Not General Sherman

Working on the outside of the house makes me a little bit crazy.  Crazier, I mean.  I get out there where the whole world can see me and I feel like I have to make huge progress every day or I'm a total failure.  Then the haters start showing up to tell me that I can't do this or I shouldn't do that, so to prove them wrong I work even harder.  A little bit of that attitude is good.  A lot of it, and I start to become General Sherman during his March to the Sea.  I develop a scorched earth policy towards anything and anybody who's in my way:  old paint, sleep, talkative neighbors, weather, my friends, nightfall....and what ends up happening is that I miss out on fun things with my friends, I become sleep-deprived and then get sick, and I aggravate my old shoulder injuries.

Well, this year I have decided:  I am not General Sherman.

That means I'll still work hard on the house, but I'm going to spend more time with my friends and family, more time talking to my very cool neighbors, and more time porching.  And I'm not going to feel bad about it.  I tried out the Anti-Sherman Plan for the first time this past week.  My house looked like this on Wednesday morning:

I went to Hilltop Farm & Greenhouse with my mom twice, spent most of a day with her after learning one of her friends had passed away, ate supper with my son and daughter-in-law, talked to my favorite neighbors Floyd and Gwen, cleaned my house, slept until noon every day, planted some flowers, went for walks with White Trash Bob, sat on the front porch or the back patio quite a lot, and had movie night with the furbabies.

And by Friday evening the house looked like this:

Could I have gotten more than that done in three days?  Probably.  But I wouldn't have had as much fun.  I like having fun more than I like finishing up the house in record time.

Besides, nobody in Savannah liked General Sherman anyway.