Leaves and a Sprint

As with my two other houses, my new house has mature trees in the yard.  Yay!

Guess what mature trees do?

They shed lots and lots of leaves.  Leaves get in gutters.  Wet leaves make the walkways slick, and thoroughly cover the lawn.  They stick to your shoes and get tracked into the house.  Dry leaves get blown into the house.  (For some reason, around these parts screen doors are the exception, not the rule.)

It's been raining on and off for a couple of days, so I have both wet and dry leaves.  I cleaned the gutters yesterday, mostly after the sun went down.  This afternoon I finished cleaning the gutters and did (another) big rake in the front yard, where the two trees have dropped all their leaves.   I did some raking in the back, but my giant curbside compost bin is full, so I can't fit those leaves into it.  (Pickup isn't for another week!  Eeep!)  But it should help keep the leaves outside, rather than inside.  I love the smell of fall leaves.  I'm glad there is a fall here, even though it's all due to non-native trees.  But I get to experience the colors and the smells, and that makes me happy.

I have a handyman combining the two smallest bedrooms into a single bedroom, shaped a little bit like Oklahoma, with patio doors at the end of the panhandle.   (Patio doors in my bedroom!  So very California!)  And widening the doorway between the dining room and the living room.  These changes have exposed gaps in the flooring (because they were under the walls), so I need a floor guy to fix it.  So we now have:

• handyman finishes wall changes, up to painting
• handyman hopefully installs tubular skylights!
• flooring person needs to install the new boards (with accompanying demo mess), sand them down, and apply 4 coats of finish.  no one can walk on boards during the finishing coats (and perhaps not in house due to fumes ... not sure) ... for 3 days.
• termite people need 3 days with no one in the house to tent and fumigate.
• cleaning service needs a day to thoroughly clean house (gypsum dust everywhere!), and garage (smells like an ashtray!).  Garage is currently the handyman staging area.
• Naomi visits her Mom for 6 days

All this before moving day!
After moving day:

• washer/dryer delivered and installed
• refrigerator delivered and installed
• everything out of apartment ... and work with apartment cleaning person so new tenants can move in Jan 1.
• unpack substantial portion before work resumes on Jan 3.

This situation feels very much like the end of a semester, when I was an undergrad.  There are a list of tasks that MUST be done, each with different deadlines, and there are too many tasks for comfort.  That flat out sprint feeling, while you constantly ensure that you're doing tasks in the right order to deal with dependencies and deadlines, but it's longer than a sprint, so it also feels like a marathon.

Unlike my undergraduate days, I intend to get a full night of sleep every night.