...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

14 July 17 -- Happy Bastille Day, or how I became a puffer fish.

Moving along, at a tortoise's pace, with the house. Every small thing is a victory, I guess. Recently I've been watching this Irish chick, Laura Hutchinson, on You Tube. Her channel is called How to Get Your Shit Together.  She's gotten a little theatrical lately, but I love her stuff, she's Irish and sweary and that's right up my alley. She's a big proponent of the KonMari method of "tidying," which really should be "decluttering," as tidying is dusting and hoovering and the day-to-day routines that keep your place tidy once you've found all the furniture and floors...

Apparently I'm late coming to the table on this, the book has been around for a couple of years and there are a kabillion and one videos on YT about how everyone's "KonMaried" their digs. But...if you're like me and haven't seen it yet it's called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. Even if you didn't know she's Japanese, you'd figure it out soon enough by reading. Among other things, she tells you to greet your house each time you come in and thank your belongings for their service...as you're shoving them out the door. 

I got the paperback version because it was the cheapest, I'm glad I did. I made notes in it, made it mine...and lent it to my daughter. But it comes in all formats from audio to hardcover. I haven't really started "doing" it yet, but the basic advice is sound. 1. take one category at a time (e.g. clothes); 2. take them all out and put them in one place; 3. handle each and every item; 4. decide if the item "sparks joy"; 5. if it does, keep it, if not, thank it for its service and discard 6. find a permanent place for things you keep.*

"Sparks joy" is open to interpretation, of course. For instance, your toothbrush or dishcloths are not going to "spark" any fuckin' joy...but you need them. Discard, or as Kondo keeps saying "throw away," is of course a multi-layered thing. Garage sales, charity shops, freecycle, Craigslist, etc....the last thing you want to do is actually bin it, and only if other options are not apropos for the item,. I have several options here: a creative reuse shop run by the city where they resell craft and art supplies to support the city arts program in schools; the Habitat for Humanity Restore, which takes all kinds of things; Freecycle; the hazardous materials depot for those cans of paint and bug killer you no longer need; and of course the good old stand-by: Goodwill. I don't use Salvation Army because of personal philosophies. 

This past weekend I took boxes of shit I'd decluttered to all those places--nothing freecycled or garage-saled, however.  It felt sooooo good, too.

I've been working on a project, making a china cabinet I got from a friend work for me and here's how massively stupid things had gotten. I found myself working on top of the washer and dryer and a little dresser because EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TABLE had shit two feet deep on it. I stopped and literally said out loud, "What the actual fuck? just clear off the tables already, what is WRONG with you???"   You don't know how tempted I was to just take my arm and literally sweep everything off on the floor. But then I'd just have a pile o'shit on the floor. Not helping.

I got stalled mid clear-off because I had to go clean mum's kitchen...that's a whole other thing, there...

I actually started this post because I woke up feeling just a tad nauseated and resolved to eat very little and as cleanly as possible today. I had waaaay too much sugary crap yesterday (omfg that cherry pie was delish); I'm not even going to test, I just don't want to see the number. I have also stopped taking both of my acid reflux meds, famotidine and pantoprozole. The famotidine was making me gain/keep enough weight as it was, adding the pantoprozole made me feel like a puffer fish, like overnight. 

So, today's program: tea and fruit, no fucking gerd meds (going with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a cup of cold water before bed--sounds counter-intuitive, but it works), and clearing those tables!

Cheers!

*ETA for the time being, I will have to treat each table, then each room as a "category."  More on this later.

The Devil in the Detail

I have punished myself for over 20 years...how and why you ask?

Well, the how is simple. I keep my house in an ungodly state of ....disarray? mess? chaos? shittiness?  which keeps me not only mentally unable to do the things I REALLY want to do, but physically keeps me from doing them, too.

Why?

Good fucking question, y'all.

I had this table nearly cleared off...and it is again, and in my defense, I was shifting things around trying to clear the BIGGER mess on my cutting table. *sighs* But this photo captures my world, my mind, the clutter that has become my life. I am not truly a horder...really... No...really! lol   But...I am a clutterbug. I can use all kinds of excuses, my ADHD, depression (erm...we know the clutter actually contributes to the depression, kind of a catch 22 sort of....fing...), because I work and have no patience/energy to deal with it when I get home...or maybe I'm just lazy...

But the root of it is my child mind doesn't think I'm worthy...yeah, it's the ol' lack of self worth rearing its ugly, pathetic, moronic head again.  I wish to kill it...yes...kill it.

I actually have cleared about 18" off the cutting table...woot.  Back for more...

Used art supply haul

I always do this to myself, decide to paint a wall or some such DIY thing that delays what I really need to do. But...in my defense, I want to get the walls painted before I start moving furniture around...so I don't have to move it around again. Logic, right?  Right??

So, I'm moving along, getting things done and for some unknown reason I decide to browse Craigslist...you know, scan the free stuff...meh, nothing catches my eye, then...oooh...art supplies!

So I end up with this total haul of used art supplies for 20 bucks: Pastels ( a LOT of pastels), couple dozen pastel pencils, brushes, close to 60 tubes of oil paints (many still good), pencils, blending stumps, small stack of paper, a stack of nice-sized pieces of canvas, a small tin of watercolours, a painter's box, several cans of fixative & retouch varnish, a bottle of Liquitex gesso, a jar of Golden gesso, a jar of Liquitex gel medium (never opened), two unopened quarts of odorless turpenoid, a half-full pint of Grumbacher turpentine, two jars of picture-hanging hardware, 4 palette knives (3 really nice Holbein ones), an ink brayer, an unused bar of castile soap, two large-ish baskets, a stack of art books, and an antique knife...oh, and a small plastic funnel (??).

The young woman I bought the stuff from said she got it from a friend and it had been his grandmother's.  This lady. The girl said she had taken a few things out, because "she didn't know what she was doing." I'm assuming she might have taken the better brushes, as the ones left were not the best...but other than that, I don't know.  Any one of the groups of things by themselves, the pastels, the stack of canvas, any 6 tubes of paint, the gessos and gel medium, or the painter's box, are each worth over $20. There are three tubes of Grumbacher in the original plastic cases, never opened, that list for $23.50, $29.45, and $29.45!

So, even If I were to give the brushes to Creative Reuse (I have a boat load of brushes) and the books, too, and throw half the tubes of paint out (I've already binned three of them)...I still came out like a bandit.

Many of the paints are no longer available, like the "Permanent Pigments" which became Liquitex. Liquitex no longer make oil paints, they have concentrated on acrylics. I remember way back in art class in high school, we dabbled a bit in acrylics and that was the only brand there was back then.

I can tell things have been stored: the oil paints have leaked out their oil in some cases, due to heat, and the brushes have been nibbled by bugs. I had that happen to some of mine....the little buggies love the boar bristles!!

So, even If I were to give the brushes to Creative Reuse (I have a boat load of brushes) and the books, too, and throw half the tubes of paint out (I've already binned three of them)...I still came out like a bandit.

It feels a bit weird, going thru all this stuff, sorting it, etc, as the lady's name is written on a lot of it, along with her address, but I think she'd be happy someone has her supplies and is using them. I took all the pastels out of the three original boxes Grumbacher portrait and landscape and NuPastel)  they were in and the other, random box the Rembrandt and Webers were in. I know some people like to curate supplies and keep the boxes and all, but I put mine in my pastel drawers--I hate having to go through various boxes to find the ones I need.

Several years ago--after not having worked in pastels for literally decades, I gave my collection to one of my best friends as she was into them at the time. I've slowly been building my collection up again and this increased it like, 3-fold.

I've also been thinking about working in oils again, but didn't want to spend the money if i decided I didn't want to keep up with it--good GODS paint has become expensive!!! I notice even Jerry's is slowly edging their prices up, and soon, like Bed, Bath, and Beyond, they won't be a discount place any longer. Tricksy.

Anyway, I bought a Gamblin medium starter kit (I just realised the little red box was not in mine 😡) and am really looking forward to trying my hand again.  This video explains the different medium types.

So...that is what has derailed the progress of house and studio this week. Tomorrow I have to make some embroidered streamers for work... So that will derail things for part of Sunday as well.

Please pardon the fuzzy pics...erg...

Basket O'Paints

Paint box w/palette and slots for boards. I'm probably going
to paint the outside of this, it's raw wood, but Ruth wrote all over it.

Brushes and palette knives. I really had to work to resurrect the
two larger brushes you see.

Stack O'Canvasses 

Grumbacher landscape pastels

12" Antique knife. Rather sharp!  Stamped "WILLIAM SANDERSON & SONS
BEST CAST STEEL SHEFFIELD" Dated to most likely mid-to-late 1800s. Crucible steel, and
very early type of plastic for the handle.

Gesso and gel medium

The long sticks are the NuPastels. The other are oil pastels my brother gave
me for my birthday in the 60s!!!

Pastel pencils

Top three sections are Rembrandt & Weber soft pastels, the bottom is
Grumbacher portrait pastels

Solvents and fixatives--those two quarts of turpenoid are worth over $20
by themselves. Just call me Zorro....

Trekking on...

I actually have been "making progress" (God, I hated when my mother would ask me, "Are you making any progress with your house?" A. Not your business, B. Are you 'making progress' with your nasty-ass house, and C. Would you ask any other adult that?) with the house, but other than get the top of the dryer cleared off, and a good start on my little desk in my room, there's not much to show.

My son and brother flew down on the 1st and then drove the boy's car car up to Lincoln. Junior Birdman and I went to the dentist on Thursday--I stayed home from work and we had lunch and hung out), then stayed in the cluster-fuck that is Austin traffic for over an hour trying to pick Hairy Mon up from work, and then another hour getting home. Austin has just gotten out of control...it's nowhere near as bad as other cities, but the influx of people from other places has just ballooned the traffic issue.  Our 'secret' route in the morning is now just as bogged down as I-35.

I give on on trying to give stuff away via Freecycle. I deleted by auxiliary blog that I kept for photos of things I was giving away. People are just eejits when it comes to picking things up. If I want something and they give me the address, by God, I'm there.  Anyway, picked up the perfect little table for keeping the pet food bin on. And yes, I said, I'll be there within the hour and I was there...and boom...home. The table works perfectly; I'll try to post a pic tonight.

Poldark is over for another year...thinking on a review of some kind....

*falls off the world for another month or two*

No...really...

New Adventure

This is the exploration of Gecko Hall (so named because of all the geckos around our house --and in it from time to time).

I'm hoping by putting this up here that I will be inclined to not only post about the progress I make (if any), but actually MAKE progress.

I apologise for the out-of-focus video. This camera is really old and I think it's about to get donated, maybe. I'd do better taking vids on either my Nikon or iPhone.

So without further ado...

Link to the video if this one won't play.

I cracked myself up watching the part about turning the light on in the studio...  what can I say? I'm easily amused.

xxn

http://www.unfuckyourhabitat.com/

www.flylady.net

WOYWW #160

Hi, y'all--some of you might remember the debacle that was my kitchen table and studio in WOYWW #159.  Well...I got the kitchen table all cleared off and a nice table cloth on it, and made lots of headway in the studio (more on that in a bit), but still had to draw on the table this week. I started doodling last night, thinking zentangles, but that's not exactly what came out. Oh, before I show you the new pics, click here to see the vid of my son's journal--I showed you the cover in WOYWW #158.

In the studio, I started consolidating fabric and gave away four empty bins (some fabric might follow). That has freed up a bunch of space; I have more to go, but when I'm finished I should have space for a lot of art supplies, files, etc. I'm also tossing and culling as I go, so don't worry that I'm hanging on to everything. One of the things I started was a fabric journal.  I used a cute (ack!!) little notepad with very nice, strong paper (that's not perforated!) I won as part of a goodie-bag door-prize YEARS ago. There were a few things scribbled in it, including doodles by my son, who was a toddler at the time. I just went over all that.  It's small enough I can keep in in my purse when I shop for notions and matching fabric, or if I have a design idea. I labeled flip-top bins, small IKEA boxes, and Roughneck totes with things like FABRIC 1, 2, 3, REMNANTS 1, PROJECTS, etc. and then everything is getting recorded in the journal, with the box it's in, a swatch, width, and the yardage, plus fiber content, if I know it (a burn test will tell you if it's cotton, silk, wool, linen, ramie, rayon, or some sort of synthetic). Now all I have to do is flip through the journal and pick a fabric, go to that box and Bob's yer uncle.

And this is the work desk...or main event, as it were, with my art journal piece in progress (99%). Mixed media, Pitt pens, water color, water color pencils, and gesso and glue (had a bit of a repair issue due to old miskit).

Hope you enjoyed the show! Mwa!

WOYWW #159

Hi, Madame B here. I forgot to mention last week that it was my first WOYWW post! (I was #178...posted on Thursday. Hee.)

We had a marvelous thunderboomer in our neck of the woods today--not all of Austin got rain--lowered the temp and watered the garden a bit. DEEE-lish!

Okay, I never had to go to confession, but I imagine today's post would be a harrowing experience in the confessional: Forgive me, for I have sinned. What is your sin, child? I have allowed a large, wonderful place to work and craft get so totally cluttered with schtuff, I've had to work in the kitchen. Ooooh...I'm not sure there are enough Hail Marys or Our Fathers to cover that, but your penance is banishment from all craft stores until it's tidied up!!

So, before you click the thumbnails of DHOOOM below, a bit of an explanation is due, I think. My house is one constant reno project and things get moved about all the time.  Pic #1 is my kitchen table, because of Pics # 2-3. My studio. *sighs* I had to move things in there and then they didn't get organized at all. Today I was home, giving Valentino meds for his nastily infected eye, so I attacked the studio and started organizing fabric and project bins. Actually made some headway, too. :)

When I came in the kitchen to sit a bit, I was gessoing odd bits of things to use as tags and journals...and playing Bubbletown on the computer. Any wonder I don't get more done?

These are thumbnails, click on them for larger pics!

Bonus Post-IKEA hack

This is to make up for not really doing a bona fide post yesterday. Way back, I bought a couple of Metro shelves at Sam's. At the time they were only $70. One went in my kitchen to pad out my pathetically small pantry (read: teeny weeny closet with some shelves). I made a table top thingy from nice birch plywood and the middle shelf relieved my counters of the microwave and toaster oven. The other Metro shelf went in my sewing area to hold supplies, etc.

So, one day when I was in IKEA...they had these really great lightweight cotton bedspreads, the Bomull series, for next to nothing. Sadly, they've been discontinued, but I snagged a few before they did. When you wash them, the fabric becomes wonderfully rumply and natural looking with defined ribs.

I took one of the bedspreads and cut it into panels and used IKEA's Riktig curtain clips to make a curtain around the bottom, hiding all the really ugly stuff.

So...this is what I made:

Getting your shit together, as it were.

This, right here, scares me more than anything. It's not that my house is like this—although if you looked at my garage, living room, or craft/sewing room/studio, at the moment, you might wonder (more on that later)—it's that I'm afraid of my house looking like this. Okay,  not the one with the kajillion cats or the 2500 "pet" rats. O.M.G. But just accumulating too much crap, shit...stuff you don't need. Frankly, I look at some of those houses and wonder just how...how....when did you start throwing the empty cat food cans in the bathroom, for God's sake?  And now they're two feet deep?  I lknow hoarding is a sickness and not an easy one to tame, but some of these places look like just plain laziness. But, I'm not the expert... (just an ellipsis abuser!)

I've always been a bit of a clutterbug. Somewhere, there's a picture of my room when I was in the 4th grade. Daddy was taking a pic of my little blackboard, upon which I had printed "EXOTIC HAIRDOS" (don't ask) and in the surrounding area are piles of kid stuff.  My brother got the neat genes, I got the clutteriffic genes. There is a reason, though. My mother took the time and taught my brother how to do it, and him being a tractable, amiable sort, took to it quite nicely. By the time I came along, 5 years later, her approach had changed, but also, me being the distracted, stubborn, ADHD* type...she would finally give up and just come in and do it herself.  That set a bad precedent, lol, but not at all my mom's fault.** I guess subconsciously, I just figured someone else would always bail me out of my clutter-prison. Sort of a Cinderella complex.

The weird thing is, I can organize the hell out of things...but let me get started projects? Oh...dear...  While I'm working on any given project, I'll think of a dozen other things I could ALSO do and drag the materials out to look at them, and then lose interest in all of it and move on to something else.  The ADHD has the weird affect of making you avoid things. I look at a pile of stuff and literally do not know where to start, so I go read a book. There's also the perfectionism theory put forth by Marla Cilley.  "You can't do it perfectly, the way you want to now, so you don't do it at all."   Between the ADHD and the perfectionism...oh, man.

This past weekend, my mother and I drove down to visit my aunt and uncle.  I won't use her real name, but Auntie Di is one of those pre-programmed, born-organized, never in a fluff kind of women you admire, wish to emulate, and hate all at the same time. There's never a speck of dust or anything out of place in her house. Ever. You can't catch her with her guard down. Her pantry is always stocked, her kitchen neat and spotless. She works her butt off in her own business, she and my uncle garden (we had a salad with winter greens they had grown themselves. In Texas!). Oh, wait...I forgot, her myriad plants were still sitting in groups by the garage, waiting to be distributed around the yard in their spring and summer locations--they'd just taken them out of the greenhouse.  *sighs*

If you're like me, you ask, "How does she do it?" Well, I'll tell you. Aliens. That's gotta be it. Aliens.

No, seriously. Here's the secret, as Marla's site will tell you: Routines.  I'd bet you a month's salary if I sat down and asked Auntie Di about her routines, she'd say, "yep, every day I do this, and once a week, I do this, and once a month this."  Because I know that if you clean before you see the dirt (or pile of crap), you'll never see the dirt. I also gave a lot of thought to the notion that you'd never, ever find Auntie Di sitting down playing a stupid-ass computer game for hours. She reads, she watches some TV, and she and my uncle have their cocktails on the deck at dusk...well deserved rest time. But I know that lady is up and doing things all day. And it shows. She's in better shape at almost 74 than I am at almost 60.

So, Auntie, you should be happy, because it's more you prompting me to get things cleaned up and organized than all those gruesome pictures of houses that should more than likely be bulldozed.

As to the rooms that need the most help, really only the living room has no excuse, except that I used it as a staging area for crap from other rooms while I was working on them...and so it hasn't gotten cleaned properly in a long time. This is open-heart admission, here, folks...but I still won't go into detail until I post the after pics. :)

*donning deep-shit diving gear now* If you don't hear from me in a week, call out the Texas Rangers...I've most likely gone down in a crapalanche.

 

*I was not actually diagnosed as ADHD until I was 49...and sure did 'splain a lot, Lucy.
**I've done the same thing with my son, it's easy to do without realizing you are.

Happy New Year and All That Jazz...

2012

Twenty-twelve.

It beleaguers the imagination.

I've been trying to figure out why this particular new year's has been so devastatingly depressing. I mean...for a long time now, new year's has been one of those days I try not to think about. Just another day, new date on the checks, etc., etc. You know, the new year...is. It's just the inexorable march of time. One more year I can't go back and salvage. And I ain't gettin' any younger, either. That's a huge part of it, I know. I'll be 60 this year.

60

SIX-ty.

Shit.

That, in and of itself is enough to make me want to jump off a bridge (if I weren't afraid of heights). Part of the disconnect is that I do not feel 60, hell...I don't feel 40, mentally. Physically, my body is a disaster zone. Physically, I feel like I'm 90 most days. All this BS about 50 is the new 30 and 70 is the new 40, or whatever...those spinners never lived in my body. 60 is the new 90. Bah!

Instead of chronicling what I feel the issues are (which sounds suspiciously like making excuses), I'm going to try to take a page out of the sunshine and lollipop spin and look at ways to make 2012 a better year. I mean, you know...just not sitting around being morose would make it a better year, right?

First up, I'm decluttering the house. It's a gargantuan undertaking, but I'm gettin' 'er done, by gosh. In that vein, I've decluttered Mdme B's space here. My previous theme mirrored the usual state of my desk (might have even been cleaner...but I'll never tell), but I've noticed most of the well-read sites are simpler, with white backgrounds.

Before you get all mushy and think this is a list of resolutions, don't. I don't do resolutions. They set you up for failure. These are things I've already been working on or need to do anyway, new year or not. It just seems like a good time to trot out the list since one of the things I'd like to get in the habit of doing is actually, you know, like...USING my web site--what a novel idea. Which reminds me of another one on the list. Setting up a time to write, every day, same time. I might actually get that novel done before I really am 90.

Dump about 80-90 pounds. Didn't say pounds of what, now did I? (Technically, I've already done this: in decluttering in the last couple of days, I've trashed, recycled, and donated well over 100 pounds of schtuff. HA!) But yeah...part of the feeling 90 thing is this extra couple of bags of mulch I'm carrying around. Hee. In order to clearly demonstrate what carrying weight on your body is like, I use the following analogy: you know those bags of garden dirt, compost, or mulch? Each one weighs 40 pounds. I can barely tote ONE of those around. And I'm carrying at least two on a small, 5'5" frame that wasn't intended to carry more than about 145 pounds at the most. TWO! No wonder my knees are going and my feet hurt so much.  (218 when I last weighed myself at work before the winter break, if you MUST know.)

Another thing I'm going to try for is consistency. Juliet said something about the moon's inconstant orb...but you know, the moon is rather consistent. Each month, she does the same thing, perpetually. I'm not sure I'd want to be quite that predictable--and boring--but one could do far worse than be as consistent as Lady Luna.

Getting back on track being a vegesaur. Several times over the holidays, whether it was just because I was tempted by some yummy-meat thing or because there really wasn't anything else to eat in the house, I've had things to eat which I regretted later.  Regretted either because of guilt or because they upset my system something fierce.  This goes along with actually planning some meals, doing shopping, and cooking! Gah...I have a teenager, for crying out loud, and I rely on my husband to cook most of the meals, but he doesn't make veggies and green things, so no one gets the nutrition they should. *slaps own hand*

One last thought on this is time spent on the computer. It is a very useful tool, when used properly, but I spend too much time on FB and playing games, and not enough time doing creative things with it. Posting projects and the like here will be a part of a renewed effort putting what little time I have left on this earth to good use. Believe it or not, I actually go days without checking FB, I don't twitter, or Google-group...but I still manage to waste an inordinate amount of time on teh intarwebs. I love googling ideas, items, history, pictures, etc. THAT can really eat up time, lemmetellya.

So. I'm off to clean that other catbox, start a back-to-work-and-school washing marathon, finish scanning a kajillion photos for my boss (he's paying me), bake two more loaves of banana bread, wash dishes and continue sorting and culling 20 years of crap that grew in my house  and wonder if clutter is like mold or a fungus...does it spread by spores?

Daily Horoscope

For my main home page, I have iGoogle. You can pick all sorts of fun widgets to clutter up your iGoogle page and one of them is a daily horoscope from Tarot.com. For the most part, it's like any other generic, one-size-fits-none daily horoscope. But lately, they've been hitting it eerily spot-on.  Today's is a prime example:

You may feel as if you are at a turning point in your life, but everything may seem bigger than it actually is. It will take months before your long-term goals clarify, yet the choices you make now will be instrumental in your new direction. Don't worry if you cannot put all your ideas into one practical package. For now, let your imagination flow without restraint; you can make sense of your thoughts later on.

Over the last couple of days, I've been determined to turn things around in my life, to end the cycle of downward spiral, clean things up, clear things out, lose weight, finish projects, etc. But my mind can't settle on one thing to begin with. Today I decided to take control of my kitchen. I've washed a ton of dishes, and am cleaning the fridge out (most of what was in there was nascent compost), wash it out and clean the floors and start the plan to paint and refurbish the kitchen.  Also, I want to work my way through the laundry monster that's taken over the laundry/cat area in my studio, and move ahead on getting my shelves back up in my bedroom.

Why the heck am I sitting here typing??

The House, so far...or confessions of the organizationally challenged.

We've lived in this house for exactly 20 years and 1 month (not counting the 4-5 months I lived in an apartment by myself, but that's a whole other story). It was built by a less-than-reputable builder, Nash Phillips/Copus Homes or NPC. Back while this subdivision was being built but before I'd heard of it, I was dating a guy whose mom lived in a fairly nice neighborhood in the south part of the city...why am I being coy? If you know who or what NPC Homes was, you'll know where I am, so what the hell. In South Austin, off of William Cannon. This boyfriend was the first person to tell me the other names for NPC: "Nails, Paper, and Cardboard" and "Not Properly Constructed." The year after we moved in here, a tax adjuster for Travis County said he had been one of the original owners in the little exclusive condo neighborhood attached to the bigger development of single-family homes. They had a HOA and tons of issues with NPC...he added the epithet "Never Pays Contractors."

After 20 years of living here, I've added my own: "Nothing Per Code." The sheet rock is cheap, too thin, and barely taped; none of the plumbing was installed correctly--we're still waiting to find the money to have the hall bathtub drain fixed (as in new stuff, properly installed), so we can replace the flooring in the greatroom--on long walls, there's only 1 duplex, instead of the 2-3 there should be; everywhere we've torn up flooring, there's been some cryptic message scrawled in black marker by an inspector "not plumb" with an arrow pointing to the wall, is my favorite. But the single biggest code whanger I've found was brought to my attention by the guy who bought the house next door. He's since sold and moved, but I remember one day, not long after he moved in. He was furious. He'd bought the small footprint, 2-BR house with the intention of adding on a second story, only to find out that the studs were 22 inches on center. If you're not the constructionly type...studs are supposed to be 16 inches on center. The builder saved about a third of the framing costs right there. My studs run 22-24 inches on center (and no rude jokes, please).

Since NPC went under, Nash Phillips came back and started Wilshire Homes here in the Austin area. As far as I know, they are very nice, well-built houses, in fact, we had looked at some up in Round Rock. Either he learned his lesson...or another thought occurred to me. Perhaps the people working for NPC were robbing the company blind, some sort of concerted effort by a superintendent, etc. to skim as much as they could. Imagine, if you will, NPC buys enough wood to properly frame out the entire subdivision. But the contractor, because he knows he's not going to get his money anytime soon...skims 1/3 of the 2x4s. That's a fair chunk of change, and in these cheap little houses, purchased mostly by first-time, low-income buyers, who's going to notice? Makes you wonder.

None of this really has much to do with my dilemma, except that the house is built of cheap materials which are now falling apart. Not horribly...yet. But enough that the house really needs work. Add to it my proclivity for STUFF and we have a problem. Add to it my total lack of energy when I get home and we have an even bigger problem. Add to that my ADD and ...well... Anyone who knows an ADD person knows that we tend to start a whole lot of things, but never finish them, which of course adds even more crap and inability to decide even where to start. My doctor, who's a sleep specialist (never, ever tell a sleep specialist you snore...), says he's not sure he believes in adult ADD.  eh...doc? So I guess we grow out of it?  Doc, that's like saying someone will grow out of their eye color. Supposedly, all my symptoms can be explained by sleep deprivation.  That's fine, but I'm not sleep deprived, as long as I actually go to bed on time. I also find it hard to believe that certain behaviors specific to ADD are caused by sleep deprivation.  Like starting a project or taking on a position in a group, and then losing interest, but meanwhile, you've gone gung-ho into it, and have all the tools, books, materials, etc. only to leave them behind...usually in a pile somewhere and start another project. Or, be working on a project and think about something else you could do with an item in your hand and go dig out all kinds of fabric, etc, to look at and then leave that out.  Then later, you want to clean up, but literally do not know where or how to start.  Inability to concentrate? Sure, I could give that one over to sleep deprivation...except that it's been going on all my life, and I've only been snoring since I got really overweight....

Any who...back to the house. In some regards, you could say I'm a type of hoarder. But I can throw things out, I can organize them, I can give them away...having the energy to do that and enough time to think about it, that's something else. Depression...did I mention that part, too?  Crap.  Well...and you can see just how easily I get distracted by reading this, yes?

This started out about my house and all that needs to be done...stayed tuned for part the second.