2021 Life Logs, Day 5: Living Room Redo
Date: Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Weather: Rainy All Day; High 37, Low 31 Degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
As always, one thing leads to another. It was a rainy day and this morning the squirrels and birds that gather in the side yard just outside my front window were driving Shadow crazy, and in turn, he was driving me crazy. I have a love seat that sits right in front of the big window and Shadow gets up on the love seat so he can look out the window. But in the last month or so, he has started scratching at the window when the squirrels are outside. I have not been successful in keeping him from doing this, so today I started thinking about what I could do to keep Shadow away from the window. In other words, dog-proofing. Then I remembered that when I have my shelving for starting plants in front of the window (behind the loveseat), he can’t get to the window. It’s a little early for starting plants, but no harm in bringing the shelving upstairs early. So, off the basement to get the shelving. Because the shelving is more than six feet wide, I disassemble it to get it in and out of the basement. But assembling it requires that I clear the living room floor. I almost took the Christmas tree down a day early to make things easier, but instead I just moved all of the furniture. And while I was moving furniture, I decided to try the longer sofa in front of the shelving and window and put the love seat where the longer sofa was. And as long as I was doing that, I did some cleaning. It was almost 8 pm when I finished and I’m not sure I like the new arrangement. I thought it would give me more room for the exercise bike and make the room look bigger, but it really doesn’t. I’ll take the Christmas tree down tomorrow and live with the new arrangement for a few days before making a final decision. But I did accomplish my mission of keeping Shadow from the window.
Tomorrow my mission is to figure out why I cannot get the temperature in the cottage any higher than 65 degrees. It has been this way for at least the last week, but I just wear a sweater and ignore that I am freezing. Near the end of the time that Heather, Jonah, and Ollie were living here, I asked Heather to program the thermostat so the temp would automatically go down at night and back up in the morning. What I don’t know is whether this is when the problem started. Today I changed the batteries in the thermostat. That didn’t help. I don’t have an extra indoor thermometer, so I took a thermometer out of the aquarium that I know is accurate and put it in a glass of water near the thermostat. After a few hours, it reads 64 degrees to match the thermostat. So, I don’t think the thermostat is the problem. But I am not sure I want to trust myself to reset it, so I have asked Heather to come over to do the reset. If it is still only 64 degrees in here after that, then I will call the heating and air conditioning guys. I don’t mind 68, but 64 is just too cold.
I’m currently watching the Georgia run-off election returns. Sure hope the Dems can pull off a double win so McConnell will no longer be able to keep legislation from coming before the Senate. We’ll probably not know the final results tonight, so maybe I’ll just go to bed and read and check in tomorrow morning.
