Creature of Mad Enthusiasms

Over 8 months since we went to cell phone only, M and I still knee-jerk try to check the non-existant answering machine. Not finding it, or having that moment of realization adds a surreal tinge to a life that has gotten very surreal as the changes I've made over the last few years reach critical mass.

Another tiny but incredibly major change was taking M's suggestion in the kitchen. To my great annoyance, most magazine articles on "how to handle a tiny kitchen" involve knocking out walls. That was NOT HAPPENING, even in a kitchen so small that the fridge cuts off a quarter of the room. (You can see it in the kitchen photos - all the way to the right, cutting off access to the back half of the counter and reducing how far a drawer and cabinet can open.) I thought that there was nothing to do about it - to move the fridge to the other side would involve shutting off and removing the baseboard heaters, which was a job more drastic than I chose to tackle.

And then M said "What if we stick it in the door?"

There's a doorway from the kitchen to the now-library, was dining room. (Off the coffee table in front of the TV, to answer what everyone asks at this point.) We shoved the fridge over to see if we could live with the block and you would not BELIEVE how much it opens up the kitchen! Suddenly there's space galore - and room for another big bookshelf in the library to cover the doorway from the other side. Win-win, and without one single structural change!


As I adjust to these changes, I'm equally adjusting to a life without credit card debt... and, like checking the answering machine, finding old habits and mindsets very hard to break. My AmEx came in with a 4-figure owed number and I spent far too much time flipping and freaking about how I could have done that and what do I do now until I went through it line by line and discovered that the big ticket item was something I had saved for. Specifically. All that freaking out and flailing and the answer was "Take the money budgeted for this out of savings, put it in checking, and pay the bill." The rest of it was all standard stuff (I use AmEx to buy gas and occasionally groceries, that kind of thing.)

Same thing with the Little VISA. It's tied to a separate account that now has a cushion that not remotely coincidentally is the spending limit on said VISA. A set amount of each paycheck goes to that account, so there is essentially a built-in budget for the grins and giggles card. I don't remember the big ticket item off the top of my head, but I remember thinking hard about before pulling out the card and telling myself "You will go into the cushion. You have to put this away after this until the end of June to let the cushion build back up." After the flipout with AmEx I called to find out what I owed on the Little VISA.

Another 4 figures.

Another freakout.

A frantic set of calculations - I have x much over the cushion right now, and y much will be deposited with the last check this month, leaving z to come out of the cushion, which will be repaid... mid June.

Exactly as planned.


I'm not used to this.

I went to restock the Little Free Library this morning and it was full to the brim of returned and new books! I've had more books returning this week than I have in the entire life of LFL 2778 so far. They're all that sort of "NYTimes Bestselling Literature" type - Tales of the City, Elegance of the Hedgehog, Bridges of Madison County, etc.

Presumably it was someone else who took Investing for Dummies. (For Dummies books are very popular, and on some really bizarre topics too. Weddings for Dummies didn't budge, but Tropical Fish for Dummies and Training for Dummies (not weight training, teaching training) both got snapped up.) Hunger Games and Catching Fire also went - I'm to the point where I just knee-jerk get extra copies of those if I can.

While downloading a couple of Trek books to my ipad, I noticed the 52 uncluttering and weight loss apps, both of which having been ignored for ages. On the other hand, in the last two weekends alone, I have: painted the bathroom, sanded and painted the bathroom vanity, gone through the vanity drawers and tried to reorganize them (the organizers did not fit; I'm using baggies until I can get lower dividers), retrofitted the area under the vanity to be another sheet-linoleum-lined litter area, scrubbed off the old glue-based bathroom window cling, put up decorative window cling (including cutting around the edges for a higher window to let more light in), paid all the bills, reorganized the cookbooks, replaced a few Trek books in ebook and set the rest aside to give to someone else, sanded and painted the top of my aunt's cedar hope chest and put it up in the living room to hold bedding for people who come to visit, rearranged the living room, took down the barrister shelves before the cats ruined them, cleaned and brought up new shelves, bought and set up more living room shelves (I can now answer the phone without standing up and craning, huzzah!), and bought and set up a console table to act as a "landing strip" as the old one was now covered in cookbooks.

Oh, and Cleaned All The Things. And delivered a 5000-word essay and started on a 2000-word essay. And started a nightly 7 items to declutter my bedroom.

Pretty damned proud of myself, actually. Especially that I only wondered what was available this week at the Book Thing less than a dozen times

Today I need to start putting together the raffle prize baskets for Scintillation of Scions next weekend. I'm also on what was supposed to be the last of the spring Kitchen Guild things, making jam over an open fire at Riversdale. But the summer heat has moved in early; yesterday was beastly and today's not much better - humid and close to body temperature. This is precisely the kind of weather I told them I couldn't cope with, and I fear I will have to come home early.

This also means I can't stand any more clinic shifts until the weather breaks again, so I'm feeling guilty for one or two of those Thing runs when I could have been in the parking lot.

The good news is, I'm admiring the new granite countertop. The bad news is, that's pretty much all I can do until Monday. They say to let it sit for 24 hours - that'll be noon tomorrow - then seal it, which (according to the bottle) will take about 20 minutes to do and 8 hours to cure. And that's after I've wiped down the counter with wet towels, because the drilling and sawing they did in-house has meant that I needed to sweep, vacuum, and mop the floor 5 times, the last one on hands and knees with a scrubbrush. So everything else in the kitchen needs a good cleaning as it gets revealed/unearthed too.

The microwave, at the moment, is hooked up on my bathroom counter. Far from optimal, but at least I could have my chai and bagel this morning.

The lighter granite turns out to still be kitten colored: