Vacation-Use It or Lose It

For the first time in 26 years, I was in a use it or lose it situation with my vacation at work. I always take enough time off during the year to get under my max hours allowed. Not for 2011. My Minnesota vacation was all sick leave, if it wasn't for that I would have been under.

I was 40 hours over. I took one day off with Gary earlier in the month, which left me 4 days. Since we get Martin Luther King day off as a holiday it was perfect, take my remaining 4 days with the holiday. Counting the weekends, I had 9 days off.

I didn't go anywhere, had plenty of time to clean out the back bedroom. This was my sons bedroom and when they moved out a few years ago, stuff just got put in that room that we didn't know what to do with. Soon it got so full that you couldn't walk into the room without stepping on something. Cleaning and organizing was my project for the week.

I took it is small steps, just sections at a time. Monday was spent throwing out garbage. For some reason we had boxed up old magazines and was going to keep them for something, not sure what, but to the garbage they went. I spent two hours each day working on a section.

In the afternoons I watched my Harry Potter movies. For Christmas I bought the 8 movie collection, I had watched some of the movies already when I had time off for holidays, just had three more left to complete the series.

Tuesday Jennifer and I went to Billings for some shopping. She needed new work shoes and I bought two book cases for the room. One to display the knick knacks I got from Grandma, the other for all my books. I had them packed in boxes. We had a good time, the weather was nice and we got it done before the storm.

I needed help getting the book cases into the house, so they just stayed in my car until Saturday. The weather got nasty, the storm hit on Tuesday night and it snowed until Friday morning. Most of the snow came on Wednesday, it had let up some on Thursday and by Friday morning we got another 3 inches. The storm also brought in very cold temperatures. Perfect weather to get my project done.

I finished cleaning on Thursday. Found an extra air mattress that I didn't know we had. It was stuffed in the closet. Boxed up a bunch of clothes to take to Good Will and threw out some more garbage. I got as far as I could, just needed the shelves before I could clean up some more. It is so nice to be able to see the floor and walk into the room.

Helped Gary clear snow off the sidewalk and also cleared snow from the parking lot at our Tae Kwon Do school. We didn't get all of it, but most of it. After we shoveled, the snow plows came by and plowed all that right back onto the sidewalk. By this time, it was very heavy and we got what we could. Temperatures are warming up so hopefully most of this will melt soon. Thankfully, Mmom's neighbor cleared her sidewalk. All I had to do was her front steps. Whew!!!

I got my shelves put together on the weekend. My original plan was to drive to Meeteetse, but the roads were not the best and we were to get some freezing rain on Saturday afternoon. Will have to go down later. Called Mmom and they didn't get any of the storm in Wyoming.

All I have left to do is sort the china out of boxes that Mmom and I brought back from Spuddies a couple years ago. The room looks nice and will get the tv and home theater system hooked up in there.