The Fourth of July Admin Pile

Mark took the kids to see the fireworks on the fourth. I said I'd meet them there and then just... didn't. I sat on the couch with my laptop and a glass of water and knocked out about two hours of property admin, and honestly, I'm not even sorry. The fireworks go off every year. That Naples to-do list was not going to wait.

We had a VRBO turnover at the Naples condo over the holiday weekend, so that cleaning expense hit the ledger. Fine, expected. But when I'm already in the app logging the VRBO turnover cleaning, I always end up pulling the thread a little further. The Hurricane Shutter Inspection schedule needed updating. The dryer vent had been on my radar, so I added it as a task and then immediately marked it complete because the service actually ran on July 4th. I like doing that. Add it, close it. The record exists.

The shutter maintenance came in two separate charges, July 2nd and July 4th. That's just how that contractor works; they bill in pieces. I logged both. That's the kind of thing that would have lived in my email as an "I'll sort it later" and then caused me a small crisis in December when I couldn't remember what we paid.

The Saint Paul Rental also needed some attention. A living room inspection got logged, the lawn care invoice came through, and I updated the Furnace Annual Inspection schedule while I was in there. That one I've been meaning to get on the calendar properly for a while. It's the kind of task that feels premature to think about in July and then somehow sneaks up on you in October.

Back here at Our Minneapolis Home, the visual schedules got re-laminated. I'd been meaning to do that since a corner started peeling in June. Eli uses them every morning and they needed to actually hold up, so I finally sat down with the laminator and did the whole set. Logged it as complete on July 1st.

I also scheduled his next OT session, which sounds minor but I'd let it slip for a couple weeks because summer scheduling is its own whole thing. It's in the app now with a completion date, which means I won't spend the next three days wondering if I actually did it.

None of this is dramatic. But that's kind of the point. The Naples condo runs fine in July because I'm paying attention to it from my couch in Minneapolis, in the middle of a holiday weekend, while my kids are watching fireworks with their dad. That's the trade-off and I genuinely like it.

The smoke detector in Maya's room got tested on July 1st too, while I was on a roll. Finally. That one had been sitting on the list since the June 19th post. No more.