Finally home after a great weekend visit with Leise, Zenkitty, Kate, and Amyth in Nashville. The cats took advantage of my absence to go crazy - the living room was a repeat of the faux crime scene I found earlier this year, and there's cardboard in my kitchen sink and litter scattered all over the floor of my office area. I don't lnow if they were in hiding because Mom feeding them this morning was upsetting, or if they realized the jig was up when I opened the door.

For anyone traveling in central Tennessee, I highly recommend the Best Western at the I-40 exit for Loretta Lynn's dude ranch and kitchen. It was half the price of the low-end places I looked at near the Nashville airport, and the room's furnishings and decor looked like they were from a Westin resort rather than an economy motel. (Apparently their head of housekeeping is more or less Mary Poppins. The manager told me it had been eight years since their last reno, and the only sign that the entire room interior wasn't finished earlier this week was a worn light switch in the bathroom.)

documents question:

old 401(k) info (everything has been rolled into a new account) - any need to keep?

any need to keep water bills for more than a couple of months?

I just pulled the most god-awful amount of hair and carpet fuzz out of the roller on my vacuum. Must check that more often.

I have stopped with taxes for the day. I think they are complete, but I am going to give myself another day or two to uncover medical, charitable, or other posit deductions.

The air is clear, the late afternoon light is illuminating the valley beautifully, and for the first time I can see the entire valley in sharp, clear definition. It is glorious.

I suck at keeping my paperwork organized, but here's something I've recently started, offered in hopes it may be of benefit to others:

For years my paperwork STAYED disorganized because I was so intimidated by the boxes upon boxes of bills, statements, receipts, etc. waiting to be sorted and filed. And those boxes are all still there. But I've stopped just throwing each new bit of paper into the latest to-be-filed box whenever I pay a bill or bring home a receipt for a writing expense. I got a new file box and set up neatly labeled files--2015 Writing Expenses, 2015 Writing Income, House Payments, Car Payments, a medical bill file for each family member, etc.

IOW, we still have years worth of old papers to be dealt with, but at least I got myself over that hurdle of feeling like I never could be organized until I tackled those YEARS of chaos. And now that the present is under control, I feel empowered to to make the old boxes an ongoing project. I figure while I'm watching the Mariners, Seahawks, and Auburn this year, I can go through those boxes, split them into shred vs. sort, and then get the sort boxes into some kind of order.

It's supposed to be 82 here on Tuesday. 48 on Thursday. This is how we get snow in May.

The air is clear, the late afternoon light is illuminating the valley beautifully, and for the first time I can see the entire valley in sharp, clear definition. It is glorious.

That sounds fantastic. Yay, medical technology!

That is great Susan. sounds like a good solution.

So, this is one of the houses we saw today, and we're a little bit in love. It's within walking distance of what passes for downtown Ossining (including the Metro North station and the brand new HUGE library), and really close to the elementary and middle schools.

The previous owners upgraded just about everything, so every room is cable/ethernet wired. The backyard is a really nice size, with a new patio. The two rooms on the second floor are perfect kid-size (but not tiny), and the master bath on the ground floor has a jacuzzi. The basement has one nicely finished room that would make a great home theatre, and one unfinished where the washer/dryer/etc are.

The only thing it's missing is a formal dining room. The eat-in kitchen is big enough for our family plus a few guests, and in good weather people could spill out onto the patio pretty easily, but hosting Thanksgiving might be difficult. (There are also no hotels close by, so if we did want to host my family for Thanksgiving most of them would have to stay in Tarrytown.)

Jessica, that looks really nice. it's similar to my friends' place in New City.