Happy Thanksgiving Recovery Weekend

After two days of wonderful overindulgence in food and family, I am ready for a two day fast. I'm thinking of nothing but cereal & soup and a long list of chores to do around the house.

I am sitting here now, writing a charter application for a middle school, with one cat on my lap and another eyeing my keyboard. He thinks it's the best place in the house to sleep. I disagree.

The angel Gabriel is sleeping upstairs with GrandBob. He awoke at 5:30 a.m., starving to death. I fed him and he fell right back to sleep. Not me. I'm up, drinking coffee and reading about best practices in middle school education. Trying to convince my cats that they don't like me that much.

By some miracle, my house is, for the most part, clean. The weather is mild. I guess I don't have any excuse not to tackle the storage shed. It is filled, not so much with twenty years of junk, but all of my neuroses, anxieties and big plans.

If I throw away the pieces of fabric I cut out 15 years ago when I decided to teach myself to quilt, am I admitting failure? And maybe I should give them to the art teacher. At least the pieces that don't have cat pee on them.

Do I really want to get rid of the size 6 jeans I was able to wear for one week in 1985? Jeans never go out of style, and I could very well lose 50 lbs...

Oh well, I guess I have to face the incomplete craft projects, the disorganized boxes of books, and the jumble sale of clothes I've managed to ignore for 10 months, plus twenty years.

Onward... wish me luck... oh wait, is that left over killer mashed potatoes?

Fall Cleaning

Today we are cleaning and sorting the tax office. We are sorting files that we might need if the IRS gets a whim from the ones we will probably not need again, good lord willing and the creek don't rise. It is invigorating and exhausting. Right now, we are at the stage where the office looks worse than it did when we started, but by the end of the day, we will be organized and ready for the 2008 tax season.

I seem to be doing a lot of cleaning and sorting these last few months. It is probably very important, especially for me. I have trouble throwing things away. I have several bags of half-finished, slightly dingy needlework, crochet, and knitting projects. I have many bags of yarn and every size of crochet hook and knitting needle you would ever need... somewhere.

Yesterday, I found an Izod sleeper that my now 21 year old son wore when he was an infant. These little gifts are part of the reason I can't throw things away. I can't find my winter skirts, but I found this sleeper just in time to give it to baby Gabe.

I know I have too much stuff. Some of it is good stuff, but I can't find it. And when I do, it is torn, dirty or broken because it's been in a box or closet or ... somewhere.

I am not going to say that I will do better about getting rid of things I don't need and taking care of things I want. I am working on it, but all of the good intentions in the world aren't going to make me do it. So no more talking. Just doing.

Well, maybe a little more talking...