Sams, Couches, Laundry and Babies

Relatively productive and quite fun weekend. Thursday I did some maintenance clean-up work, but I mainly played more guitar hero. Friday, we mainly hung out as a family and played, but we did go to Sam’s and do a major restock run. I really don’t understand how easy it is to spend serious money at Sam’s. We bought nothing over 22.99 (that was Prilosec) and still got up to $430!

Sam’s did raise some thoughts. I was able to resist buying any of the unique, random items that Sam’s seems to have a plethora of that while cheap and relatively nice, really have no needed role in our lives and will just add clutter. This got me thinking about how there are all these items that are designed and destined to be clutter. If you don’t believe me, go to your neighborhood grocery store and look at the “as seen on tv” aisle, the novelty aisle and the seasonal aisle. Scary to get that economic confirmation that we value junk.

We didn’t see any fireworks, but it really was a great 4th just to spend time with each other and not have anything on our plates.

Saturday was the day we got the most “done”. I organized, cleaned out and cleaned up the living room entirely including the couches. We have leather couches and while most of the time just dusting them, vacuuming the crevices and occasionally wiping down with a leather wipe is sufficient, it really is important to condition the leather occasionally. This should be done at least once a year, but I haven’t done this in at least three, so it was a serious job. And then I made it more serious by taking the couches completely apart rather than just conditioning them assembled. I started rubbing them down about 7:30. I quickly discovered these were the most thirsty pieces of leather I’d ever seen and as I’ve cleaned a LOT of tack, that’s an impressive statement. I therefore began a comical adventure.

I decided to quickly run out and get some additional leather conditioner, as it was obvious my eight ounces weren’t going to go far, and some saddle soap. Now, using saddle soap on leather furniture is something you want to be careful about since it’s designed for outdoor purposes and so contains some wax, but if you do know what you’re doing, it can be a valuable tool. So, I ran into our neighborhood Randalls and it turned out that while they had saddle soap, they had no leather conditioner of any type. I didn’t get anything and instead went to the HEB a little further down the road. They had leather conditioner in the cleaning products aisle. I then was able to find the shoe polish aisle after assistance from a minimum of three employees and it turned out they had no saddle soap. I bought three containers of the leather conditioner, went back to Randalls, bought the saddle soap and went home. I killed all three of these additional leather conditioners for a total of 32 ounces on a first rub-down of the couch structure and all the pillows and cushions from both the couch and the chair and a half. There was none left to rub down the structure from the chair and a half, but it was after two at that point and so I quit for the night. I went and got six more eight ounce containers the next morning and these were sufficient to finish the initial rub down and do a second round. I went to the other HEB, closer to our house but farther from the Randalls, and they not only had both the saddle soap and the leather conditioner, but they also had the thicker leather treatment. Should have gone there first!

Couches are done, but they aren’t reassembled. T-man really enjoys the pillows strewn around the room, because they are climbing challenges that are within his repertoire.

Sunday, I didn’t do much productive outside of the six hours of rubbing leather. T-man and I went to a friend’s birthday party at the Salt Lick and met his three-month old twins and had a fantastic time. Then we ran by the house to drop off food that we’d gotten for Paul and pick up swim suits and headed over to play with another set of friends. I say friends, but they are really family as they are some of the most important people in my world. I was incredibly blessed when they became a part of my life in graduate school. Trajan loved playing with them and had a great time and it was good because they’re going out of town for three weeks starting tomorrow and so I was glad we got to see them.

So, I definitely need to reassemble the pictures and get some progress pictures, but life is good!

Almost forgot! I also got nine or ten loads of laundry done including beddings, mats, and more. I'm in love with the new machines. You can do a load of laundry even with extended stain settings and have it done in two hours including drying! This is in contrast to five plus hours for a similar task in the energy efficient machines. And the size of a load is at least double! :-) :-) :-) It may be sad how happy this makes me.