I had an interesting conversation last night with a friend. He is a new-ish friend, and quite unlike any friend I would have presumably picked for myself, but I am coming to think that he has landed in my lap for a reason. I chuckle as I amend that to “we seem to have landed in each other’s laps for assorted reasons.” The universe does strange things sometimes, does it not? Talking to him is much like talking to myself… plus all these books I have been meaning to read… and the thoughts I have been meaning to think… and calm, much calmer than I currently am.

Anyway, several days ago, we had an intense conversation that ended with the idea of feeling emptied and refilled. Last night, we discussed something only very tangentially involved, and by very tangentially, I mean not at all, except that it eventually led back to this idea of “emptied and refilled.”

I have been attempting purposefully to hang on to that feeling, even though I was not the first one to express it. It is a place I have found myself fleetingly several times. It is…wide open loving, accepting presence in the moment. Right here, right now, content. Unguarded, vulnerable, with the universe catching your back and the whole world in front of you. And, yes, I know that none of these are solid images, that you can’t grasp on to them and hold them and twist them around in the light. I promise I am doing the best I can, and I realize it is woefully inadequate. What if I said my New Year’s goal was birthed from that feeling? Would that make it more understandable?

Anyway, I said I have been fleetingly here before. The other side of that is that I have managed now to hold that feeling for 10 days. Which is not to say that I haven’t slipped out of it, but that I have been regularly and consistently and without great struggle coming back to this place for that ten days.

Why is that important enough to blog about? Because it is in this place that I am at my absolute best. As a person, a writer, a lover, a friend, a parent. The best stuff on this blog: written right here. The most loving and undemanding treatment of others: done right here. The most me I have ever been: right here. And so this is where I want to stay. Perhaps that is the plan of the universe in this instance. My friend can serve as a reminder to me to seek this best place, a place at once passionate and passionless.

Now, do I have a picture to go with that? You betcha. I emptied cubbies 2 and 3 today, and refilled them. My plan calls for just going through one cubby per day in this way, until I have dealt with all the piles in this room. It will take awhile. I will empty and refill many times. Except Cubby 3. It holds my stationary tin, and will continue to do so. Cubby 4 will be looked at tomorrow, but I doubt much will change. It holds the books I got from Daddy and others when I was very young. They are fragile and will never enter general household circulation. Here’s the pile of crap I threw out.

I also dealt with the stuff from cubby one, books on the bookshelf, and yarn wound and ready to work. This is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Seaside and Lakeview. The blue and green are the same in the two colorways. I may end up mixing this yarn in a scarfulle or very tall socks. We shall see.

Those of you who don’t think an old-fashioned wooden swift is an objet d’art have clearly never used one to wind the glory that is LL Lakeview. It brought a tear of joy to my eye.

December 20 and 21–I am getting a little behind here! What did I do Thursday and Friday? *scratches head* Well, I did take pictures and that will help remind me.

Oh yeah, I pulled the washing machine out to fix it. That thing is heavy. I had flipped the breaker several times to no avail, but managed to fix the beast by unplugging and plugging it back in. Except for the hole in the gasket. I have no idea what happened there, but it was very blistered and thin, and when I touched it, it made a hole. I’ve tried several different ways to patch it, all unsuccessful. I’ll be trying a bicycle tire patch next. I don’t even want to know how much one of these would cost to replace!

I finished with that book. By which I mean, I read what I wanted to read out of it.

Then I grabbed the hammer and fixed the front porch railing and the side steps. RAWR!

Friday, I cleaned the bathroom, and did more laundry in my patch-gasketed washer. Cleared off counters are better than the best pageant trophy ever! Oh, and freaked my teenager out by going out without telling her where. She hates that. 😀

Another busy and productive day!  When I started this morning, my desk looked like this:

When I declared it done for the day, I had this:

I did more on the room later, but…yeah, I’m happy.  And I’m posting this from that desk! Woohoo!

After I got that done, the kids and I worked on the living room. I fixed the vacuum cleaner, which boiled down to replacing the broken belt, and got the place ready for the tree.

And I spent some time reading and knitting. I finished these two books, by virtue of realizing half way through the first one that they were FICTION. WTH? Who write an entirely made up account of Jungian-style psychodynamic therapy?

I’m sure I will run out of things soon that I can declare finished each day, but I am enjoying this wrapping up of niggling details. The kids go back to school tomorrow, and I will have time to think through some of the stuff on my list of “thinkings to think.” Yep, I will count that too, because it’s productive. And don’t even tell me you don’t keep such a list! Also beginning tomorrow, it will be time to start cleaning the nooks and crannies of my room. I’ve pretty much gotten the furniture where I want it now. I’m still loving it!

So, I remembered the before shots!  Woohoo!  When I got up this morning, here’s what the shelves and cubbies looked like:

As you may remember, the cubbies are being used to divide the sleeping and dressing space from the office space. Clothes do not belong in the cubbies anymore. Something had to change. Here’s what these areas look like now:

You can see that I added a second set of shelves. And yes, I know I have a lot of clothes. I’ve put myself on clothing restriction, no need to “tsk, tsk” me.  And yes, I realize I am missing a shoe.  It’s in there somewhere, under a  pile of “movings.”

There are now empty spaces in the cubbies. The shelves came from beside my living room chair. I’m sitting in my son’s chair now, because….my chair is full of stuff off those shelves, which needs to go in the cubbies. Not sure that will happen today.

In other news, there was the finishing of the Hafiz. All those bookmarks indicate passages I plan to share with you. But not today. First I have to write them down in my “Book of Keeping.” Which I also have to start.

All in all, three days in, I am pleased with what I have gotten done. I’m glad I am learning to feel comfortable with a camera in my hand again. And I am happy to be carving out workspace and developing a plan to deal with some of the clutter.

Now I am off to fix the vacuum cleaner, so I can clean the living room, so we can put up the tree. Oops, clean the living room. That’s gonna mean getting all that stuff out of my chair, isn’t it? At least the cycle is feeding itself, right?

I am sure many of you know this trick already, but I am once again discovering how much I can accomplish in just 15 minutes. I have a tendency to hyper-focus and concentrate on just one thing until it is finished or I am exhausted. It’s a trait of ADD, which doesn’t necessarily mean, as most people think, an inability to pay attention, but a problem with directing attention appropriately. So, for instance, I could clean the kitchen all day, and it would be very clean, but I would not be noticing that the kids are wrestling in the living room, the toilet is overflowing, or even that the rest of the house has burned down. You can see how this might be a problem for someone who has many, many important irons in the fire, right? So, I am trying some cognitive therapy on myself. I do stuff in 15 minute increments, 30 if it’s something I need to be deeply involved in. I look at the time when I sit down or get up (depending on the task at hand), decide how much I can realistically accomplish in the allowed time, and then that’s how much I do. When the time I up, I walk away.

Sometimes, that’s very frustrating. I’m a plate cleaner. I like to get a task done, and have it off my plate. Unfortunately, that’s not how real life works. Real life is repetitive. Think about it, everyday you have to get up, brush your teeth, brush your hair, get dressed, make coffee, etc, etc, etc. Coming to grips with the fact that my living room will never BE clean and so I will be cleaning it everyday is a real break through for me. I’m telling you all this so that I can tell you I spent 15 minutes this morning organizing the last of my knitting stuff and I feel pretty pleased with myself. Except that organizing my knitting stuff will never be truly finished because I always have at least one set of needles out of place, because I am using them to knit something. And that’s okay. Life is messy, and I am learning to get over it.

However that stack of stuff I took off the shelf that I put my knitting stuff on? It’s sitting in my rocking chair. It’s been there for an hour, and it’s already on my last nerve.