At last... Success!

I'm proud to announce that I did fabulously at this week's GYST challenge. Housekeeping turned out to be much easier than I expected it to be, and my house has stayed surprisingly tidy all week long. One star for me!

I have also gone back and managed success in the Booze category, nipping my nipping down to just three glasses of wine for the entire week. (This resulted, also in a tiny, but measurable, amount of weight loss, so I'm well motivated to continue!)

The one downside of maintaining a clean house is that I began to feel a little like the Terminator. Always scanning, scanning scanning for mess. Empty coffee cup at 3 o'clock. Gum wrapper on side table at 5 o'clock. Alert. Alert. Dog hair on carpet. Take immediate action. I may have lost weight because I didn't sit down all week: fluttering around the house like an OCD hummingbird. Wiping surfaces, picking up bits of trash, moving things from here to there. But it worked! I managed to keep things under control all week.

The one thing that sort of went to hell was the yard and garden. Mainly because I'm in denial about the need to pack up the pool for the season and mow. The pool has a leak, so draining it is not a problem. And packing it up is probably moot, because if it's leaking now, a season in the garage isn't going to make it any better. But it's a colossal pain the butt either way. Mowing wouldn't actually be that bad, except for the little patch of Green Acres around the pool where the leak has allowed the grass to grow. Last Sunday I went out and actually just mowed the perimeter of the front lawn, the rest of it was mercifully dead.

This weekend I'm off to the lake with my folks, so I won't have an opportunity to make too much of an additional mess. I should be able to start next week all tidy and organized, in order to face my next challenge:

Meals.

I may have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. I. Am Not. A Cook. I hate cooking, I'm bad at it, and it frustrates me. I can't think of anything to cook, and when I do think of something to cook I never have all the ingredients, and when I do finally get the ingredients and put something together, most of the time Grayson won't eat it. Assuming that it's edible at all. I have no idea how to get around this problem. Last night I attempted to cook a "real" dinner and made fried chicken. It took forever, made a huge mess and was tasteless and tough. Both Grayson and I made a valiant effort to eat it, but resorted at last to cookies and pudding. This also prompted two of the three glasses of wine on my record for this week.

I will have to ponder how to handle meals over the weekend, perhaps consult with my mother, who can cook, and come up with a viable plan of action. I'll keep you posted.