exhale.

I'm afraid to say this because it will probably soon no longer be true but … I'm all caught up at work! After an insane month of March and a hard-pressed first week and a half of April, I've finally checked off everything on my schedule that I can do right now. My list of 55 things to do in the past month (Mach 14–April 14) now only has 6 items not crossed off. But I'm waiting for other people to finish up their parts and pass those things onto me. It's been a nice big relief to have an empty to-do box and I've had time to work ahead on some smaller routine tasks so those will be done when their deadlines come around. I can breathe!

Yesterday as soon as I got home from work, I started cleaning/reorganizing. Nate has been in Chicago at The Gospel Coalition Conference all week so I've kind of neglected cooking or doing dishes or picking up or making my bed … and in the throws of wedding planning, the second bedroom had turned into a place where I work on painting pots and piling junk up on top of the treadmill because I don't know where else to put it. And Nate would sometimes go in there to try to study but it wasn't very inviting.

With the weather warm enough to run outdoors, I grabbed the treadmill instruction manual and read it backward to disassemble the treadmill. It came apart fairly easily and most of the parts fit in a long box up in the attic. The only part I couldn't move up there was the base, which would likely fit but it weighs about 100 pounds. This probably wasn't wise of me, but I picked it up and shuffled it into my bedroom to fit under the bed. I spent the rest of the evening washing floors and rearranging and organizing and moving things to the recycle, trash, or attic. Now that second bedroom actually looks like an inviting space! We need some furniture, but there's actually space to put Nate's stuff when he moves in! All that wore me out but it looks great so I was glad it was done. So glad that I let Miles sleep in my bed. It went pretty well until about 4 a.m. when he decided it was time to get up. So I kicked him out.

I'm thinking about getting a Sam's Club membership. There is one relatively close to my house and it's like $40/yr. Plus I have this coupon to get a $10 gift card when I join, so it's really like $30. I'm sure I could save $2.50/month by buying some things in bulk. And they have a lot of non-food items. Fortunately too this weekend (Friday through Sunday) they are having an open house so I can shop there for free and then decide if I want to join.

Shout out: Happy birthday to my mom! I'm looking forward to having her and my sister in the city next week to help me with some wedding planning. We're down to 86 days but things seem to be coming along alright.