Sometimes You Just Gotta...

The fireplace mantel in my dining room

Urff... I've been sick, sick, SICK!

On the 5th day of having a painfully sore throat, I went to urgent care, convinced I had strep. I didn't, but it slowly faded over the next couple of days I spent mostly in bed.

The opposite wall in the dining room - so many cookbooks, and these are the ones I kept, there were more!

I canceled with my two pool league teams. Do you have any idea how sick I have to be to miss shooting pool? It's the highlight of my week! And I was ridiculously grateful this past Saturday to finally feel healthy enough to compete in the MVP Regionals. I shot well, winning the first three matches, then coming within a hair's breadth of winning my fourth match. Had I won that, and the next one, I would have gotten a cash prize and been able to go to Las Vegas to compete in the world tournament next year. So it was a big deal to get as far as I did.

Last Friday I had started organizing and cleaning the house like a woman possessed. I have become an ORGANIZING MACHINE the last five days. It all began on Friday when I looked at my writing "to do's" and realized I couldn't tackle the narration of the last two G581 books, not at all, until my voice recovers from this cold. Add to that the fact that the narration is my last full edit of a book, and one I desperately need before I can release a book, I was well and truly at a standstill.

My pool hall outside of my office - the first time using it in MONTHS!

My voice is SO BAD that I currently sound like a "three pack a day smoker with a fifth of whiskey to start my morning off right drinker." That is, when I can make sounds slide past these damaged vocal cords.

I love what I do, so I don't have down time, except when I'm sick, and I was DONE being sick. And problem-solver that I am, I asked myself, "What can I do right now since I can't narrate my audiobook?"

For the past nine months or so, I've had piles of stuff, extra furniture, boxes of cabinets and bookshelves to assemble, and so much more, in my house. All of it intended for Cottage East, our current renovation project. A project that has run over in length and shows no signs of being done anytime soon. I had collected a couch, a desk, a dresser, and a pile of flat pack boxes of cabinets and bookshelves with the thought that any day now, I would be ready to move it all over there. Any day became next week, then next month, then "please let us get this done this year." And I looked around and realized I had had enough.

All of the boxes, furniture and more have been moved over to Cottage East. It took a couple of days, but it was so nice, I felt like I could breathe again! But I still had more to do. I dug into all of the nooks and crannies...

• The front entry closet - we can see the floor now and walk inside!

• All of my author fair supplies are put away in the playroom closet

• I've organized my dining room, gone through and parsed out many cookbooks, and other accoutrements and we have rehung doors that had sat waiting for me to stain them for around eight years or more.

• The deep pantry (once a pass-through from the dining room to the old kitchen), was completely cleared out and re-organized.

• Two drawers and a tall cabinet in the kitchen were emptied, sorted, and then organized.

• One large black garbage bag and three kitchen garbage bags were filled with items to donate.

• I can once again access the top of my folding table in the laundry room (no more using the dining room table or top of the pool table to fold laundry!) and re-arrange storage to make the old sink more accessible and less cluttered

• A ton of stuff to finish out Cottage East is now over there and NOT cluttering up my house

Greek lentil salad with feta vinaigrette (and celery and tomatoes)

And today, alone in the house, I tried out two new recipes from one of my cookbooks, and made some orange lemonade ice pops for the Littles. As I went through my cookbooks (and gave away or sent to Cottage East over a dozen), I decided I would work my way through the cookbooks, trying recipes that caught my eye. If they were a good fit, I'd add them to my handwritten recipe book. Eventually, I'll make my way through the cookbooks, alter and write down what I want to keep, and then give the books away.

I am dying to return to narrating my audiobooks, but until my voice recovers, I'll busy myself with other tasks!

Quinoa with pistachios and cranberries