Oh, summer day, stay forever! (Plus some thoughts on culling things.)
It's warm and sunny, and it doesn't matter that I'm not outside. Even just seeing the sun through the window is making me so happy. Also, my entire house is permeated with the smell of strawberries in balsamic, because 
scruloose has some in the dehydrator. Yum. ^_^
I'm taking this weekend completely off. Tomorrow that means social stuff--we're hoping to see Pacific Rim with Kas (at some stupid around-noon time, because that's the extent of our options if we want to see it in 2-D), and the girl+family are having people over for BBQ in the evening. My hope is that this will translate into going there for dinner, coming back here with Kas and fitting in an episode of Orphan Black with
scruloose and Kas while Pumpkin is put to bed, and then going back there to carry on with our ATLA viewing. (We're about halfway through S1.) And somewhere, somehow, I'm hoping the girl will get a chance to see Warehouse 13 4x01 so I can go watch 4x02 with her.
(I have a lot of Feelings as a result of last night's S3 finale rewatch, but if I talk about them, they should get their own post.)
Today, OTOH, is going to be pretty quiet. I want to try to clean out a bunch of tabs and do some linkblogging; I have conquered Tumblr, which is a disturbingly satisfying feeling. Maybe I'll watch something. Maybe I'll have Phish Food. Hopefully I'll go out to the usual Saturday night gathering of local friends (the closest thing we have to "going to church", since I haven't been in a few weeks, but otherwise it's a day for staying in and lying low, and I know I keep saying that I've been needing that, but it's so true.
I've been in the mood to get rid of things recently, and that kind of mood tends not to come around very often, so I'm trying to take advantage of it.
scruloose and I are both packrats, but for very different reasons, which doesn't help; I'm prone to excessive emotional attachment to things, while he's prone to hanging onto anything that could conceivably come in handy someday.
I was going to reread our copy of The Clutter Cure, because when I originally read it I got all inspired, but it's the kind of thing that I feel really needs both of us on-board for momentum, even if a surprising amount of our stuff doesn't overlap as shared possessions. I have books and clothes and DVDs and miscellaneous souvenirs and oddities. He has tools and equipment and boxes of random things. The good news here is that the reason I'm not rereading that book is that
scruloose is currently reading it, though. There could be no better reason.
There is some progress being made, though--there were the bags of clothing I got rid of while Ginny and Bianca were visiting, and I've managed to yank quite a few books and set them aside. And today, in a truly excellent development, a Casual Job co-worder came by with her early-twenties daughter and they bought and took away my (like-new!) exercise bike. I didn't ask for much money for it, and probably could've gotten somewhat more if I'd been willing to put in the effort with research and Kijiji, but now it's simply GONE and I am 110% okay with that.
The other big thing to rehome is my piano. There's a chance one of my Casual Job editors will buy it, which means I need to nail down a price (which I obviously need to do either way), but I'd definitely ask less from her, since she's someone I know and like who'd give it a good home (my piano--!), and again, that would spare me fussing with Kijiji or something.
Here's a question for anyone who cares to weigh in: what do you do with things like jewelry that isn't wanted anymore? In my case this mostly means necklaces, none of which are worth anything; other than things like my wedding ring and my Black Phoenix Trading Post clocket, my approach to jewelry has always been mostly "oh, there's an inexpensive shiny thing being sold by a street vendor on Queen West!" and whatnot. Does it make sense to donate things like that when donating clothes? Or is there really nothing sensible to do other than toss them?
And now, a tangent about book culling that got unexpectedly political:
Books are hard. I get emotionally invested in specific ones even if I don't love them (frex, the shelf and a half of textbooks from my year of Celtic Studies at U of T. I'm pretty sure I can let those go, but I'm still working on actually doing it), and more (and worse), a lot of my self-image is all knotted up in being someone who has a lot of books and someone who feels disoriented or even uncomfortable in a home without books everywhere. The idea of getting rid of a swath of them is really hard for me on multiple levels.
(There's a quirk to that last--it's not that I find being in a home without a lot of books disconcerting. Ginny, for example, doesn't have all that many in Ginlandia, because she's very selective about her stuff in general and tries to be fairly minimalist. But as a result, while she doesn't have all that many things, a high enough percentage of what she does have is books that that odd feeling is never twigged in my brain.)
I'm trying to let go of partial series that I know I won't buy more of. I'm trying to let go of things I know I'm not going to read again, or authors whose books I once bought--but no longer buy--automatically. There are several authors for whom I have enough residual fondness that I have trouble picturing my shelves without those books, but I've been gradually whittling them down over the years, trying to keep only the books I loved most when I was a teenager. (Most of which I'm scared to ever read again, for fear of the Suck Fairy having visited.)
There are a couple of things that are outright uncomfortable, with the glaring example being Ender's Game. It was a formative book for
scruloose, and I loved it when I first read it. In previous culls, all of OSC's books went away except for Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, and at this point I think we're working up to getting rid of those last two. On the one hand, OSC doesn't benefit from us keeping copies we already own; OTOH, having them on the shelf feels too much like endorsement or agreement or something, and I doubt I can ever read them again. I don't know if I'd feel strongly about the Suck Fairy having visited the books on their own, out of context, but of course there is no "out of context". I have below zero respect for the man, and there's no way I can read those books again without knowing that, and it's bothering me that evicting the books from my home is apparently not something I can do without batting an eye.
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/447957.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW:
scruloose has some in the dehydrator. Yum. ^_^
I'm taking this weekend completely off. Tomorrow that means social stuff--we're hoping to see Pacific Rim with Kas (at some stupid around-noon time, because that's the extent of our options if we want to see it in 2-D), and the girl+family are having people over for BBQ in the evening. My hope is that this will translate into going there for dinner, coming back here with Kas and fitting in an episode of Orphan Black with
scruloose and Kas while Pumpkin is put to bed, and then going back there to carry on with our ATLA viewing. (We're about halfway through S1.) And somewhere, somehow, I'm hoping the girl will get a chance to see Warehouse 13 4x01 so I can go watch 4x02 with her.
(I have a lot of Feelings as a result of last night's S3 finale rewatch, but if I talk about them, they should get their own post.)
Today, OTOH, is going to be pretty quiet. I want to try to clean out a bunch of tabs and do some linkblogging; I have conquered Tumblr, which is a disturbingly satisfying feeling. Maybe I'll watch something. Maybe I'll have Phish Food. Hopefully I'll go out to the usual Saturday night gathering of local friends (the closest thing we have to "going to church", since I haven't been in a few weeks, but otherwise it's a day for staying in and lying low, and I know I keep saying that I've been needing that, but it's so true.
I've been in the mood to get rid of things recently, and that kind of mood tends not to come around very often, so I'm trying to take advantage of it.
scruloose and I are both packrats, but for very different reasons, which doesn't help; I'm prone to excessive emotional attachment to things, while he's prone to hanging onto anything that could conceivably come in handy someday.
I was going to reread our copy of The Clutter Cure, because when I originally read it I got all inspired, but it's the kind of thing that I feel really needs both of us on-board for momentum, even if a surprising amount of our stuff doesn't overlap as shared possessions. I have books and clothes and DVDs and miscellaneous souvenirs and oddities. He has tools and equipment and boxes of random things. The good news here is that the reason I'm not rereading that book is that
scruloose is currently reading it, though. There could be no better reason.
There is some progress being made, though--there were the bags of clothing I got rid of while Ginny and Bianca were visiting, and I've managed to yank quite a few books and set them aside. And today, in a truly excellent development, a Casual Job co-worder came by with her early-twenties daughter and they bought and took away my (like-new!) exercise bike. I didn't ask for much money for it, and probably could've gotten somewhat more if I'd been willing to put in the effort with research and Kijiji, but now it's simply GONE and I am 110% okay with that.
The other big thing to rehome is my piano. There's a chance one of my Casual Job editors will buy it, which means I need to nail down a price (which I obviously need to do either way), but I'd definitely ask less from her, since she's someone I know and like who'd give it a good home (my piano--!), and again, that would spare me fussing with Kijiji or something.
Here's a question for anyone who cares to weigh in: what do you do with things like jewelry that isn't wanted anymore? In my case this mostly means necklaces, none of which are worth anything; other than things like my wedding ring and my Black Phoenix Trading Post clocket, my approach to jewelry has always been mostly "oh, there's an inexpensive shiny thing being sold by a street vendor on Queen West!" and whatnot. Does it make sense to donate things like that when donating clothes? Or is there really nothing sensible to do other than toss them?
And now, a tangent about book culling that got unexpectedly political:
Books are hard. I get emotionally invested in specific ones even if I don't love them (frex, the shelf and a half of textbooks from my year of Celtic Studies at U of T. I'm pretty sure I can let those go, but I'm still working on actually doing it), and more (and worse), a lot of my self-image is all knotted up in being someone who has a lot of books and someone who feels disoriented or even uncomfortable in a home without books everywhere. The idea of getting rid of a swath of them is really hard for me on multiple levels.
(There's a quirk to that last--it's not that I find being in a home without a lot of books disconcerting. Ginny, for example, doesn't have all that many in Ginlandia, because she's very selective about her stuff in general and tries to be fairly minimalist. But as a result, while she doesn't have all that many things, a high enough percentage of what she does have is books that that odd feeling is never twigged in my brain.)
I'm trying to let go of partial series that I know I won't buy more of. I'm trying to let go of things I know I'm not going to read again, or authors whose books I once bought--but no longer buy--automatically. There are several authors for whom I have enough residual fondness that I have trouble picturing my shelves without those books, but I've been gradually whittling them down over the years, trying to keep only the books I loved most when I was a teenager. (Most of which I'm scared to ever read again, for fear of the Suck Fairy having visited.)
There are a couple of things that are outright uncomfortable, with the glaring example being Ender's Game. It was a formative book for
scruloose, and I loved it when I first read it. In previous culls, all of OSC's books went away except for Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, and at this point I think we're working up to getting rid of those last two. On the one hand, OSC doesn't benefit from us keeping copies we already own; OTOH, having them on the shelf feels too much like endorsement or agreement or something, and I doubt I can ever read them again. I don't know if I'd feel strongly about the Suck Fairy having visited the books on their own, out of context, but of course there is no "out of context". I have below zero respect for the man, and there's no way I can read those books again without knowing that, and it's bothering me that evicting the books from my home is apparently not something I can do without batting an eye.
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/447957.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW: