This was a very busy and tiring but ultimately productive weekend.

On Saturday, we got ready, ate, fed Miranda, and managed to leave the house before 9 to drive to Raleigh to pick up the cargo van we’d rented to haul the last of the trash and junk from my old townhouse. Once again, I got to drive the giant van! Whee! We drove to my old place and loaded up the van with about 25 bags of garbage, my old rusty deck furniture, gross old litterboxes, and other assorted junk. We managed to fit everything into one load and headed for the dump. When we got there, the long line of waiting cars was a bad sign, but it wasn’t until I’d finally backed the van into a spot near the compactor that the operators bothered to tell us that the equipment was down and wouldn’t be running again for at least an hour and a half. Great.

At this point it was about 11, so we got back on the road and called my parents to invite them to lunch nearby. We stopped at Kohl’s to buy me a few belts to hold up my still slightly too big maternity jeans, and then ate a nice lunch at Courtney’s with my mom and dad. It was around 12:30 by this point, so we drove back to the dump for attempt #2 at emptying the van. We were greeted once again by a long line of cars, but this time people were busily flinging stuff into the compactor, so we settled in to wait our turn. Once a spot freed up, we unloaded the van in record time and headed back to the car rental place. We squeaked in just before the 2pm closing.

After that, we headed back to my old place to fill up my car with stuff to take home and for Goodwill, and made a long trip home via Goodwill, Barnes & Noble (for magazines), Earth Fare (for Miranda’s favorite cat food) and then to ATC, where Jag had left his car overnight so we could drive to Geek Beer together the night before. We drove home separately; I stopped at the grocery store and Jag stopped at a friend’s house to drop off a little gift, and then we collapsed at home. I was in bed by 9:30.

Today I filled up some plastic storage bins with quilting fabric as part of the Great Craft Room to Nursery Conversion Project, then spent several hours in the study cleaning out filing cabinets and shredding old bills and checks from as far back as the mid-90s. I had to empty the shredder bin 4 times, and I’m not even close to done yet. On the positive side, once I’m finished I’ll finally be able to unpack my boxes of office supplies and financial records and clear up more space to move in all the crafting stuff.

The weekend wasn’t all bad; we took a nice walk this morning, and I gathered a handful of adorable tiny green acorns to put around my fairy door.

I had been craving donuts all morning, so after our walk I drove us to the only Dunkin Donuts in Durham (all the way down at Erwin Terrace) and sent poor Jag in to get my fix (I hadn’t showered yet!).

Mmmm, vanilla creme.

I had planned on making something nice for dinner, but in the late afternoon I started jonesing for good french fries with mayonnaise (I know, very healthy cravings here), so we jumped into the car again and headed down to The Federal. I got my usual, pork carnitas, and, um, a side of fries. At least the pico, guac and lettuce weren’t too bad for me.