Monday, Aug. 25, 2003 - 1:14 p.m.
Greetings,
Well, the weekend is over. I’m sitting in my corporate cube surrounded by what feels like ten tons of paper, all different sizes, some creased, some ripped, some folded, hemming me in and cutting off my air supply.
Just another Monday morning unfortunately.
The weekend was marvelous, mainly because it combined two things: three days and an anniversary. Oh, andthere were caftans. Lots of caftans. (Well, two.)
This weekend was spent mainly at Crescentwood with only two excursions – both to Schwinn Pixie ironically enough. One on Friday, one on Sunday to get the stuff I forgot to get on Friday.
On Thursday my friend Ken told me he was cleaning out his bedroom closet this weekend. Throwing out all the things he hasn’t worn in at least a year. (Probably to make room for more caftans. That man has a collection 20 strong and growing. I am stuck at a paltry 7 and sometimes feel very inadequate. Sometimes.)
I made a pact with him that I’d clean out the closet in my Ritual Chamber a.k.a. Study, so that when we caftaned Saturday night, we could talk on the phone and bask in the glow of homely accomplishment.
Nothing spells contentment quite like a clean closet.
My Study closet was horrible. It didn’t start out that way. I had all the good intentions that you get at midnight on December 31st/ January 1st when you promise to lose that weight, clean that closet, exercise that fat ass, etc.
I promised my closet that we’d forever be one of those minimalist couples like Max and Bettina on Ab Fab. There would always be surfaces in my closet. There would always be neatness or order. Chaos was not allowed.
Fast forward nearly six months and you open the door to a shortcut to hell. Crap piled up almost to the closet rod. Shelf cluttered with piles on piles on top of original piles.
It looked like ……URK….. Tommy’s closet from the Stinkwood era. Only I had six months to build it up not three years and therefore there weren’t quite so many layers and not nearly as many empty boxes. And there were no plastic bags or pennies to be found anyway thankfully.
But you could find lots of soot covered crap from the trunk of the car that I didn’t have time to sort and throw out before we departed for Oak Alley. Back in…June. But I digress.
I took everything out of the bottom of the closet and piled it on the floor. Then I started three piles:
Garbage
Most likely garbage
Put back (neatly) into the closet
The middle pile was the largest, the Put back (neatly) pile the smallest.
I’m not sure how long it took, but in the process of cleaning out the closet, I also rearranged furniture in my Study and added a rocking chair in the corner to sit in.
I threw out all kinds of crap that I can’t believe I actually saved in the first place.
I cleaned up my zills and my ceramic pigs and made an altar to Papa Legba with the help of my drum and a red altar cloth.
My closet and I are now back on speaking terms and we are cautiously exploring the possibility of a long-term, loving relationship. The top shelf area needs work still, but we’re compromising on that right now, waiting on the addition of an entertainment center to our living room furniture family. When that happens, just look out! My closet will be a lean, mean, storage machine!
Anyway, Project Closet took a lot of Friday. What was left was taken up with cleaning Crescentwood in general. I only got one load of laundry done and had to save most of it for Saturday. Oh, and I went grocery shopping at one point and bought a couple new autumn outfits at Schteinmart.
My Oceanus scented bubble bath felt very, very good that night.
The evening consisted of watching an episode of X-Files, Friday the 13th Part 2 and (scattered parts of) Clue.
I actually fell asleep clutching my champagne glass and then dumped champagne all over sofa and myself. I woke up in a hurry. But I am proud to report that while I may have spilled champagne, I did not drop the glass.
Saturday was laundry day and I watched lots of BBC America while sipping PJs coffee in the morning.
The afternoon was spent pampering my feet of all things.
A good long soak in lavender scented warm water followed by some massage and some lotion. Then I painted my toenails (Fig) and my fingernails (also Fig).
Then I spent some quality time reading in my newly redecorated Study. When I wasn’t reading, I was admiring my closet and it was admiring me back. My closet is something of a flirt.
Saturday night it was another long bath (this time in cucumber melon scented bubbles) followed by the donning of a caftan and the watching of three Dark Shadows episodes and Vincent Price in “The Pit and the Pendulum”.
It was also the 7th anniversary of when I met Tommy face to face in Irvine. So we sipped (relatively) cheap champagne from our antique toasting glasses and snuggled on the couch while eating Freschetta pizza and Zapp’s BBQ potato chips.
A very good evening.
Yesterday nothing would do except that I cooked a meal. Lately we’ve been subsisting on sandwiches, cereal, Hot Pockets and frozen pizza and something in my soul rebelled against the monotony.
So I browned up some hamburger, went to Schwinn Pixie for more spaghetti sauce, pita pockets, non-fat flavored creamer and a bottle of red wine. Oh, and garlic bread. Mustn’t forget that.
We stuffed ourselves senseless on spaghetti while watching several episodes from the first season of “Friends”.
Today I am suffering from acid reflux, which doesn’t happen when I eat boring old sandwiches, but what the hell.
Anyway, enough is enough so farewell for now.
Until next time,
Olrun
