 3–1/2 weeks. Straight.

We ate a lot of In-N-Out Burgers and had lots of chocolate shakes, too, for whatever that's worth.

So, J is heading back to school, and >poof< that was the summer. Wow, that went quick.

Everything is mostly in its place, and the dust has settled, so to speak … (we dusted, did I mention that? Yeah. So, I guess, technically, the new dust hasn't actually settled) … and we're finally (maybe) going back and reminiscing about the summer trips, along with a lot of other memories we unearthed during the whole housecleaning whirlwind.

There's a lot to share, coming up. But that's where I've been.