...letters and a ...what?

So. As per usual, I’ve had all sorts of ideas to write about and have completely forgotten all of them. #stateoflife 

I’ve been wanting to start a YT channel. Well, I have a channel, it’s called “Murf’s Mess,” but there’s only a couple of random things on it. Two things keep delaying me. First, I look like Jabba the Hut’s old maiden auntie on camera (bad enough IRL, but on camera OMG!!! nooooo), second, the husbeast is almost always around and I feel self-conscious about doing a video whilst he’s home. He’s doing his own thing and does most of it away from the house. He’s gotten all into people who travel/live in RVs and their YT channels. He wants nothing more than to buy a high-roof Transit, fit it out for a 6’4” guy and go around the country, seeing the US.

Ugh.

As much as I’d like to see a lot of the US before I cack it, hotels are my preferred accommodations, tyvm.

So, what would be on my YT channel, you ask.  The title should be a clue. There are a kabillion and one videos out there about decluttering, the different methods to do so, people who think they’re hoarders (hahahahaha…even with my extreme clutter, I’m not a hoarder), people touting minimalism as a life-style, etc, etc, etc.

The methods I’m using are konmari from Marie Kondo’s TheLife-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering andOrganizing; Fly Lady; The Gentle Art of SwedishDeath Cleaning (here is one blogger’s recap in a nutshell but you can always find the book on Amazon), and various methods I learned from an online summit where they had 26 different “experts” talking about decluttering, getting healthy, managing finances, decorating, and personal style.  Plus…you know, I’m not exactly without brains….I think….

 

A couple of notes on the methods. Konmari focuses not on what to throw away, but what to keep, what "brings you joy" and what is useful. She has you proceed by categories. For instance you drag out all your clothes and go thru them one at a time, deciding if it brings you joy. If it doesn't, thank it for its service and give it a new life somewhere else. I added the "what is useful," because none of my clothes, for instance, give me joy, but giving them all away might be slightly problematic. I doubt if I will do a category at a time the first or even second pass through things, more like, a table top will be a category. Anyone who knows me, knows flat surfaces are not safe...just. not. safe.

The Fly Lady, Marla Cilly, has some very useful techniques for decluttering, like the 27-fling boogie. I extracted what I needed from her approach and left the rest behind. A lot of the email prompts and verbiage I really don't care for and now it seems more that she's all about selling her calendars, control journal kits, and cleaning tools than she really is about helping people. Your mileage may vary.

 

Reading further will tell you all you need to know about why I'm using the Swedish Death Cleaning thing. 

I can probably film any time, as the husbeast is usually back in his mancave, watching TV or videos. Then on Fridays when I’m off work, I can edit and do voice-overs. I might get in front of the camera just so I can tell the haters to fuck off.

I mean, yo, dudes, I have enough self-loathing for a couple dozen people, I don’t need any assistance, tyvm.

I have 28 years of accumulated crap, and not as if I didn’t have a shit ton before we moved into the house, and I was working on it, getting someplace, then my mum passed away in September.

To get a little perspective on why she was like she was—marginally a hoarder—you have to consider her history. Her dad lost the family farm in Missouri during the Depression, they lost everything, packed up what they had in a 1936 Dodge (I think) pick-up with a cover on the back. Either like a box or a sort of canvas affair…I forget and of course she’s not here to ask.  Then, in the early 70s, Daddy decided to live on a yacht. And all of her stuff was either given to me or put in storage. So then, he changed jobs and they moved to Cleveland…and basically she only had her personal things, papers, writing, knick-knacks, books, etc. They rented their furniture,  In about 1974, they declared bankruptcy, and she lost her cool car (which later in life she couldn’t even remember the make. FYI it was a 1969 Dodge Dart with a 440-4 barrel like this

I drove it a lot during my senior year in HS. 

Then…in 2005, Katrina hit and she lost everything that was on the first floor of her house. Books, artwork, furniture, clothing, and favoured items. Fortunately, all the photos and papers were upstairs. And bags of clothing, which my brother dutifully brought to her…except they were all the stuff she was getting ready to donate. *sigh*

A few folders of her papers were fairly well-organised. But only a few. My daughter and I went thru I don’t know how many little boxes and totes and baskets of bills, years old, paid, AND the envelopes they came in, along with flyers, receipts, years of monthly activity calendars from her senior apartment complex (not that she ever went to any of the activities, “they don’t like me, because I’m different,” well, yeah, Mum you are, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like you, they fuckin’ don’t KNOW you LOL). One plastic tub had those benefits books you get from insurance companies, you know, the ones when you get this year’s you throw out last year’s? Seventeen years of them….

I have been tasked by my uncle to find her genealogy notes and send to him. He’s been diagnosed with colon cancer and he wants to write his memoir, and would like all the info he can get on his family. I had one box of stuff set aside already because his grandson (my cousin’s kid) wanted to work on it and I was going to send it to him; but I know there’s more here and there in her stuff. I was going thru a plastic file box, filled with mostly letters, writing, memorabilia. Just to kind of outline the task, in one folder, about an inch thick, there’s her writing, my grandfather’s writing (often you can’t differentiate), letters, clippings, a greetings card or two….and the instruction manual for a lawnmower.

Right.

Now, to be fair, if I cacked it tomorrow, I would leave no less of a confusing legacy of mish mash crap.

That outlines the quest. My crap and her crap. I’ve been trying to get three rooms mostly decluttered, organised, and decorated so they will be havens while I’m doing the rest of it. The kitchen, my bathroom, and my bedroom. I’m almost there on my room and the bathroom. There’s still quite a bit of painting to do in the kitchen, but I’ve done a LOT of decluttering and have developed the habit of doing the washing up (almost) every night. The counters are clutter free, and it’s so bloody wonderful to wake up to and come home to a clean kitchen. I actually feel like cooking!

The other aim in all of this, besides finally getting everything painted and decluttered, is I’m moving my studio into the dining portion of the great room, and the half of the garage that’s closed in and is now my studio will become storage. When it’s just the two of us, we never eat at the table; if and when we get to the point where we can have anyone over, well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. There are several drawbacks to having my studio out in the garage: even though I had an AC vent dropped in, it’s too bloody hot for 6 months out of the year (hellooo, Texas), and too cold for about 2-3 months; there’s very little natural light; spiders love to nest in my fabric and art supplies; I’m too far from the kitchen sink (I wish I had one in the laundry area, but I don’t), and I’ll just have more room in the great room. The big Roughnecks of fabric I have in the actual garage will go in the storage area, along with a lot of other supplies and things I still need to go thru, and the family antique chairs and table my daughter wants. I used them for decades and just don’t want them anymore.

Enough for tonight. Eeeenuff already.

xxx

177 days and a wake-up.

That’s until my last day at my job. I’m retiring. I’ve had enough. More than enough, since I could have retired literally 6 years ago! But I’m also retiring in the nick of time before the right-wing state government fucks with our pensions (again). We’re one of the few states without an income tax, so any educational, health, and social programs are vulnerable  If you want to wade through this little jewel and figure out where most of the revenue stream comes from, be my guest. I mean, like, if you have nothing better to do with your time. (Education is already at major risk here, subject to the Right doing things like takingThomas Jefferson out and putting the likes of Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmeticsand Phyllis Schaffly in senior high history textbooks. 

A couple-three years ago, they changed the ratio of who pays what. I seem to remember when I first came to work, the state matched the individual’s contribution, but it seems it’s been going up and for the last two years it’s been 7.7% for the employee and 6.8% for the state. And it’s all pre-tax. I really wish they’d just gone ahead and taxed it so it would not be subject to the vagaries and whims of whichever party has us strapped over a barrel to be shafted at any given time. I hoping any subsequent changes to either the pension or Social Security have those of us over a certain age ‘grandfathered’ as it were.

I really, really need to start carrying a little notebook with me all the time. I keep thinking of things I’d like to write about and then when I go to write…*POOF* uh…what was I saying? Things like total rants about our current administration and the rich, white, male members of Congress who think they have the right to tell women what to do with their bodies, to cut all social programs for the poor and elderly….I mean, what the fuck do they expect people to do? Pretty sure their retirement plan for anyone worth less than $10M is to loan us a pistol, award an engraved, gold-plated bullet, and tell us to get on with it. At least we’d be able to take our retirement gift with us.

Another rant I have is against the likes of Paul Ryan. Yes, our esteemed (not) Speaker of the House, who used social security funds that were not his to pay for his college and ever since has been out to kill the program. You got yours, eh Paul, and fuck the rest of us. In addition, they give a huge tax break to people/corporations who already don’t pay their fair share, then suddenly it occurs to them they military budget can’t be funded, so they propose taking $266 BILLION from Medicare.

If you are old, of colour, Hispanic, Gay, female and/or a recent immigrant and voted for Trump or any one of his ilk, you seriously need to cop onto yourselves. Seriously.

I should be keeping up with Stonekettle Station. Jim Wright writes what is probably the most well-researched, knowledgeable, and cogent blogs about the political scene in the US 

The man can write.

I just tend to rant and fume and imagine shouting SHUT THE FUCK UP a lot at them. In the end, I don’t think they can really comprehend what either one of us is saying, but it feels good to scream FUCK YOU at an imaginary Mike Pence or Paul Ryan. Trump would take it as an invitation, I believe, so I don’t shout at him.