Project Updates and More!

I am very happy to report that the garage project is coming along. I reported last week that Wifey went in and gave the garage a 2am ass kicking. She got all of the junk better organized and consolidated. Then on Saturday after freaking out about how overwhelmed the garage was making me, I proceeded to load up my car and take a huge load of stuff to the East Bay Creative Re-Use Depot. It was weird to let some of the stuff go - like the Balinese xylophone (It looked like #7 in the photo to the left, but much more beautiful.  It had an ornate frame with red and gold lacquer paint.).  Gone is our seldom used picnic backpack, the fish bowl (R.I.P, Raspberry) and a stack of board games that we will never, ever play again.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel and and the train is not coming.

In other news, we're continuing on our journey for baby #2. The most difficult and humbling aspect of the whole process for me is that it is COMPLETELY OUT OF MY HANDS - to a certain extent. You can obsess over your fertile mucus, pee on a stick (POAS) for days on end, and still when the time comes to...deliver the goods, you could still not get it right. Maybe we'll do everything perfectly and it won't happen the first time, or the third or even the fifth, but then again, maybe it will. Also, you can't rush things.

I want to rush things.

Can I just be pregnant right now and skip the anxious waiting and the uncertainty?

No?

Trying to be patient like the grasshopper,
Elsie

P.S. I found this video of the Balinese Rindik!

Project Update: The Backyard

I'm making progress! 

Of course looking at it in the photo, it's not so impressive, but it is, in fact, progress. 

I finally put in the rock border and moved around a couple of plants.   From left to right we have a fern (that was a gift three years ago from friends), an impatient (started from a cutting that the kid received at her birthday party), a rabbit ear and a red hot poker plant (also from cuttings from her birthday party).  I need some sort of ground cover, I am realizing, but I think that once the plants bulk up, they will fill up the space nicely. 

This is the other side of the yard.  In the back corner we've got a bamboo that I'm hoping will eventually fill up the entire back wall.  We got the plant about three years ago and it was a single stalk.  Next to it, on the left, is a begonia that just keeps on growing.  We moved it from our last house and it never stops blooming.  We've got two elephant ear plants that we thought were not going to make it there, but are really taking off and in the middle of them a blueberry plant.  Yes, the blueberry plant is a little out of place, but it was a gift from the kid's birthday party and I really didn't know where else to put it. 

The vine that is snaking off the the right is a dying pumpkin plant.  Two weeks ago that thing had taken over our ENTIRE backyard.  I cut it back like crazy because I just couldn't stand it any longer and I don't know if our two pumpkins are ever going to ripen, but so be it.  The wifey hates the broken planter thing on the right. 

Don't tell her I said so, but from this angle, I get her point. 

Ho, ho, ho, green giant,
Elsie

Project Updates

Project #2, the CD situation, is a wrap.  Ta-Da!!!

I do realize that in the grand scheme of things, that I have no right to feel so proud of my accomplishment, but I will take my pride where I can get it.

I am proud, proud, proud, I am proud!

It is done.  The assigned task has been seen to completion.  I engaged in adult conversation with my partner to rationally discuss how we approach a shared situation.  I say that it doesn't matter that Wifey didn't really think it was that big of a deal in the first place, or that organizing our CD collection is not physically getting us one step closer to NYC, or that normal people just put their shit away on a regular basis and don't find themselves in this situation.  Whatever.  What matters is that I started this project and finished it.  Doors are closed.  Mind at ease.  So, maybe it's getting us closer to our goal after all!

Also, I have exciting news on Project #1, the garage....the refrigerator is gone!!!!  After two people flaked, and I exchanged e-mails with a half dozen others, Joel, lovely Joel with the big truck, came and took it away.  Every time I pass through the pantry I have to sneak a quick peek into the garage, just to look at the empty space.  It is so divine.

Ready to kick some ass,
Elsie

Project #2: The CD Collection

Living in a small house is like participating in a ongoing, ever changing, game of Jenga. This is why our stereo is in the living room and our CD storage is two flights of stairs away. When you want to, for example, blast Shakira's grandes exitos while wifey is out of earshot, you grab the disc, leaving the case behind, and shake your groove thang. Repeat, repeat repeat.

The problem, of course, is that after two or three months, the CDs start to pile up. When the stack by the stereo gets to high, we dutifully bring them upstairs, but typically neither of us has the time to actually put them back into their cases, so we stack them up, and up and up....

Recently the situation had gotten completely out of hand. It seemed like there were stacks of CDs all over the house and during our regularly scheduled cleaning on Sunday, I decided to tackle the project.

What I quickly learned, however, that it wasn't simply as easy as picking up a CD, reaching into the cabinet and returning it to the shelf. How in the heck was I supposed to know that the Edie Brickell Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars case would be on the top shelf when the Everything But the Girl CDs were on shelves two and three and my Everclear (yes, I have more than one!) CDs were on the bottom shelf. Can't all the Es just live in harmony together????

After spending half an hour in a semi-crouched position and managing to return just four CDs to their proper homes, I had an epiphany. I would take every last case out of the cabinet and separate the ones that were missing discs, giving me a much smaller pool of candidates for my homeless CDs. Then I would group all the like artists together and return them all, in alphabetical order, to the shelves.

I was so excited. So proud.

At one point, I made a trip downstairs for a snack. Wifey was doing something on the computer.

Me: Hey, I am kicking CD butt upstairs,...[insert details of my awesome plan]

Wifey: [loooong silence] You know I just organized the CDs last week.

Me: [longer silence] Huh?

Wifey: Yeah, they are separated by shelf, top shelf is mine, second is yours, third is mine.... Oh and feel free to weed out your collection.

Me: [sputtering and stumbling over my words] What?....But I couldn't find....

Ok, you get the idea. I looked at the CD cabinet and saw a nonsensical jumble, she saw order. Really and truly, this isn't about right or wrong (even though I am always right!), but after living with someone for 10 years in 6 different houses, you'd think we would have worked this one out.

How can you know someone so well, but still not be able to figure out something so basic as how that person organizes her CD collection?

I hate conflict. I hate the potential for conflict, and maybe I'm not so willing to compromise as I think. Maybe I'm rigid...like my mother (gasp, horror) and never learned how to cohabitate gracefully.

Yikes, ouch, painful truth ahead!!!!

This is where that pesky goal of being a better partner comes into play. This seems like a pretty harmless way to start. Ask a direct question, "Wifey, how would you like to organize the CDs?"
"Oh, really, I would really like to do this, can we compromise and do this?"

So beautiful, so...adult. We'll see how it goes.

Trying to be a bigger and better person,
Elsie

P.S. This is what happens when lesbian CD collections don't use protection.

Project #1: The Garage

I've been thinking a lot lately about the ways in which your environment can lift you up, inspire creativity, or at least make you not cry. And then there are the spaces that make you want to scream, stick your head in the sand, or in my case, stare blankly at the wall. Worst case scenario? The space in which you live or work or play turns you into a shaking, slobbering blob of stress and anxiety.

Guess who is drooling on her keyboard as we speak?

Ok, I'm not drooling, but I am shoveling Swedish fish into my mouth at an alarming rate. I can't help it, it is a reaction to my environment. Take my garage for example...

Is this the space of a woman who has her shit together enough to move her whole family cross country in six months? No.

Is this the garage of a woman who can't even find the tape measure to take the dimensions of the refrigerator, so she can sell it on Craigslis,t so she can even get to the ten other boxes of crap that need to be dealt with? Yep, that would be me.

I don't know how this happened. We didn't always have a refrigerator sitting in our garage, but when we inherited a larger, newer model from the MIL, what were we supposed to do? We inherited the fridge because MIL moved, but when she moved she thoughtfully brought us all the crap that we had stored in her shed when we moved three years ago. Now we are housing a desk, a bookshelf, a dryer and a traditional Balinese xylophone, called a tinklit, to name a few.

The other problem is that junk begets junk. It takes so much rearranging just to put the hammer back into the tool box that it seems perfectly acceptable to put it on top of the dog blanket, that is on top of the 4 track cassette mixer, that is on top the shelf where we keep the iron. It is like a pulsing, oozing sore that is sucking the life out of our house.

This is hardly my most glamorous project, but we have literally been hauling some of this junk around for years. Well, maybe different junk, but same jumble. This is one habit that I'm hoping to break.

First step, sell items on Craigstlist. I've been putting this off for ages because it seems so overwhelming. There are so many things and some of them I can't even reach, but I came up with a genius idea - don't try to sell everything at once.

Duh.

Once the refrigerator is gone, I can get to the dryer. After the dryer goes I can get to the desk which is blocking the pile of donations. See, this is a habit to break....don't try to tackle an impossible problem head on.

I always joke (well, it's mostly a joke) that if it's not hard, why do it. Maybe it's time for a new mantra.

Details on the great garage sale to come!

Seeing a light at the end of the vortex,
Elsie

Projects, Projects, Projects!

I am quickly finding out that moving two moms, a 4 year-old, and two dogs across the country without anyone losing their mind, their favorite blanket or a tail is going to take a lot of work. Just the logistics are mind boggling, but throw in the whole 80's make it better scene and we are talking about a Kilimanjaro sized goal. Heck, maybe even a K2 or Everest sized goal - it's that big. And, just to make it all the more exciting, we're going to try to have another baby along the way as well!

Yep, you heard right. We're going move, find new jobs, revamp our wardrobes, get some therapy, write a book (me), become the next Annie Leiboviz (also me), record an album (wifey), get out of debt, take two road trips, get our house ready to rent and make a baby. Awesome! Because really, if you're not doing the impossible, what fun is life?

I realize that some of these things might not happen in six months, but (brace yourself, it's cliche time!) this one is going to be about the journey. Yikes, did I just say that?

Achieving these things is really important to me. There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel good about what I do, about my body, accepting my past, creating something beautiful and fulfilling, creating a beautiful family, but for such simple things, they are quite elusive. Maybe this isn't how it is for everyone, but I am getting too old to to keep hoping that one day I will just wake up and have fulfillment shine down upon me from high. It's time to do the work. Shit or get off the pot. Be the change you want to see in the world. Yadda, yadda, yadda,....it's time for action. Maybe by some miracle this all happens in six months, probably not, but I want my feet firmly planted in the right direction.

So action it is.

Phase One: The Home Front, or, how not to lose your frickin' mind when you can never, ever, ever, find anything.

Coming up tomorrow....the garage.

Peace, love and home organization,
Elsie