Spring Cleaning Part One
I have several ideal goals for 2012. Two of them were fairly big, cleaning-type householdy goals. They were:
1. Empty my closet at my dad's house, full of bottles, long and/or vintage dresses, junk from my old dresser, stuffed animals, dozens of posters, and thousands upon thousands of notebooks. (Oh, the curse of being a writer!) The idea behind accomplishing this task was that everything I owned would be in one place. Let me say that again everything I owned would be in one place.
2. Spruce up my kitchen, as much as it is in my power. (For instance, I cannot renovate it or replace the appliances, as badly as I want to.) Paint kitchen white. Put in a pegboard or other interesting device for holding pots and pans. Put in mom's Hoosier cabinet that she inexplicably doesn't want now that she is living in Indiana. Clean/organize.
Last week I realized that I had to do both of these tasks this weekend! It was my choice, but an awful necessity. This is what I have accomplished:
-Emptied the closet and brought all my stuff home. (YAY!) (Now I have a big mess on my hands.)
-Painted one wall of my kitchen white in preparation for bringing in the Hoosier cabinet
-Made plans to move the Hoosier cabinet
-Emptied and cleaned black shelves that the Hoosier cabinet will be replacing
-Went through junk from dad's house, organized a little, put some of it away
-Emptied closet of shoes to make room for junk boxes
-Had a BRILLIANT idea about how to best utilize my closet space (yet to be put into action; I am waiting to get all the junk put away first)
I feel like I've been working all weekend and accomplished nothing! The contents of my "pantry" are in boxes and jars all over the living room floor and the kitchen floor and taking up every available surface in the kitchen; I think once I get the Hoosier cabinet in (either tomorrow or Tuesday), I'll feel a little more together about things.
And there wasn't as much junk in my old closet as I thought there was--I got it home in one trip! It's really just a matter of organizing it all properly now; I think I even have space for most of it!
The kitchen. It's going to be wonderful. Already I love that one white wall, SO MUCH. The whole apartment is a bland tan that I hate with a passion. I've never been a big white fan, but anything is better than bland tan. All the woodwork in the kitchen is already white and I'm painting the walls white and someday when I am insane I will decide to paint the ceiling white as well because that tan color is just soul-eating. EVERYTHING in my kitchen will be WHITE WHITE WHITE. Hence the need for a pegboard, which I will paint green or turquoise. Having a 100% white room is a big step into no man's land for me.
In other news:
This morning I really wanted to skip church. I haven't been in weeks. I lay in bed examining my reasons for not wanting to go and realized I had no real reasons. So I went anyway.
Books I am reading (most of them victims of my show-induced Book ADD of February):
The Woman in Black, Magic Casement, The Devil in the White City, The Annotated Peter Pan, Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture, The Frog Prince (by Elle Lothlorian), Don't Know Much About Mythology, The Scarlet Letter. The last four are e-books which I started reading and then lost interest in (except for the first of those four, which I only started Friday). Reading so many books at one time makes me feel like a crazy lady hiking her skirt around her waist and running down the street jabbering gibberish, like, totally insane and free and gibbering or something.
I have been drinking wine and reading Kate Beaton which may explain that last crazy paragraph.
I was really good at chores last week. SO GOOD. Up until Thursday, when I was exhausted and just wanted to take a night off, and that bled into Friday, and then the weekend. And I want to blow off the dishes again!
But I've been writing again. I couldn't get myself to do it for most of last week. Many months ago I started a Varenta short story with rotating viewpoints, but ran out of steam six and a half viewpoints in. (There are eight total.) Thursday night I looked it over and gave it another shot and now I feel that I can finish it. It is merely a warm-up to prelude my working on AEFB again.
Really, I thought on Thursday that I would work on AIW again, but I couldn't think of anything to write, so instead I collected all the pieces, tallied up the word counts, and discovered that it is about 26,000 words. A novella (which I had vague intentions of it being) is supposed to be 20-40,000 words, and though I have many significant pieces written, there are huge gaping holes between the pieces. Hence the return to Varenta, so soothing and easy. Thinking about wordcounts lately makes me grumpy and frustrated. Why, WHY do I make so many words? I'm like Diana Gabaldon.
(I fear I will have to rewrite AEFB completely if I want it to appear acceptable to an agent. This is an awful, terrible fear of mine. I suppose first I should finish it in its current incarnation and see where it goes.)
The result of all of this is that I am very tired and not ready to go back to work yet, and still deep down missing my show and thinking wistfully of it every day. I need to get back to normal life now please!
1. Empty my closet at my dad's house, full of bottles, long and/or vintage dresses, junk from my old dresser, stuffed animals, dozens of posters, and thousands upon thousands of notebooks. (Oh, the curse of being a writer!) The idea behind accomplishing this task was that everything I owned would be in one place. Let me say that again everything I owned would be in one place.
2. Spruce up my kitchen, as much as it is in my power. (For instance, I cannot renovate it or replace the appliances, as badly as I want to.) Paint kitchen white. Put in a pegboard or other interesting device for holding pots and pans. Put in mom's Hoosier cabinet that she inexplicably doesn't want now that she is living in Indiana. Clean/organize.
Last week I realized that I had to do both of these tasks this weekend! It was my choice, but an awful necessity. This is what I have accomplished:
-Emptied the closet and brought all my stuff home. (YAY!) (Now I have a big mess on my hands.)
-Painted one wall of my kitchen white in preparation for bringing in the Hoosier cabinet
-Made plans to move the Hoosier cabinet
-Emptied and cleaned black shelves that the Hoosier cabinet will be replacing
-Went through junk from dad's house, organized a little, put some of it away
-Emptied closet of shoes to make room for junk boxes
-Had a BRILLIANT idea about how to best utilize my closet space (yet to be put into action; I am waiting to get all the junk put away first)
I feel like I've been working all weekend and accomplished nothing! The contents of my "pantry" are in boxes and jars all over the living room floor and the kitchen floor and taking up every available surface in the kitchen; I think once I get the Hoosier cabinet in (either tomorrow or Tuesday), I'll feel a little more together about things.
And there wasn't as much junk in my old closet as I thought there was--I got it home in one trip! It's really just a matter of organizing it all properly now; I think I even have space for most of it!
The kitchen. It's going to be wonderful. Already I love that one white wall, SO MUCH. The whole apartment is a bland tan that I hate with a passion. I've never been a big white fan, but anything is better than bland tan. All the woodwork in the kitchen is already white and I'm painting the walls white and someday when I am insane I will decide to paint the ceiling white as well because that tan color is just soul-eating. EVERYTHING in my kitchen will be WHITE WHITE WHITE. Hence the need for a pegboard, which I will paint green or turquoise. Having a 100% white room is a big step into no man's land for me.
In other news:
This morning I really wanted to skip church. I haven't been in weeks. I lay in bed examining my reasons for not wanting to go and realized I had no real reasons. So I went anyway.
Books I am reading (most of them victims of my show-induced Book ADD of February):
The Woman in Black, Magic Casement, The Devil in the White City, The Annotated Peter Pan, Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture, The Frog Prince (by Elle Lothlorian), Don't Know Much About Mythology, The Scarlet Letter. The last four are e-books which I started reading and then lost interest in (except for the first of those four, which I only started Friday). Reading so many books at one time makes me feel like a crazy lady hiking her skirt around her waist and running down the street jabbering gibberish, like, totally insane and free and gibbering or something.
I have been drinking wine and reading Kate Beaton which may explain that last crazy paragraph.
I was really good at chores last week. SO GOOD. Up until Thursday, when I was exhausted and just wanted to take a night off, and that bled into Friday, and then the weekend. And I want to blow off the dishes again!
But I've been writing again. I couldn't get myself to do it for most of last week. Many months ago I started a Varenta short story with rotating viewpoints, but ran out of steam six and a half viewpoints in. (There are eight total.) Thursday night I looked it over and gave it another shot and now I feel that I can finish it. It is merely a warm-up to prelude my working on AEFB again.
Really, I thought on Thursday that I would work on AIW again, but I couldn't think of anything to write, so instead I collected all the pieces, tallied up the word counts, and discovered that it is about 26,000 words. A novella (which I had vague intentions of it being) is supposed to be 20-40,000 words, and though I have many significant pieces written, there are huge gaping holes between the pieces. Hence the return to Varenta, so soothing and easy. Thinking about wordcounts lately makes me grumpy and frustrated. Why, WHY do I make so many words? I'm like Diana Gabaldon.
(I fear I will have to rewrite AEFB completely if I want it to appear acceptable to an agent. This is an awful, terrible fear of mine. I suppose first I should finish it in its current incarnation and see where it goes.)
The result of all of this is that I am very tired and not ready to go back to work yet, and still deep down missing my show and thinking wistfully of it every day. I need to get back to normal life now please!