All right. I admit it. I completely forgot yesterday was Thursday. Even though I received a call from R saying it was his last day of skiing and today would be about packing and driving. In fact, as sad as it seems, my last thought before crashing into bed (at 3a in the morning—darn history channel and its fascinating fare…) was oh no—I missed 8Things today…I have to remember to check out the Magpie first thing in the morning. Which, actually, is exactly what I did—and then…I became distracted by other things…yes…I’m having a week here…spike tv plays CSI – darn near all day…how can I, who have missed too many seasons, resist the lure…Ok, fine. So I also managed to finish up some transcription—which the writing of my sources today is the real reason I sat up last night for so long after the bit about the escape and suicide of John Wilkes Booth (yes, the dude who shot President Lincoln…) At least I am not completely ashamed on my self-induced paralysis today.
I read Rachelle’s list today and ….pieces of it made me cringe, recoil. Sell my books? My books? We have fourteen 72 inch tall bookcases, three smaller bookcases of various sizes, and piles of books in darn near every room…especially every bedroom. Not to mention, the books I have at R’s house as well…It’s February…did I not say something earlier this year about not ordering books for the rest of this year, unless absolutely necessary? Always have to have that caveat in there. Well, yeah…like that lasted. Heck, in the last two days alone I have ordered no less than ten books…mostly on autistic subjects…but not all of them. What is worse is – I’ve gone through my books…gone through the kids books…I have probably gotten rid of more books in the past two years than I had in the decade before that. I have even just…gasp…given books away to friends…without the small niggle of hope that if push comes to shove I could possibly borrow said book….
But this list isn’t supposed to be about the things I am afraid to let go of…even as I am more than willing to say that I HAVE downsized our libraries…even as I continue to build them…hey….garden ridge had a 50 cent book sale—and I forced myself to walk away before I really loaded up on the biographies and everything else I saw there…I only spent $10 on books for the kids and me…where do you think I found ‘Fierce Food’? That for me is really good.
“…a list of stuff of which we could have less.”
Funny, this I have had in my head for a couple weeks now. I have merely refused to go home and do it—I’ve had too many things to put together and arrange.
1. First on the list: clothing. Four years ago, I swear to you, my wardrobe was twice as large as it is now. I know why I hoard clothes. I understand that part. And ‘I’m a girl’ isn’t going to cover it. This is one of the things that truly struck me while I was reading ‘Entre Nous’ is the desire for quality over quantity. You have one dish that you can cook really well. You have one little black dress in which you can go through a variety of engagements. Closet space is a premium. Now, I have gotten rid of so much…so many things…but I have plenty of room to get rid of more. And I plan on it as well.
2. Uhm…uhm…uhm…struggling already…not because I don’t have a list…but more because I have been in the process of implementing my list...I have cut down on emails, newsletters, advertisements…during the move, I cut my online interactions down to nil so I wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed. I am still working to get back to visiting only the blogs/sites I truly enjoy on a regular basis…I am not missing any of the things I have done away w yet…
3. I am planning to cut back on freaking facebook time though. It’s getting morbid. I hadn’t realized I missed so many people. I read through the list of people that I went to high school with, just the people in the class I should have graduated w, and read who died…and one name in particular, a guy I never really liked, never really disliked, his name, his face, keeps coming back to me. It makes no sense to me. I love being able to find people. I love being able to connect to people. But, jesum crow, man, I hate wading through so many things in order to find what I am looking for…and if I start looking at one thing, it’s sort of spirals as I read this, or go there and check out that photo, or take this quiz…or try to figure out why I care so darned much whether my crops have grown or not…
4. Facebook is not my only time suck. Look at the beginning of this email. Right now, I am sitting in front of the tv as I type this, because I am listening to the darned history channel and their tale of Lincoln’s body. I have an addiction to biography and auto-biography…I love history…I love learning…but…at least I am able to work while the tv is running…because I can listen to the tale while I am working…this is how I study…something in the background that I can tune in and out of…while applying myself to other ends…but the tv on as soon as I wake up and then staying on til bedtime (there’s lots of time in between when it is not on…but more or less, if I am not moving, the tv is one…because there is no stereo here…at my house, the tv is off and the radio is on most of the time…but at least w the history channel, we do get to learn things as we go along…). The tv has to stay off more often…not that I have a real problem w that myself…and I know when R returns the need for that noise in the background will fall farther away from me as well…
I had no clue that February is Lincoln month on history channel. It’s almost better than shark week on discovery channel. I love this stuff.
5. Ok, so this is getting harder. When I moved, I went through dvds, dishes, kids’ toys, paperwork, the random piles of my life…every little thing was gone through, sorted, persecuted, eliminated, discarded, and set free. I cannot claim that there isn’t still plenty to go through. I still have junk boxes sitting there. The boxes of miscellaneous things that …well…don’t really fit in anywhere else.
6. Does it count if I say I want to minimize the dog fur everywhere? Oh, when I stop laughing at that, I might just cry. A chow mix, the old man gimp along. The German shepherd, who simply sheds all year long. And…the frakkin’ border collie mix. I did recently, ahem, trim her rump fur—and remove 85% of the fringe that she calls a tail. I will spare you the reason behind it and whatever she had rolled in or sat in that was embedded in her fur…border collies and their two billion layers of fur. I gave the butthead a bath, to remove whatever it was in her fur—and still ended up having to cut it out of her fur—and found the fur underneath—that I had had a jet of warm water hitting and saturating for more than 15 minutes and that I had been rubbing dish soap into for five minutes—the fur underneath where I trimmed was bone frakkin’ dry—and that fur is a good 2-3 inches from her actual skin. I did not want a fur ball dog. I had a German shepherd before this—I had cats before this—long haired cats. I want something like…a boxer, a Doberman, a greyhound. It can shed as much as it wants…but it’s short and fine and when I wash the dog I can actually get the water down to the skin without fighting….sigh.
7. I’ve minimized my work hours, tightened up my schedule to include more family time…and writing time and art time and whatever time I want…minimized my commitments and obligations…I’ve long ago brought my running around errands down to a more manageable banter and centralized my shopping down to certain areas. Which, in an effort to stop spending so much on art supplies, ordering my hobby lobby stuff online—and believe me, that is way cheaper for me.
8. Oh, I nearly forgot. There is no way I am giving up yarn—although, yes, I do tend to donate and give yarn away whenever asked—it’s not as if I don’t have enough….but I have randomly collected knitting needles every since I started knitting…from bamboo to metal to plastic to whatever I can find…I have to sort through all these needles—and find out who needs some. I always manage to hold some back for the kids…and now for R as well…the only ones I don’t use that I won’t let go of are the antelope horn circulars. I love the needles, but the cable is a string of leather—and it sucks.
My ‘big plan’, if I have one, is simply to keep paring down and keep paring down and to start making use of what I have…since I know I have more than enough.
Wait…I do have my one extra. Do you have any clue how many canvas bags I have, not just cloth grocery bags, not just the knitted or crocheted ones, not just the ones I have collected over the years, not just the backpacks….but all these other things I have…currently on the floor of the hallway in the basement as I have yet to find another place to stick them yet…not much of a thing…but I swear I have over a hundred bags—and they are not all grocery bags or knitting project bags or school bags…and in fact, when we moved, there were all too many of them that I kept in case we might need them. Dude, we didn’t use them when we moved—they were in the attic the whole time we lived there—we weren’t going to use them then—we aren’t going to use them now.
And, yes, maybe I should put minimizing my verbiage on my list as well, huh?
