The Road Less Traveled...

Oh, I had such great plans for today! Let's face it though, things don't always go according to Hoyle. This week I had a plan that included starting some preliminary financial planning yesterday for Jim's new workshop. I gathered a bunch of information and put a folder together for us to go over in the coming weeks. I paid some late straggler bills that didn't come in until this week, did the billing for the neighbors in our group irrigation system, etc.

Fun? Not really! But it had to be done so we picked yesterday. I spent hours on that paper work...one of my least favorite things to do on earth. Ugh! But got it done and that felt so good. It's like that with things we don't want to do isn't it? Sometimes the weight of just thinking about doing it makes it worse. Often it is at least as bad as the task itself.



But the carrot that I was dangling in front of myself was that I would get all this stuff done so I could play today. Play translates here into writing on my blogs, sharing some fun photos of the grandkids and some photos of our day trip on Thursday with you, etc. I also wanted to get online and do some genealogy. I just knew today would be perfect for that as Jim would be working on his road all day and Dave was coming to help him this morning.

The new road to where Jim's workshop will be located.
This has been a dream of his for the past 33 years,
almost since the day we signed on the dotted line.
We have to name this road....
any ideas on a good name?

These two have been working so hard!
This is not a short road and it's up hill to boot.

This is my favorite part, seeing them just chatting like a couple of old hens! I love how they are such great friends. They talk more on the phone and text more than I do with any of my friends. Too cute! All men should be so lucky as to have such a dear friend!

Oh, and the third party on this project is Bob!

Well, my plans were completely derailed for today when we woke up with no Internet service! I hate how dependent we all are on this wonderful technology, but I dislike being without it even more! And the thoughts of fixing it on the phone really puts me over the edge. If you have a computer you have probably been here!


The above photo reflects the message in a funny e-mail about this very thing that I received just this week. And I have horrific memories of Jim spending literally, and I am not exaggerating 7 hours on the phone with India trying to get back up. Not once but two different times this has happened to him!! Half of that time is spent saying, "what?" as the other party tries to get you connected! But this time we lucked out (PTL) it was an area outage that caused the connectivity problems, so someone in the USA fixed it. No disrespect, but seriously SEVEN hours?

So we waited all day to reconnect!...

I went to the Farmer's Market and bought probably the last large bag of beautiful tomatoes for the season (sigh), made a nice lunch for Jim and Dave, took photos of their project, read a book, got all the laundry done, put new flowers on the porch and we talked to some friends about their new Family History calling.

And I actually know what we are having for dinner, in fact decided that yesterday. I saw evidence of the first autumn leaves here in our town and mailed some important papers. I got to talk to Chris and his little Aynslee on the phone while they were shopping at Home Depot and doing the DIY things at their house today. I got to talk with Laura and Spencer in Rhode Island too. Spencer's class is going on a trip to New Hampshire next week so Laura has been cooking his food all day due to his food allergies.

I went over next week's calendar with a fine tooth comb and made an electronic grocery list on my iPhone. And I cleaned out the car (sorta) and got my bags organized for work on Tuesday. Next week is looking pretty nice now that I did all that stuff that I would have had to do on Monday! So I am moving my carrot out a few days~we'll see if the best laid plans materialize this time.

Sometimes you just have to make the best of it, what are the choices really? And now we are up and running again. And maybe I didn't have as much 'free time' as I thought. Hmmm? Food for thought, that is for sure.

Maybe taking a day or two to be completely unplugged once in awhile is a great idea. I'll have to work up to it. The problem is I just cannot write with a pen; it's too archaic, too slow, and I'm too out of practice. Maybe it is not good to love writing this much? But I think I just do and that is that! I don't see any reason to change it really. I just have to balance it out for that day of being unplugged to become a reality in my schedule. It did feel pretty refreshing, I have to admit!

Have you tried it?