Keeping busy

I am mostly unemployed at the moment. It has actually been almost a month that I've been back without a job and it is quite nice to be a house husband with a "sugar mamma" taking care of me. I run errands, go shopping, cook meals, do the laundry, make lists. I'm a great list maker. The trouble with the lists that I've been making is that it requires final decisions to be made and there are a lot of them to do. What color towels, what kind of furniture, which vacuum, where can we find that at, what happened to our... how much have we spent already? Decisions seem to digress quickly into variables and these are all like little stop signs on the path to getting things done.

There are little tricks to making a house more comfortable. I never knew them until our most recent house sitting adventure. The house was very well organized; everything was in the most practical place that it could have been in. If we needed anything all we had to do was think for a minute of where it should be and low and behold there it was! There were also little tricks like finding a plastic tray for underneath the toaster. Here I've been getting crumbs all over the place for years when all it takes is a tray. Floor mats too make a huge difference not only for feet but also in keeping the place clean. Putting one in front of the fridge, at the stove, by the sink, etc. makes the spills from going on the floor. I believe these are called "life hacks" and I am sure that I will keep my eyes peeled for more.

Yesterday Ashley and I went on a walk up a hill. We discovered a lake (pond really) up the way from us. It is a gorgeous walk but there has been a lot of recent development along with what is obviously planned for the future. Most of the area is in some stage of building. The houses are huge, the yards are little, and the pond is full of mosquitoes. Non-the-less, it is still a gorgeous walk. There are even signs that say "turtle crossing april-sept". I hope to see a turtle or two before our time here is over; in fact I did see one but it was squished flat and dried out on the side of the road. Sad.

An interesting tidbit, today I went to check my email at yahoo and saw what looked to be a picture that Ashley took on our trip. It was in fact a picture of the island of Koh Tao at the very beach we frequented on our trip. The article was entitled "cheapest places to retire" and was all about the permanent residence policies of Southeast Asia Countries. It was fun to see that picture.