I finished writing SLIPSTREAM (cheers and dancing in the streets) and dug into EVERLOST with a vengeance (The first is sci fi and the second is a gamer-geek love story. I'm probably halfway through that one).
But also there's this:
I was brought up to be clean and tidy. We had to have our beds made and everything in its place. There were consequences if we didn't respond to the PRODDING.
Segue to my married life. I have a lovely husband for whom decades-old dust bunnies older than some of his children don't bother him. Which can sort of be a good thing sometimes. But for a person brought up to clean clean clean, it's nerve-wracking. Picture a wizard sitting in his cobweb-draped (some of them occupied) study with open tomes splattered with candle wax, magic wands, animal skulls, a gargoyle or two, musical instruments, various other interesting objects, and thousands of books. He's also reading a computer magazine surrounded by computers in various forms of undress and viability. This wizard of mine can untie just about any Gordian knot of a problem, but if you touch his stuff, you'll find your hand resting on the floor next to your head.
So imagine my exquisite joy upon surveying the empty room of my recently married daughters. By empty, I mean still full of their extant things but evacuated. Slowly, like a glacier moving, I dealt with it all, moving this to move those things to move that.
Next I went caving in my room, part of which hadn't seen a dust rag in decades. I found long-buried treasures (Yup. Forget about going for the lost treasure of the Sierra Madres and the lost Teton treasure. Found along with a plethora of single socks whose mates have languished forever in the sock basket) and a multitude of things we'd been looking for.
When I moved the bed, I found we'd had termites and they'd gotten into my school teaching supplies. ARGH! Luckily they had decided they were done and gone the way of the dodo, leaving no extant macaroni sculptures. Because of those, I went and got several plastic bins and loaded everything salvageable under my bed with room to spare. Now people actually realize there was a master bath in there somewhere...:) And it's no longer full of computer things.
I walk around my house several times a day, now, just exulting over the fact that I can see more than a couple of feet of carpet. I try to think up more things to say good-bye to or fix every day.
I'm going to have a gar(b)age sale and the resultant money will go to sending my son on a mission. And the second reason is that I'm getting rid of loads of treasure (clutter) which I'd stockpiled in my living room for as long as I could stand it. Away go the bunk beds and shoe rack and some clothing, jewelry, roller skates, dolls, toys, electric pianos, and anything else I can get rid of, plus a few things I've been keeping in case of nuclear holocaust or something akin to it.
And there is a den filling with the wizard's paraphernalia. It's very tempting to go in and help him out by dusting or putting things away. But it's his, now, and it has a door with a lock. I don't have to obsess over whether the dust bunny civilization that lives there is going to rise up and strangle us all in our sleep.
Now I just get to worry about the cupboards falling off my kitchen wall and the microwave that has a hole in the bottom of it that might or might not explode into a major fireball next time I use it.
Breathe. Just breathe and then go in and calloo over the vast emptiness that is our bed room. And then get back to writing before the hubby gets home and I have to make dinner.
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