Coolest Card EVAR!

Check this out!  I got the coolest card in the mail today.

Does that not just rock?  I think this one is going to have to go on my permanent magnet board, once I get the damn thing hung again.

In other news, I don't have much news.  I'm reading A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant, which is pretty amazing so far.  There's been a lot of buzz about this one, and if the rest stays as good as what I've read so far, it will be totally deserving.  I'll let you know how it goes.

I saw on twitter that Candace Havens is getting ready to run another Fast Draft class, and I'm seriously considering signing up.  Has anyone taken it?  Any advice?  Apparently the idea of the class is that you're supposed to write 5,000 words a day, so at the end of the two weeks, you should have a 70,000 word first draft.  That's one unusually long m/m romance, or quite possibly two average-ish length ones.  I'm not sure if I'm up for that kind of pressure, but it sure would be a kick in the ass to get writing.  And the class is only $20, so it's not like it's a huge financial investment.  (Although a significant time investment if I'm really going to do it.)

As far as the rest of my resolutions go, the cleaning one isn't going exactly as I planned, but I am making progress.  Today was trash day, and I managed to ditch a whole trash bag full of crap.

I have the next knitting project for myself planned out, but I'm trying to wrap up a few ongoing projects before I start it.

The "read less" resolution is in the toilet.  I looked at my little red book, and as of the first of the year I only had 295 books to read to reach 1,000 since I started logging them.  I think I'd rather hit 1,000 this year, so 295 is my new goal.  I have, however, managed to not buy a book for 5 whole days.  That's pretty good for me lately.

Let's see.  What else?  I haven't done any exercise since that little bout on the Wii last week.  I haven't bothered with the picture a day thing, either, although I'm still enjoying taking pictures with my Samsung thingie.  Mostly of the cat.

I think that's everything new and interesting.  Or even not so interesting.  I'm not even wearing any lip balm today!

This is a Little Embarrassing

As I mentioned the other day, I'm getting started on my 2012 New Year's resolutions.  (Why wait to make positive changes in your life, right?)  So, I'm going to kill two birds with one stone here-- post some pictures and talk about the cleaning and organizing I need to do.

Here they come, the embarrassing pictures.

This is the giant pile of crap that completely blocks access to my closet.  There are a couple of tubs and boxes on the bottom, with clean clothes, yarn, shipping boxes, and God knows what else in the mix.  I haven't measured it or anything, but it's probably 5 feet long, 2 feet deep, and waist high at one end.  This is probably my most daunting challenge.  A lot of this stuff needs to go into the closet, somehow.  But I can't *get to* the closet with the pile in the way.  And I don't have the energy or the space to move the pile so I can get to the closet and put it all away.  It's a conundrum.  But I'll figure something out.

This is one end of the pile, and also the little table I use as my nightstand.

This is the other end of the pile, as well as my dresser, which is thoroughly cluttered and covered in about a quarter inch of dust.  On the positive side, you can see my Christmas cards hanging on the door!

This is the set of plastic drawers that I use as my other nightstand.  See the pink/white/black thing under the tissue box?  That's the sack sock I mentioned a couple posts ago.  It's coming along nicely!

As you can see, the whole room is piled, packed, choked with stuff.  Part of the problem is me.  I have a hard time letting go of stuff that I think I might need.  Or I set something aside, and then it disappears from my mind.  It just doesn't exist for me anymore.  It does, however, continue to collect dust for the next 6 months until I finally throw it away.

But a really big part of the problem is I have no organizational tools or system.  That blue tub at the bottom of the first picture is filled with CDs.  But I have no place to put them.  There are two or three boxes of books taking up space on the floor of my closet, but I have no shelves to put them on.  That big ol' dresser?  Holds a lot less stuff than you might think.  (But to be fair, I really need to go through some of it and either pack it up for winter or just let it go all together.)

I haven't started doing my one song of cleaning a day.  I was thinking about doing that today, but I did 11 minutes on the Wii instead (first time in *months*), and between that and MTX day, I am pretty well worn out.  But I have started thinking about how I want to arrange things as I get them put away.

Shelves and such are not an option right now.  The room desperately needs to be painted (the walls are scuffed up and full of nail holes, and one wall is painted a horrible gray-purple), and I don't want to put anything big and heavy in the room that will have to be moved to get to the walls.  And since it's January, it's going to be months before the weather is really appropriate for painting.  I'm looking at probably 6 months, minimum, before I can put in shelves.  (Also, I want to put in some sort of entertainment system to hold my TV and for storage.)

All this listing of what's wrong, and what I need and can't get right now is starting to feel like a novel.  A long, boring, Russian novel.  Something by Turgid.  (Points to anyone who gets the reference!)  I think I'm going to leave this here and come back tomorrow with what I see as my specific requirements for my room, and what I'm going to try to do to meet them in the short run, even if I can't have my dream room right now.

Lip balm of the day: Pick Me Up Peach!  (And boy did I need it.)

In Flux

I don't know about you, but for me the week between Christmas and New Year's is always an odd one.  The old year is over, but the new one hasn't started yet.  It's a time for wrapping up old business and gearing up for the new.

For the old business, I'm mostly making sure that my book and knitting records are up-to-date, bills are paid, that kind of thing.  Reading the last of the holiday stories-- tonight's is Carol of the Bellskis, a m/m Hanukkah story.  And wrapping up a stray knitting project-- a hat made from the leftover yarn from my brother's Christmas socks that I intend to donate to a local homeless shelter.

For new business, I've started my first knitting project for myself.  It's this sack sock to collect all the random plastic bags that I keep finding all over my room.  (For someone who rarely leaves the house and shops almost exclusively online, I have a shocking number of plastic bags floating around the place.)  (Bonus, it will help me keep my room clean!)  I've picked up a couple of songs that inspire me for the beginning of a writing soundtrack.  I'm not working hard yet, but I'm poking in that direction.  And I've got my eye on a reading challenge over at Goodreads that should help me control the ebook buying issue.  I felt like crap today (monthly surge in symptoms, plus I'm just worn out from the past week or so), so no activity whatsoever, and no cleaning.  I think I might need the same for tomorrow.  But Wednesday, look out!  I'll poke around and do something or other.  My favorite Wii game encourages me to compete against myself, to always go just a little further, so once I get into it again that should help keep me motivated.

So, progress.

And with that, I will leave you with a picture.  I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I came back I discovered someone had stolen my spot.

It's a little hard to tell, because the bed is so cluttered.  But that green thing is the hat, almost finished then, and completed now.  There's also a cone of white/black/pink yarn that I'm using to make my sack sock.  I'm getting an interesting swirling stripe effect as it knits up.  I'll take a picture in a day or two, when I'm further along and it's easier to see what's going on.

'Night, all!

Oy

My mother is subject to... enthusiasms.  She gets an idea in her head, and suddenly she's off and running in 15 directions.  (Of course, I am, too.  But in me it's fun and charming.)  I wouldn't mind if it was just her.  But when Mom gets an enthusiasm, she drags Dad and I along after her, whether we want to be dragged or not.

Her latest enthusiasm is to have a garage sale.  She decided on it just this past weekend.  We're having it on Thursday.  Never mind that there's probably enough shit junk crap stuff in the garage for a professional auction house to come in and do an estate sale.  Apparently, we're going to do this one small stack of boxes at a time.  I'd be overwhelmed with joy if we could just get Goodwill or someone to come empty out the garage.  Take it!  It's free!  But no, this is all precious shit junk crap stuff, and must be sold for top dollar.

I understand, to a certain extent.  There are antiques and such in there.  Mom and Dad have somehow become the storage repository for all of *their* parents' stuff.  (Even though they both have siblings who could have, and should have, taken responsibility for some of it.)  Mom sees it all as a potential source of extra cash-- which we could certainly use.  But what Mom insists on being blind to is the fact that she lives with two people with exhausting, chronic diseases.  I can't speak for Dad, but as far as I'm concerned, the energy expended in this ridiculousness is not worth the measly buck seventy-five we're going to make on it.  A good garage sale requires preparation and advertising.  Since we're doing this last minute and on the fly, there is time for neither.  Her goal is $50.  Fifty dollars for days worth of work, and if we're lucky we'll gain an extra 2 square feet of space in the garage.  Sigh.  Considering what she's willing to part with (barely), I think we'll be lucky to get $10 out of it.

What I haven't been quite willing to tell her yet, is whatever she doesn't get rid of now, I'm tossing when she's dead.  A few sentimental items?  Sure I'll keep.  But I'm not hanging on to boxes of "antique" linens.  Furniture.  For God's sake-- there are still baby clothes in there!  (My brother and I are both in our 30s!)  I don't want it, I don't want the hassle of it.  It's gone.  If we could get rid of some of this stuff now we'd all have a better quality of life, and my brother and I won't get stuck with the burden of disposing of at least two generations worth of junk when they're gone.  Mom complained all last winter that they couldn't park in the garage because it was completely full of boxes and junk (stacked 7 feet high, with only a narrow, take-your-life-into-your-hands, walk way).  Dad has lumber in there that we moved to Indiana with us when we came here the *first* time.  That was 1989!  He won't let go of any of that, either.  It's not just Mom who is clinging to this crap for all she's worth.

And what really frosts my cookies is that Mom suggested to me last night that I go through the two-- two!-- tubs in the garage that are mine to see if I can get rid of anything.  Probably I can.  But two rubbermaid tubs vs the whole rest of the garage (plus a rented storage space-- did I mention that yet?).  Which one of these is really the problem?  And she keeps coming in to ask me if I'm really sure that I don't mind if she puts out this piece of crap, or that pile of junk.  I finally just told her that I'm really, really sure that she can get rid of all of it.  Please!

OK, I think I better go now.  I'm getting even more annoyed than I was when I started this post, and I still have to go write up the Craigslist ad.  Damn it.

March Review and April Goals

At the beginning of last month I set a few goals, so I thought I'd update you on how they went.

Goal #1: clean

Weeeeeeel, I made some progress here, but it was cancelled out by new mess.  There are still two baskets full of clean laundry in my room, but one of them is a new basket with new clean laundry, so that's progress.  I did some dusting, but I made all new dust.  (I feel this is completely unfair, by the way.)  I got rid of some of the junk mail and random paper that I collect like a magnet, but not much.

Bottom line on this goal: my bedroom is still a pit, but not as much of a pit as it would be if I hadn't worked on it a bit.

Goal #2: get my Goodreads Books to Read in 2011 list under 100 titles.

Hahahahahahahahahaha!  I did manage to read 12 books that had been sitting on my list for a while, some of them over a year.  But I added a bunch of titles, too, and the current total stands at 116.

Goal #3: blog more than once a week

Personal stuff derailed me on this one.  I'm getting a handle on it, but no guarantees that I'm going to be any more regular this month than I was last month.  But I'm going to try.

And I want to say thank you for all the kind comments on the last post.  I appreciate the support.

Goal #3: return movie to Netflix

I did it!  And I managed to watch and return a couple other movies, too.  Success!

So that's March.  Goals for April are:

to finish my taxes (I'm working on them, but slowly)
clear some more floor space in my room
dust and tidy my dresser, which is currently piled high with holiday cards and an inch of dust, in addition to all the usual stuff
blog more
continue to pick a lip balm flavor of the day, because it makes me happy
try to keep my 2011 reading list from growing past 116 this month-- read at least one book for every book that gets added to the list

Sounds good, I think.  Doable.

Lip Balm Flavor of the Day: Lavender Lemonade

Kiss Me Baby!

I've got some stuff going on right now, and I'm not quite ready to talk about it yet.  But I will say that I'm still kickin'.  I'm in the mood to do a little cleaning today (I know.  I don't have a fever, I promise.), and Prince is on the headphones, urging me along.  I wanted to embed the Kiss video, but apparently His Royal Purpleness is pretty emphatic about keeping his stuff off the internet.  So you'll have to make do with this picture instead.

Meow!

Update on Last Week's Goals

So, some stuff got done, some stuff didn't, and some stuff is worse than it was before.  The DVD finally went out in the mail.  I managed to do some dusting and clear out a bag full of packing materials, catalogs, and general crapola.

But the laundry is still in the basket, taking up way too much space.  And instead of reducing my "books to read in 2011" file, it's increased from 107 to 120.  (A couple ebooks finally came available at the library, and I picked up a few others cheap.)  But 21 books in the rest of the month is still doable, if tight, as long as I don't add any more titles to the list.  (HA!)  Maybe I should just change the goal to "somewhere near 100" instead of "under 100".  Might be more realistic.

So that's about it right now.  One step forward, two steps back.  You know, the usual.

Lip Balm Flavor of the Day: Cat Pee (not as scary as it sounds- pink grapefruit, orange, and lime)