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Jul. 12th, 2004 12:41 amI did not go motorcycling this weekend, unless you count a short ride around town.
I did not work in the garage this weekend either.
Instead I read a very good book, Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin. It had this dreamy quality, like something from Charles deLint, or my favorite Tanith Lee books. But I don't think Helprin is considered a fantasy author. (I always wonder how some authors end up labeled as fantasy, and others are considered more literary, but I don't want to go there right now; instead I just want to wallow in the dreamy state the book left me in.) The book takes place in New York City, with side trips. I was curious about which places in the book were real, and which were imaginary. So I did a little websurfing and found an interesting site, Forgotten NY. I love stuff like this! When I see an old road, a sign for something that's not there anymore, or a bricked up doorway, it always fires my imagination.
..................
Today Michael and I worked on cleaning up the pile of mail that has engulfed our kitchen table for way too long.
Every day there is another handful of things in the mail that need attention. I recycle most of the mail immediately, but it would be impolite to recycle Michael's mail, so it sits on the table. And when he brings in the mail, he can't recycle my mail, so that sits on the table. Then there are the things that can't be recycled immediately, that actually need to be looked at or responded to. And the really annoying advertising mail that tries to look like it needs to be opened, like letters from the phone company that say "Important Account Information Enclosed" and then when you open them they want you to apply for a phone company Visa or something. Grrr. Neither of us wants to deal with all this crap. And the more mail you already have piled up, the harder it is to be decisive about the mail you just got.
This has been a problem for years. When we used to have parties here more often, we would put mail in boxes so we could get it out of the way before people got here. As a result, we now have boxes of mail hidden away all over the house. Nothing in these boxes is current enough to need attention, but if one of us ever got a tax audit we'd probably need things that are in there, so we don't dare just pitch the boxes without going through them. So the boxes sit. We didn't tackle those today.
Instead we tackled the mail on the kitchen table. We spent hours going through it. I told Michael I wanted to be ruthless, and throw as much of it away as possible. I got my portion down to about twenty items. Michael's still got a stack about four inches deep to do something with. Our recycle bin is completely stuffed. We found a lot of overdue bills and paid them.
Michael had to go over to his friend John's and help him with his computer. Since we now had a kitchen table again, I was inspired to try to push the boundaries of cleaned up space just a little farther. I cleaned the rest of the kitchen, all the way down to the countertops and the ledges. I even emptied the crud out of the bottom of the toaster oven, cleaned the cupboard doors, replaced some burned out light bulbs, and waxed the appliances. This took me about four hours and I didn't even do the floors.
I want to hire house cleaners. I'm tired of having to scrub. If someone else was doing the scrubbing, then I could spend more time picking up and organizing, and maybe it wouldn't be such a shambles around here all the time.
I did not work in the garage this weekend either.
Instead I read a very good book, Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin. It had this dreamy quality, like something from Charles deLint, or my favorite Tanith Lee books. But I don't think Helprin is considered a fantasy author. (I always wonder how some authors end up labeled as fantasy, and others are considered more literary, but I don't want to go there right now; instead I just want to wallow in the dreamy state the book left me in.) The book takes place in New York City, with side trips. I was curious about which places in the book were real, and which were imaginary. So I did a little websurfing and found an interesting site, Forgotten NY. I love stuff like this! When I see an old road, a sign for something that's not there anymore, or a bricked up doorway, it always fires my imagination.
..................
Today Michael and I worked on cleaning up the pile of mail that has engulfed our kitchen table for way too long.
Every day there is another handful of things in the mail that need attention. I recycle most of the mail immediately, but it would be impolite to recycle Michael's mail, so it sits on the table. And when he brings in the mail, he can't recycle my mail, so that sits on the table. Then there are the things that can't be recycled immediately, that actually need to be looked at or responded to. And the really annoying advertising mail that tries to look like it needs to be opened, like letters from the phone company that say "Important Account Information Enclosed" and then when you open them they want you to apply for a phone company Visa or something. Grrr. Neither of us wants to deal with all this crap. And the more mail you already have piled up, the harder it is to be decisive about the mail you just got.
This has been a problem for years. When we used to have parties here more often, we would put mail in boxes so we could get it out of the way before people got here. As a result, we now have boxes of mail hidden away all over the house. Nothing in these boxes is current enough to need attention, but if one of us ever got a tax audit we'd probably need things that are in there, so we don't dare just pitch the boxes without going through them. So the boxes sit. We didn't tackle those today.
Instead we tackled the mail on the kitchen table. We spent hours going through it. I told Michael I wanted to be ruthless, and throw as much of it away as possible. I got my portion down to about twenty items. Michael's still got a stack about four inches deep to do something with. Our recycle bin is completely stuffed. We found a lot of overdue bills and paid them.
Michael had to go over to his friend John's and help him with his computer. Since we now had a kitchen table again, I was inspired to try to push the boundaries of cleaned up space just a little farther. I cleaned the rest of the kitchen, all the way down to the countertops and the ledges. I even emptied the crud out of the bottom of the toaster oven, cleaned the cupboard doors, replaced some burned out light bulbs, and waxed the appliances. This took me about four hours and I didn't even do the floors.
I want to hire house cleaners. I'm tired of having to scrub. If someone else was doing the scrubbing, then I could spend more time picking up and organizing, and maybe it wouldn't be such a shambles around here all the time.
