look, i didn’t mean to sound quite so mercenary.

it’s not really the *stuff*, per se, so much as the clean slate. sure, i like getting new things. doesn’t everyone? but putting a new face on old things can be just as satisfying. scrubbing everything sparkly clean, arranging things in different places, having the light hit things just so and seeing things with new eyes – all pleasing.

so it’s not as if i were having a flash back to my mall rat days (of which i had none). no, it was more wanting to see tangible changes in my own place, other than scattered messes which seem to have multiplied in the dark. i actually had a bit of a temper tantrum about my piggy little messes the other night, and felt very mature after that, let me tell you. how my brain thought pitching a fit would fix anything, i do not know.

still haven’t had a chance to change much at home, but i can see a few slots of time coming up wherein all that can happen, and feel calmer knowing that change is possible.

i also feel quite proud of what i did manage to get done last night. The Dane and i took on possibly the most satisfying home improvement project ever. well, okay. maybe not ever. but it sure feels good. we put up some peel and stick wall art – a wavy border, so there’s a road running all the way around the room, and all sorts of trains and planes and cars and boats on one wall. took a grand total of half an hour, at most. peel, stick, adjust, and done. (i do now have a greater appreciation for why my dad always cursed at great length whilst wallpapering. lining up those fuckers in the corners, and trying to get patterns to match? tough enough when it’s all removable.) and it was greatly satisfying to see the room transformed into a lovely kid space.

i’m really proud of how Little Monkey Boy’s room has come together. we’ve put some thought into making it a nice, kid-accessible space – short furniture, handles that are suitable for little hands, kid height laundry hamper, good lighting to keep away the boogie monster, a little night stand so he can reach the light when he wants to do so himself. and as pleased as i am about all of that (altho interior decoration will never be a second career for me), i’m even happier that Little Monkey Boy likes it. he’s opted to spend time playing in his new room – over watching cartoons! and a first for him – he was able to pick out all his clothes and get dressed on his own.

yeah. i’m sounding sort of ‘gushingly proud mom’, aren’t i? *shakes head* really couldn’t have told you a year ago that this is where i’d be. it’s been an interesting transition, that’s for sure.

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y’know, i think i may have put my finger on why i’m unreasonably cranky, despite having done and accomplished much this weekend.

i’ve been moving for a month, and my routine is changing… yet i haven’t gotten any fun new things for myself or gotten a clean start with my own things.

isn’t that always one of the treats of moving? it’s a pain in the ass, yes, and hard, dirty work. but you get a new place! and it’s a clean canvas! and you can buy a new trash can with a flippy lid! or replace your shower curtain, guilt free! and you can throw out old stuff and get new stuff!

yeah, i know. gratuitous use of exclamation points. but isn’t it true? all the things that are normally chores in your regular place all take on a new significance, and setting up the new abode is a pleasing, nesting sort of thing.

this time around, i’ve gotten all the dirt and not so much of the exclamation points. i willingly pitched in to help The Dane move, true. and i suppose for that reason i shouldn’t be grousing. but after a month of packing and sorting and slogging and de-mold and mildewing (went thru 3 canisters and 2 cans of rug cleaner, in addition to polishing off a whole jug of Febreze) and taking out trash, i go home and see a month’s worth of laundry scattered willy nilly across the bedroom floor, closets to be swapped out for the season, and a well worn canvas.

having put my finger on it, now i can do something. there will be several nights of cleaning and organizing to get the bulk of things under control, and then i think i’m going to spring for a house cleaning service to come in and scrub the place, top to bottom. and then i can come home to lemon scented cleanliness, and luxuriate in the absence of dust bunnies (frankly, i think i have a herd of bunnies named Tim living under various pieces of furniture at this point). i will recline in comfort on my sofa, with a novel and a cup of tea, and reward myself with chocolate bon bons. and all will be right with the world. 🙂

a little side … something: driving up north this weekend, i observed the highway crews cleaning up the medians and leaving careful piles of yellow trash bags, presumably for later collection. if i were to put all my trash in yellow trash bags and leave it along the median, would they get picked up, do you think? 😉 just a thought.

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i can’t decide if it’s a spoon day or a silver lining day.

i’m immensely frustrated, frazzled, overwhelmed, and completely incapable of dealing with chaos right now. i think my chaos meter has burnt out. and i’m too frazzled to even vent (for which you are most likely grateful, yes?).

on the other hand, Eddie Izzard tonight, with friends and family.

i’m working on seeing the silver lining.

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unconscious mutterings:

Country:: mouse

G:: Love and Special Sauce

Offer:: temptation

Connection:: speed

Quest:: Holy Grail

Lighthouse:: Cleveland Ledge Light

Sycamore:: Avenue

Inhumane:: animal abuse

Sneer:: Dudley Doright

Weapon:: missing

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*grumble* moving sucks.

don’t get me wrong – we still have a good system.

but my dream of everything growing little feet and jumping into boxes of its own volition, and then the boxes growing feet and scampering down the stairs? not so much happening.

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packing, packing, packing, keep those kids a-packing… *hums the gentle hum of insanity*

nah, it’s not really that bad. 🙂 but i am humming to myself, as the boxes fill up, trash bags go out, things are sorted and labelled and cleaned and dusted, and the moving itself hums along.

smartest thing we did, it seems, is sit down one night last week and assess the effort rather than just jumping in feet first. we walked thru the house, making a big room by room list, then pulling out action items (call brother #1, call brother #2, find a moving van by thus and such a date), and tacked it up on the side of the fridge. and the list was pretty specific, too. rather than ‘pack bedroom’, it was ‘sort closet – 2 hours’, ‘pack books – 3 hours’, ‘shit you haven’t used in 5 years – take to Goodwill’, ‘baby things – give to cousin’. two advantages to this: when the list was done, we could get a good idea of how long things would take and what to tackle first, *and* it was easy to see when a specific task was done. also, we’ve tried to stick to the rule that you don’t pick something up unless you know where it’s going. that way, you don’t have to handle things more than once.

lemme tell you – the list (all three pages of it) seemed daunting at first, but now it’s our best friend. there is nothing like the sense of satisfaction you can get from using a big fat marker to cross off one more thing done. we’re about 3/4 of the way thru, and it’s gone from three pages of black and white ‘to do’ to a fairly colorful assortment of ‘things done!’. and that’s a nice thing to see.

also exciting was finding the antenna for the stereo, because now we have hot and cold running music on tap! music, i find, is a motivational requirement for undertakings such as this. don’t you think? what’s your soundtrack when you have to get something done?

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unconscious mutterings:

Coat:: m’hat

Allowance:: weekly

Mist:: lake

Disorder:: chaos

Scheme:: get rich

Dick:: wad

Homework:: desk

Milton:: British

Shampoo:: cap

Z:: sleep

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*snurf* bleargh. i think i’ve swallowed my annual quota of snot today alone.

and aren’t you glad i shared that with you? *grin* as you may have noticed, The Dane sold his house the beginning of this week. yipee! and the closing is in about 10 days. not yipee! so. much sorting, organizing, planning of the attack, tossing out, packing, and (oh yeah) kicking up a tornado of dust. hence, an insane amount of sneezing. (The Dane is reading this over my shoulder, and his nose is dribbling in sympathy just reading. heh.) it’s been so bad that we’ve had to take occasional ‘wanna run an errand?’ breaks just to keep breathing. of course, there has to be a reason to leave the house, because with such a short runway, there really isn’t time to spare for much of anything. like, say, breathing. 🙂

anyway, it really is a yippee! moment that the house is going. Is must be dotted and Ts must be crossed, to be sure. and then there’s the Great Apartment Hunt. hey, if you know of a good place near the city, drop a line, would you? i’ve got to go hand The Dane another tissue and find one for myself.

*snurf*

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the friday five:

1. What vehicle do you drive?

Penny, my lovely Corrola. ten years old, a lovely bluey green, and all mine. she is a wonderful car, is Penny. i love her very much.

2. How long have you had ither?

i bought her by accident just over two years ago. best thing i never meant to do.

3. What is the coolest feature on your vehicle?

coolest feature is that she’s all mine. honestly. you go 34 years without a car. the charm hasn’t worn off yet. outside of that, i have to say the window crank on the driver’s door. it’s such a small thing, but it makes me happy. for a long time, it fell out intermittently because the plastic prongs were showing their age… and falling off. so sometimes the crank worked, and sometimes it didn’t, so much. finally asked my mechanic to replace it while he was doing some other work. and now, when i pull up to the garage in the morning and roll down the window to use my passcard, i smile. because it’s the little things that make me happy, sometimes.

4. What is the most annoying thing about your vehicle?

no sunroof. i wanna sunroof.

5. If money were no object, what vehicle would you be driving right now?

honestly, probably still Penny. Chica Bean and i were headed to a movie a few months back, and got to talking (as you sometimes do) about what you would do with all the money if you won the lottery. we both had some similar ideas (pay off debt, pay off family debts, set up trusts, hire a good accountant), but we each had our own ideas about where the rest would go. the one of hers that cracked me up then, and still makes me laugh, was this: ‘i wouldn’t buy you a new car, because you love Penny. i’d just give you some money to fix a few things, and then she’d be SuperPenny!’ have i mentioned lately that i love my best friend? many reasons why, and that’s just one of them.

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…aaaaaand we’re back.

amazing how a stomach bug can put you off your game. combine that with an IBS flare, and there’s really not gonna be any action for a few days… as you may have noticed. 🙂

i can’t really complain, tho. despite feeling sluggy (tho not as sluggy as the slug on my front walk the other day, who had quite recently become an ex-slug), i was alert enough to read some, catching up on local news (and adding another half dozen restaurants to the list of Places To Eat Someday), and watching every episode of Trading Spaces and Law & Order that my little heart desired. that, plus strat was quite pleased to have company after fending for himself most of the weekend.

and what a nice weekend, too. the hockey game was fun, and i think Little Monkey Boy enjoyed. plus, i got to see pretty much every famous hockey player i care to see, all in one place. and god love Michael J. Fox, who skated a great game.

better yet was the stint on the Sanity Machine. we got down there Friday night, and paddled out after dinner at a local haunt. funny how doing things in the dark (hush, you) turns all those familiar routines on their ear. much more challenging getting out and up and on and settled in. The Dane and the Cap’n and i sat around kibbutzing for a bit (after i’d satisfactorily arranged the lighting – never realized how fussy i was until The Dane pointed out that i’d arranged diffuse low level light *just like at home), then turned in for the night.

when we got up on Saturday, i had a moment where it seemed like all the other boats had left. really. it was that foggy. could barely see the next boat over (altho i could quite clearly hear a few other people knocking about and organizing coffee – amazing how clearly sound travels over water). we figured we’d go out anyway… and what a good choice. sun came out, fog burned off, weather was perfect, and it was just about the nicest sailing day all season. we ran out to Cuttyhunk for lunch, and even wandered around the island for a bit. i was initially kicking myself for not bringing my camera, but after soaking up the view from the top of the hill, out over the water on all sides, back up the Elizabeth Islands, over to the Vineyard, in perfect shades of beautiful blue and green with crisp white sails scudding around… i don’t think the camera was really necessary. that’s an image that will stay for quite some time.

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