DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Aug 26 - 10:14 PM

The Welman folks will take single box walk-in donations; when you have more than that they want appointments booked. I'm going to put a couple of these filled boxes sorted by category in the car and if I'm in the area, drop off one at a time. This is because my sofa is filling up with boxes and the next appointment is three weeks off.

Big item checked off of the "to do" list - the round-trip to a historic town two counties SE of here to put miles on the car. Done. We stopped at a little barbecue place on the square, it wasn't anything to write home about but it was ok. I took the camera along in case we passed any pretty parks on the lake, but it's so hot still that we didn't stop anywhere to walk around. I guess if I want to photograph birds I should take the long lens to the back of my yard and check out the creek early in the morning.

The watering restrictions are posted for the village but the vegetable garden is watered according to the crop needs. Hence this evening's stealth watering in which I waited till after dark and turned off the motion detecting porch light that would pick up the passes of the oscillating sprinkler.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 05 Aug 26 - 11:23 AM

Y'know when you first run the hot tap to do the washing-up, and it runs cold for half a minute or so? I've taken to capturing that runoff in one of our watering cans for later use on the garden, rather than let it help flush the drains. We're on a water meter.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Aug 26 - 11:57 AM

That's why there is a bucket in the kitchen sink, and I make several trips a day out to water potted plants and the thirstiest of the garden crops. Right now the okra is appreciating the buckets most often.

So much stuff has been kept in the sewing studio because it might come in handy. It's time to open drawers and thin out what is out of sight and never going to actually get put to use (keep my favorites, donate the rest). And stuff in both kids' closets that was kept for when they have kids, and I am beginning to wonder if that will happen with either of them. Time for the big plastic toy bins to come out - they're probably full of toys that need to be donated or discarded. I think the heat of summer has worn down my willingness to list things on eBay or ship stuff to the kids. Someone else can use these items and the kids will buy their own if they start families. (The cost of shipping from Texas to Seattle makes it silly to try to send any of the bigger stuff, except the trunk full of Legos, that as an innovative toy has its own separate currency and he can deal with.)

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Aug 26 - 10:39 AM

Dr. Daniel Amen and other mental health gurus talk about how to start the day on a positive note. Last year I learned the hard way that reading the news was not a good start. This morning I mentally walked the yard figuring out where to put in the next shrub, a Mexican herb that has pretty tubular lavender colored flowers. That spot is going to be where currently the newest batch of cannas were heeled in to keep them alive until I made a bed for them. The new bed will be between two other canna beds, so this morning the physical me started the soaker hose through there to moisten soil for digging. The hose has sprung a squirt that will soon tear into a major leak, so before the project begins I'll lay a spare soaker. The leaker may have been trod on too often by painters this spring.

To get better feed any time of day on the social media sites I've worked on retraining the algorithm in Instagram and Facebook to have less news and more science and art and humor and lots of dance and music. (Did you know there are pages that play clips from opera, and others that play bits from Shakespeare?) I'm also seeing the message t-shirt ads a lot more. This morning there are four that, while I won't buy any, I appreciate. 1. Easily distracted by rocks. 2. Wait, I see a rock. 3. Off to cause a kerfuffle. 4. I'm sorry, I wasn't listening, I saw a bird.

I'm close to a paint choice for the hall bathroom, I need to pick up the larger paint samples to hold against the green shower tile to see which looks best. The booklets of color palettes are only a starting point in the process.

The donation stuff is piling high on the couch, so I think tomorrow after taking the ex to the dentist we'll swing by to drop off a box each at the Welman front office (and look around the gift shop). And if I can take him to the back to see what they accept as donations I think that will speed up the clearing out of his garage.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 06 Aug 26 - 01:12 PM

Those T-shirts reminded me of an artic I saw while cycling to work in Nottingham. On the front, in addition to the official licence plate, was another one made up to read:

D
HILL

.... and at the back of the trailer:

R
SEND

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: pattyClink
Date: 06 Aug 26 - 03:11 PM

Well I can decode the rear plate but not sure about the front.

Cheerful way to start the day, you say? Dance and music, you say? May I present 'pizzica'.

Pizzica outdoor gathering

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Aug 26 - 07:33 PM

I didn't make out either of the plates.

Soaker hose swapped out and I was able to cut the old one at the break and move the female end to extend its life. Now attached to the new hose that replaced it, the whole thing is satisfactorily longer (and waters a corner that is often neglected.) The soakers come from Harbor Freight and are cloth-covered plastic line with plastic hardware, the same kind you buy to use for regular hose repair, so the fix was simple. I can do the same repair with the other part of the hose, simply cutting out the break in the middle, keeping most of it for other uses.

It took a couple of trips to finish the work because it's over 100 again. A bonus in the cannas, where this soaker hose runs: I found an Argiope spider, but her web is in a precarious setup, connected to several of the spindly plants.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 07 Aug 26 - 12:54 PM

> I didn't make out either of the plates.

Try reading them out loud .... but put any cup or glass you may be holding down first.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 Aug 26 - 03:48 PM

So I can hear the back one, but still no clue to the front.

This evening I'll start canning whole tomatoes, starting with Roma/San Marzano, the ones that are good for sauce. Two or three pints at the most. And making more sauce to freeze.

The 10-day forecast is boringly consistent, no rain and highs ranging from 98 to 103. I continue to drink the large Stanley tumblers of iced tea and leave the house temperature set at 80 during the day. Two reasons for that - to save on the cost of air conditioning, but also so the contrast between inside and outside isn't huge, as a way to acclimate to the heat. Tap water is so warm that it's almost turned completely to cold for comfortable showers now. There are places in the desert Southwest where they turn off the hot water tank in summer so it stays at the house temperature and that is used to cool the super-heated water coming in from outside. Are you in that region, patty?

Donating a box of three-ring binders today and in my office I'm preparing to merge the contents of two into one very large binder. Additionally, in the category of no longer holding onto things to remember them - I'm tossing old projects that have no value to me now or the people I was working for, adding more binders to the donation box. It does mean some shredding. This might be familiar to Charmion - how long did you keep track of old editing projects, or keep a finished copy as a memento or record of the work.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: pattyClink
Date: 07 Aug 26 - 04:18 PM

Your tomato harvest sounds wonderful, I have yet to see any 'home-growns' this year! But I did get black cherries and a couple of peaches, was afraid they would be the usual grocery store duds, but they were great. And the annual batch of rhubarb sauce got made, glad I did not realize the new price per pound til it was too late. It is superb. But again they were out of Blue Bell vanilla, and the substitute was that awful stuff that shouldn't even be labeled ice cream.

Hitting 100 daily between rain squalls, and I am trying to get things done more inside than out. Catching up on music projects and financial stuff, and lots of filing is about to get knocked out, and maybe some file re-organizing.

I don't do that hot-water switch in the summer. There is just a short run of pipe from the well, so the water goes from underground-cool to taps pretty quickly, though occasionally some water will sit and get hot late in the day. Doing a dance of running A/C only in rooms I am in during various parts of the day, so as not to waste power or overtax the units. Once cool, a room will stay that way for a while.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 Aug 26 - 10:14 PM

I work in the part of the house with the newer 2-ton heat pump unit during the day and at night sleep in the part of the house with the older system, so have the thermometers programmed accordingly. Lucky you to be getting those down-bursts of rain. There were interesting clouds here this afternoon, but the rain is all to the east: lucky them!

I made the rounds this afternoon, stopping first at Welman with binders to drop off (one box at a time is allowed for walk-in donations) and looked around the giftshop. So many possibilities! I've yet again expanded my list of things to take over.

This year for the first time ever I paid for my library card. One year at a time for non-resident, but I'm tired of jumping through hoops to take in the right documents without using the drivers license. $50 a year isn't bad and my account is the same as are the borrowing privileges.

After I wrote about how I use the Withings fitness tracker last week I did some looking into the app and realized I could set more than one alarm. I have one that vibrates in the morning at 6am and I've set another one at 9pm with the same vibration and scrolls the message "turn off media." It's so easy to forget to turn away from the screens unless I have a regular reminder. The jury now seems to be out about blue light, according to the author of Body Electric, but I find I sleep better by avoiding the screens before bed. I have lots of books to read.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Aug 26 - 11:46 AM

Yesterday I had a reminder that my phone is getting old and I should swap for a newer one. I never buy the newest expensive version, I review their features and usually get as much battery as possible and a good camera on last year's phone. The Ultra versions are lovely but I have a regular camera I use also, so stick with the FE or + versions of Samsung Galaxy S. What happened yesterday? A friend's phone died and she emailed to ask if I could take her over to the AT&T store. The gist of it was a morning of running around, from there to a sponsored repair shop and ultimately her insurance covered a replacement, shipped to arrive tomorrow. Her phone is the same make as mine and two years newer. Our lives are stored in these devices. The S25 way is more affordable than this year's S26 and the S24 is about the same price (if you can find any) so better to get the newer S25. It's new to me, and is always a pain in the backside to set up and then dumb down all of the "features" they bundle with it, but better that than trying to get data out of a dead one.

The lawn needs mowing, but it isn't growing much now so every day I can delay getting out there it doesn't look any worse and it might get cooler. Where I am proactive is with the garden produce, and have decided to go ahead with the large canner pot and do a batch of whole tomatoes in pint jars. You you can use that pot of water to blanch the tomatoes before ice water and peeling, saving an extra pot, and doing them all in one shot is good if I have more than two or three jars (at 35 minutes a jar one at a time in the asparagus pot it ends up taking a while.)

I emptied several small 3-ring binders and shredded logon information for a friend's website that I worked on at one time. It isn't my responsibility to keep track of that, it was his account and I'm no longer involved. And I don't need those notes to remember anything about the work. The process of letting go of stuff that seems interesting in case you ever write your memoirs - (like that is going to happen and anyone would read it?) Now to shred logon information for old accounts in my big binder and compress the pages to those I actually need to refer to.

When I get tired of looking at all of the stuff here it's tempting to tip the house on edge and send everything over to the teachers project. But I'll pace myself. It's possible to make real progress this summer and fall.

Subject: RE: DECLUTTER: *Health *Progress - 2026**
From: pattyClink
Date: 09 Aug 26 - 03:01 PM

Be careful shredding the 'old' passwords. If you ever need to revisit the places or re-activate old devices, your email can be locked out if you don't know the old corresponding usernames/passwords. It seems silly to keep those, but I've gotten stuck more than once. I found it easier to just label that stuff 'old' and squirrel it away by itself.

Temperatures are down a few degrees. A pile of stuff finally got filed and reorganized. On the third weekly goathead patrol, I could find NONE!! Of course there are new hassles around each corner, but one must count the victories!