A Project Completed

I CLEANED MY SCRAPBOOK TABLE!!!

This is news of monumental proportions.

This task has been on my to do list for about 9 months. It's too low a priority to ever get to the top of the list.

I am so lucky to have a desk for my scrapbooking supplies. I found it at an estate sale for only $40. I was so excited to have a place to leave a project out, so I could work on it a little at a time in spare moments, instead of having to put everything away and get it back out again every time I had a moment to work on it.

The problem is, I don't have any spare moments. So the incomplete project I had sitting out on the desk never got worked on. Instead, the desk gradually became the receptacle for all things crafty that needed to find a home, as well as the location to dump any unfinished craft projects, paper pieces, photos, ribbons, cards, letters, and other memorabilia. We have been adding stuff to the pile on the desk for ages without ever putting any of it away. When housecleaning, we always ignored this particular mess. For almost a year.

I can hardly believe I had enough free time to spend an afternoon working on it, interruption-free. When I finally got to the end of the task, after about 5 hours of sorting, filing and purging, I was filled with the desire to scrapbook. I'd better resist the temptation, since that's how the last mess got started.

Reality Check

Looking back over my past blog posts, I can detect when I'm feeling crowded and when I have room to do my own thing by the frequency of my posts. I think I'm crowded more often than not these days.

But not today. I am hopeful that my weekend is going to be filled with room to do my own thing.

Alterations are done; payroll, job costing, invoicing, check balancing, and bill paying are all done; mending is done(I started working on that one in between alterations); inputting my financial data from the three weeks that my data was lost is done; 75% of the weeding is done.

My house, on the other hand, is a complete and total disaster. Dust everywhere, clutter overflowing every room, and shoes, socks, books, toys, and other miscellaneous paraphernalia from 6 different individuals left here, there, and everywhere.

I'll probably clean this weekend.

That's ok. I like to clean. But I wish I had this month's book on tape.

Alterations

I volunteered to help with alterations at my girls' dance class. I thought I was giving myself an out by telling them I can't do much more than sew a hem or tack up a strap. But inevitably, I was in over my head. Since I was already there at class waiting for kids so many days a week, I thought it would be no big deal to offer to do alterations at that time. I envisioned sewing hems at a leisurely pace while chatting with friends.

Not so. Every Wednesday I've arrived at class to find a line of girls waiting and ready, costumes on inside out. Far too many of the girls have costumes that are too large; I've had to take in several waistbands, and many of the hems have drawstrings that have to be moved and replaced. The first couple of weeks I thought I was going to lose it. I was bringing home piles of costumes to alter at home, when I don't even have time to cook dinner or play with my kids anymore. I felt so stressed about those stupid costumes! That was around the same time that my computer crashed and I lost all my data.

I'm feeling a little more relaxed about it now; the pace has slowed down, and I'm not taking home 5 or 6 costumes each week anymore. I enjoy being able to help, and while I don't agree with many aspects of the studio's operating procedures, I do think that if this is what the girls want to do, it makes sense for me to be involved if there is a need. So, in spite of my stressed state that first few weeks, I'm not sorry I offered to do the alterations. I do, however, wish I didn't always find life so frighteningly busy... and volunteering for once more thing certainly never helps with that.

Gardens Here and There

Last month, while in Portland for dance competition, we spent an afternoon visiting the Japanese Gardens. It was so beautiful, restful and serene. I wish my garden looked like that! I had hoped it would give me some ideas, but so much of what they had created related to the climate of the area, with mosses and other wet loving plants everywhere. I would love to view a Japanese style garden created in a dry, arid climate.

In the meantime, I am finding a bit of time here and there to do a little weeding and pruning in my garden. Things could use a bit of a face lift and some shifting around, but I haven't found the time for that. I think my next project will be to eliminate the grass(weed) path and replace it with shredded bark. The tough part will be moving a mountain of rocks I've unearthed and left laying in a pile on the path. I thought it would be great to create a dry stream bed with the rocks, but have no idea where to put them. It would be so much better to move them only once!

The front yard is still bare dirt. Sometimes I'm afraid it will always be that way. With our bathroom remodel project done, next on the list is a sprinkler system. The estimate we got was way out of our price range, but we just don't have the time or know-how to do it ourselves. Clint has a friend with some experience in irrigation systems; maybe I'll get lucky and we can hire him to install them for us. It would be so lovely to have a front yard again.