I didn't do a stitch today to take down Christmas decorations. It's been so busy!

After breakfasting and dog-walking, I had to run to Kaiser to refill prescriptions and pick up James'. It was warm (61℉) and wet; I wore a jacket just to keep from getting sopped. Then I stopped briefly at Barnes & Noble, looking for a new "Breathe" (no luck) or if there were any interesting new books out (semi). I found a calligraphy pad on the half-price table and did get that.

My old "Tot" stapler that used tiny staples died, so I stopped briefly at Office Max. Apparently Swingline still makes the "Tot," but it uses regular-sized staples now, though it's still tiny. They had a different brand on clearance, so I got that instead. Also bought a new compass in a "math set" that came with a protractor, small ruler, eraser, and pencil sharpener.

Then I picked up lunch for James and I at Tin Drum, and on the way home I stopped at Nam Dae Mun for ginger tea for James and cucumbers for dinner.

I'd intended to do some Christmas removal this afternoon, but ended up hauling all the house papers (mortgage documents, tax returns, etc.) upstairs out of the pantry closet and refiling them in the new file folders I bought at Walmart a few months ago. Why? Well, since the insurance company is going to total the truck, we need to find the title for the truck to give to them. One time long ago, one of the car titles used to be in the secretary near the bird cage. Apparently we put it in such a safe place we can't find it. Nor is Twilight's title around anywhere, and I know we had that. I looked through every paper we had—including tax returns going back to 1995, James' papers from when he was in the Navy in the 1970s, my nurse visits after my surgery in 2004, the appraisal of Mom's house from 2006, and the paperwork from when Shadow caught on fire in 1990—and neither car title could be found. I searched the secretary again, looked in the safe (only the birth certificates and social security cards we needed to get our new drivers' licenses), and tried to figure out where else we might have put an important paper—but normally they all go down into the files.

At least I've resorted them and put them in the new folders. I'd intended to do this in February, but it's done (or almost done, since one file folder is so full it won't close; I'll have to get another at Walmart).. Watched an episode of Elena of Avalor as I sorted; it's not bad if they would get rid of the songs! Also watched a cute Sofia the First which was a sideways take on William Dean Howell's short story "Christmas Every Day."

Now we will have to take a form by the DMV and buy a replacement title; we have to go by there at some point and register the new truck anyway. It's supposed to be ready tomorrow: we go to James' credit union to pick up the check and take it to the dealership and pick up the truck. We can't go register it, though, until Tuesday because of the holiday.

When I was cleaning out the files I found the seven silver dollars my dad had saved, three of them from 1883. They're not really valuable, but have sentimental value. I have always meant to put them in our safe deposit box. So when we headed out to supper tonight, we stopped by the bank. There was some kerfluffle about the keys; apparently there are two sets of boxes with the same numbers (one is prefixed by a two-digit number) and the bank guy thought I should be opening the other box. It turned out the records were wrong, and the box the key fit was the correct one. I added the coins and then we had supper at Panera.

In the meantime, the rain had disappeared and the cold has returned with a vengeance. It was, as I said, 61 and raining when I got up, 53 this afternoon and cloudy, 47 when we left for supper, and by the time we got out of Panera it was down to 38, and the wind had a knife edge to it. So we decided not to go to Publix and came home instead. I had to take Tucker out and I definitely put him in his little winter sweater that I bought for him after Christmas. As we were walking around the upper cul-de-sac the wind blew so hard that it shoved him about three feet up the sidewalk, his legs dancing to keep his balance, and when it stopped he looked indignantly back to see who the heck pushed him!

Discovered tonight that something James and I wanted to order online was only available via check payments! How nineteenth century! Well, I usually pay Alex-the-lawn-guy with checks, and you never know when you will need them, so I tried to order them from the bank—who wanted $36 bloody dollars for them! Are you out of your minds? And you had to order duplicate checks, which I despise. So I went to Checks.com and ordered them for a third of the price.

Well, this still gives me a lot to do in February! I want to change the location where I have the safe deposit box so it's closer to the house (the SunTrust near the Smyrna Kroger). I'll also need to go to the tax office to submit my form to get the exemption from the school tax you can get once you turn 62.

Labels: books, errands, food, magazines, organizing, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:06:00 PM

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