In many ways, I'm putting my life back together. There are so many projects around this house that I had intended to get to at some point in the last three years, but for one reason or another I just never got around to it. Painting the bedroom. Scrubbing down baseboards. Untangling the mismatched pile of wreckage that is my office. These things were further derailed this spring when my birth mom decided to finally make good on her talk about moving up here... which you can guess didn't work out so well by the last post.
More stuff got piled into the office while she was here, and the level of disorganization is epic, if you ask me. I had kitchen utensils in my second-floor office, for crying out loud. This room is sort of a metaphor for what's been going on in my mind for a few years. A gradual pile up of things from old lives, some still useful, most not. I'd keep the door to the room closed all the time if it weren't for the cat who pries the door open to sun himself and to barf on the floor. So, it's a room of clutter and cat barf stains on un-sealed wood floors with dreadful beige paint and a tan ceiling. Worst. Room. Ever. But I decided to tackle it for the month of September. My thought process being that if I can unclutter and control a space, perhaps I can better control my thoughts and regain my focus. Because being in this rut sucks. I have things I need to do and just can't get moving because I keep circling back to this room. This one room.
Ahem. The office project. Yes.
Has a great ring to it, right?
So, the grown-up books all live in the office on grown-up shelves, and it's taking shape wonderfully. I'm gradually moving the flotsam out into a pile of garbage in the hallway neatly tagged and bagged for whatever mode of disposal (garbage, goodwill, recycle, shred) and unpacking the old dresser that's served as an inefficient supply cabinet for the last two years into nice little baskets on one of the bookshelves. Order is happening as chaos is simultaneously created by sifting through each of the copier paper boxes in the room. My crafting stuff found homes on top of the bookshelves. My sewing tackle box also went up and overhead. The whole wall is becoming an OCD masterpiece where even my husband will be able to find things!
It WAS all going good, anyway. Then I found the box marked "Lorelei's Artwork" in big, loopy letters. Not my handwriting. Hell, I haven't had artwork in years, I either realized that I had limited talent and stopped doing 'art' or I realized that nothing I made was really worth keeping and ditched it years ago. So, it had to be left over from Her being here. So, I unwrapped miles of newspaper in the box to find several ceramic projects of mine from middle school, an acrylic rendering of a still life involving rope, a horse skull, and two horse shoes- kinda odd composition. Then there was a layer of more newspaper. Then a ziploc bag containing newspaper clippings from her father's/my grandfather's funeral. Then a stack of pictures marked "Return to Randy" (one of her many exes). Then a few documents pertaining to a divorce and a pocket calendar from 1994-1995. Pivotal timeframe for me. So, I opened it.
Inside this calendar, I saw the exact dates for all the strange crap that happened in her final months with her fifth husband. And now it makes sense. Lovely.
More stuff got piled into the office while she was here, and the level of disorganization is epic, if you ask me. I had kitchen utensils in my second-floor office, for crying out loud. This room is sort of a metaphor for what's been going on in my mind for a few years. A gradual pile up of things from old lives, some still useful, most not. I'd keep the door to the room closed all the time if it weren't for the cat who pries the door open to sun himself and to barf on the floor. So, it's a room of clutter and cat barf stains on un-sealed wood floors with dreadful beige paint and a tan ceiling. Worst. Room. Ever. But I decided to tackle it for the month of September. My thought process being that if I can unclutter and control a space, perhaps I can better control my thoughts and regain my focus. Because being in this rut sucks. I have things I need to do and just can't get moving because I keep circling back to this room. This one room.
Ahem. The office project. Yes.
Has a great ring to it, right?
So, the grown-up books all live in the office on grown-up shelves, and it's taking shape wonderfully. I'm gradually moving the flotsam out into a pile of garbage in the hallway neatly tagged and bagged for whatever mode of disposal (garbage, goodwill, recycle, shred) and unpacking the old dresser that's served as an inefficient supply cabinet for the last two years into nice little baskets on one of the bookshelves. Order is happening as chaos is simultaneously created by sifting through each of the copier paper boxes in the room. My crafting stuff found homes on top of the bookshelves. My sewing tackle box also went up and overhead. The whole wall is becoming an OCD masterpiece where even my husband will be able to find things!
It WAS all going good, anyway. Then I found the box marked "Lorelei's Artwork" in big, loopy letters. Not my handwriting. Hell, I haven't had artwork in years, I either realized that I had limited talent and stopped doing 'art' or I realized that nothing I made was really worth keeping and ditched it years ago. So, it had to be left over from Her being here. So, I unwrapped miles of newspaper in the box to find several ceramic projects of mine from middle school, an acrylic rendering of a still life involving rope, a horse skull, and two horse shoes- kinda odd composition. Then there was a layer of more newspaper. Then a ziploc bag containing newspaper clippings from her father's/my grandfather's funeral. Then a stack of pictures marked "Return to Randy" (one of her many exes). Then a few documents pertaining to a divorce and a pocket calendar from 1994-1995. Pivotal timeframe for me. So, I opened it.
Inside this calendar, I saw the exact dates for all the strange crap that happened in her final months with her fifth husband. And now it makes sense. Lovely.
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