This is the first thing you see as you enter my library room. A pile of stuff stacked in front of a closet. The closet behind is empty, and since it’s blocked I didn’t get a picture. It’s got the same slope as the ceiling you see here, with two shelves along the short wall, and is only a little wider than where that door stops. The chimney is what stops it, but it’s all covered over … in horsehair plaster and crayon.

The blue tubs are our sheets and blankets for the bed. There’s books, boxes, art supplies, projects, jewelry boxes and bags with bags in them. Then there are several boxes with empty binders, folders and dividers leftover from college. At first I wanted to keep all my notes and everything, so I bought every class it’s own binder, etc. Then I finished school and realized that not only did I not care to keep it all, but it also was really heavy and took up a lot of room. I got rid of all my notes, but kept the binders thinking they might have a use someday.

I’ve used probably about 5. I took way more than 5 classes. The printer is also sitting on another box filled with them, so they’re useful for that. Honestly, the boxes I put stuff in are more useful to me right now than the stuff inside the boxes!

We have quite a few closets in our house considering the age of the house, but we’re only using one. The rest are all empty. We don’t want to just cram all our stuff into closets and forget about it all as we’ve done before. We want it to be useful storage.

We’re just at a loss.

This is the stuff next to that other pile of stuff. None of it is staying in my room. It’s the overflow bathroom things and some empty tubs. Why empty tubs when we have so much that could go in them? I don’t know.  I want to go through it and get rid of all the unnecessary duplicates of whatever it all is. From looking in the boxes, it’s a lot of soaps, lotions, etc that were given to me, or I bought and changed my mind on.

How do you get rid of stuff like that?

The home depot box is about 3/4 full of coat hangers. I have no idea how we ended up with so many of those. The closet behind is again empty, but it has a tall armoir type thing in it, that I don’t know what to do with (it came with the house). It takes up less space being left in the closet, and since we’re not using that closet right now anyways, than that’s where it’ll stay until we figure out the answer to both those issues.

Anyway, it’s all going to be moved into the small closet in my husband’s room where he’s going to put in shelves to also be a linen closet. It’s a nice idea, but as with everything else around here … it hasn’t happened yet.

The first of these bookcases, the full bookcase, are books we haven’t read yet. Most of them are mine, some are my husbands (that I don’t intend to read, like Dune), and the rest were given to us but neither of us think we’ll read. For some reason when friends move they decide that we both need to have all their books that they don’t want to take with them.  

Those doors are full, filled with most of my textbooks and some magazines. In the move we lost a shelf for the bookcase that is open, and the door broke as you can see. The box of textbooks from the first photo has what would be on the second shelf in this case. The top open shelves hold our hardcovers, and the one near the window has the nonfiction books. Inside the paintball box is my prom corsage.

This is stuff that could go into a closet and I’d not feel bad about just storing it away. The three cat carriers (the two plastic ones are sitting on a bigger one) get used once a year. The smallest doesn’t get used at all except as a place to store cat toys when I find them around the house. The chair isn’t all that comfortable and doesn’t fit in the room anyhow. The box is filled with papers, as you can see, that are waiting to be shredded. Max likes to sit in it.

These are the office bits. The box under my amazon box houses my Sims 3 games. The rest was all stuff that used to be on my larger desk before the move and desk downsize. The box with the M&m guy is pretty much filled with candy leftover from my Christmas stocking.

The drawers behind it are about the only useful storage thing I have, but it’s mostly empty, because the drawers don’t close very well.

These boxes should be a filing cabinet. I think I might have saved too much, but at the same time, I’m worried I didn’t save the right stuff. This is after a purge of paper when we moved in, to separate out things that needed to be shredded or just tossed.

I’ve held on to (most of) my collection of stuffed animals. I don’t know why. I’m not as attached to them as I used to be. They’re out of the way, and high up enough to be out of sight, too. So, they’re the least bothersome thing about my whole room, and yet still make it look cluttered.

The ones I would save are the crochet bedtime bear that my Memere made for me. The disney store Mickey mouse (and his friends, who got cut out of the picture), the sheep, and  a teddy bear or two.

The two newspaper wrapped frames that the reindeer cat is sitting on are my degrees. I plan to hang them up, sometime, but I don’t really have any open wall where they would fit.

My motivation behind posting cluttered and unflattering pictures of my house is to a) maybe get some feedback on what to do or how and b) put it all in a row so that I might be able to look at it objectively. There’s something about sitting in the middle of all this and being overwhelmed to the point of not being able to see how to fix any of it.

Question to the reader: Why do we save all this stuff and how do I get myself to part with it? And, when I decide what to get rid of, where do I get rid of it to?

For example: milk, carbonation, coffee, lettuce, onions, peppers, zucchini, spinach, lemons, mangoes, papaya, just to start, and then I can’t eat anything that is spicy, or peppery.

With so many things literally off the menu, it makes come up with food choices hard. I like sweet things, fruit included, and some savory things. I’m okay with herbs like basil, or thyme in small doses, and garlic is okay but again in a small amount. I don’t like overpowering food, I guess.

A coworker saw my lunch once and said I eat like a third grader. He’s probably right. Today for lunch I packed myself a peanut butter and banana sandwich and pudding cup (I also had a jello cup with peaches mixed in, and a granola bar but I didn’t eat them). I had a yogurt with granola to mix in and piece of cheese for morning break.

Now, I’m sitting here trying to think of what to make for supper. Even if I were to go out to buy all the ingredients to make whatever I wanted … I still have no idea what I want. This would be fine if it was a once in a while thing. Except it’s not, it’s every night. It’s also one of the very few things that my husband and I argue over. He’ll eat anything, and will try everything at least once.

I have gotten better at trying new things, after some prodding.

I really don’t know what it is about food, it always seems like such a chore when I have to eat. Maybe it’s because I don’t like cooking? But, even when I’m not the one cooking, I can’t make up my mind. I have a limited number of options that I leave myself, and it’s like they’re always unappealing.

Inevitably lately I’ve been munching on candy that I got in my stocking for Christmas. It’s really bad for me, and I think it’s been what’s been making me feel off lately. Not sick really, just meh. I love fruit, and I want to be able to munch on fruit instead of chocolates or nerds or something like that. I’m always afraid of it going bad, and throwing it out. Produce is expensive, and quickly perishable.

I like some vegetables, and mostly I like them raw. A few I’ll eat cooked, with butter on them. I’m okay with meat, I prefer chicken or pork over beef. I’m not really into seafood. Occasionally I’ll eat a white fish (like haddock or tilapia), scallops and shrimp. I can’t eat fried foods without feeling sick.

I eat too many starches. I love fries, potato, pasta, and bread. I like cheese and yogurt, but milk makes me feel sick. I love ice cream (vanilla or chocolate on occasion. As much as I love strawberries, they’re my favorite fruit, I cannot stomach strawberry ice cream. Mainly I like vanilla with toppings on it.) and sugary sweets, but not cake. I like eggs, but not the yolk unless it’s mixed in when scrambled.

I don’t like bacon, and my husband just doesn’t understand that at all. Not liking bacon just doesn’t register in his world

I’m trying to come up with a list of foods that I like, that are easy to make, and that are healthy. It’s a short list. My snacks list is longer, but it’s mainly variations of fruits, veggies and dips. My lunches list has two things on it, a tuna fish sandwich with cheese, or leftovers. There’s a flaw in that list. I don’t have anything on my dinners list to have as leftovers.

This is what stops me from meal planning like I want to. I can’t decide what to eat when I’m hungry, how am I possibly going to come up with a week’s worth of meals when I’m not? I can’t come up with one! How seven?

Question to the readers: What’s your relationship with food?

Now, I’m not sure.

I talk to one a little here and there, and I recently went to see her for a scentsy party. I had a nice time, but I feel like we only get together for these types of parties. I did go to her housewarming, but was late and only stayed a little while because of working. Work schedules are a big factor in planning any sort of get together.

I talk to another about once a month when I visit her at her work. The third I haven’t talked to in months, and don’t even know where she’s living at the moment. I know she and her husband bought a house, but not where. I have asked, more than once, and just never receive a reply. I don’t know why this bothers me so much. I guess I thought you told friends where you were living?

My husband came up to comfort me during my break down. He reminded me that not only do I have other friends, that we were also not the type of people to call anyone, and that everyone’s been busy lately with us all three buying houses this past September and October.

During the conversation I brought up the fact that I have more friends around the world, that I only talk with online, than I do offline. Even those friends, I really only talk to online. That’s part of what’s so hard about socializing with this group of friends, they’re not nearly as big into online things as I am. So, if they’re not online, I hear nothing from them. I don’t talk to anyone on the phone but my mom. Everything else is pretty much through facebook, twitter or email. I don’t even text that much. I try to plan times to hang out, but either I get no reply, or schedules just don’t seem to match up.

I miss having friends I could hang out with and play games. It’s not the same when it’s only two people playing a game, and mostly we don’t play games just us, we watch TV together (right now we’re on firefly) in the rare times we’re both home at night.

Then my husband said something else that caused me to have one of those light bulb moments. You can have friends who your only thing in common with them is location: you live in the same city, went to the same schools, etc. Or, you can have friends who your only thing not in common with them is location. It’s okay to have friends who you’ve never met face to face.

He said that if this group of friends is really my friend, than when things settle down, they’ll call or we’ll work out a day that works to hang out. In the interim, I do have other friends, and not to discount them because we haven’t been super close in recent years. I could contact some of them to hang out some time, if that’s what I really wanted to do.

But really, when do we ever go out anywhere? We both work 45–50 hours a week. Then we get home and have to put the house together, and keep it running. Mostly, he builds and fixes things around the house, while I do the day-to-day functioning type things to keep it going: like dishes, laundry and groceries, etc.

Our house is 161 years old, it’s like having another family member to take care of. I love my house. It’s just a lot of work.

Question to the readers: What are your thoughts on friendships either offline or online?

But, like I told my husband. They’re files. They’re not even real things.

I still feel lost without them. Very much like a piece of me is missing.

I’d still be me without my books. I’d still be me without my old (and honestly not very good, although not bad for a 14 year old) writing. Or, my kitten pictures of Max. My files are not me. My things are not me.

So then why do they feel so much like they are? Why do we have a need to personalize everything? Things come in colors, can be embroidered, can have different designs and styles. If our things don’t make us, why do we have to impose so much of ourselves, onto our things?

When I describe myself, the first two things I think of without fail is that I am a writer, and a reader. Secondly I list myself as a wife, and a cat-mom. I’m more than what I do, who I’m married to, and who I take care of.

But, what?

I think, at least in my case, our things become a shield. Our hobbies become an easy way to connect with people without having to really connect or converse. If I say I love to read, and someone I meet does too, that’s one thing we can talk about. That’s something to start a friendship on.

If I said I was an extreme introvert who found talking to people incredibly intimidating and non-desirable, well, then that conversation wouldn’t go quite as well.

Question to the readers: So, how do you define yourself?

So I will obviously be not getting the external drive fixed.

It’s really upsetting because that was quite literally everything digital I had saved over the last 14 years or so. Every. Last. Thing.

And now it’s gone.

However, I have my wedding photos on CD. And I have my WIP novel. I’d be a little more devastated if I lost those two things. The writing hurts, but to be honest most of it was crap from when I was a teenager. Going forward with my writing, I’ll just have to write all new stuff instead of revising all the old stuff like I planned. It’s not so bad.

I’m sad about losing our pictures. But as my husband said, we never looked at them anyway, and there were so many that it was hard to do so if we wanted to. We have a few printed out, and he has some on his computer. I’ll miss them, but we still have the memories. And I have some copies of a few on facebook, even if they’re poor quality.

The rest, the old website versions and backups, old sims saves, and I don’t even know all of it, I’m not too upset over. I had too much junk on there anyway that I needed to sort. The music isn’t lost, I just have to re-burn all the CDs, or not. I have the stuff I listen to now on this computer so I may not bother.

I feel like I should have learned something from all this. Obviously I need to back up my backups, because when the main computer dies, then the backup dies before I can re-install everything, I lose all of it. I don’t want to lose it all a second time. Except, I’d lose much less.

But what else? That I held on to too much old junk? I do that in my offline life too.

Question to the readers: Is there a silver lining to all this?

This is big for me.

However, the floor still got water all over it, but whatever. At least the floor’s a bit cleaner now, right? 

Photographic Evidence:

A rare occurrence in my house.

Question to the readers: What is your most hated household chore?

In 2011, it felt like I spent the year tired and always busy, but never getting anything done.

We bought a house. I got a second job. I finished half my novel.

I started exercising a little in the summer, but once school started in September the park was invaded by teenagers. I couldn’t run along the paths anymore when them crowding it to get to school.

Now, my external hard drive crashed, and so did the hard drive on my laptop.

For next year, I have only a few hopes. I want to finish at least the next quarter of my novel. I want to work exercise back into my life. And I want to try harder at being positive and happy. I usually am, but lately it’s been a string of things which make that pretty hard to do.

Question to the readers: What are you hoping to accomplish in 2012?

This is our first Christmas in our new home. It’s such a good feeling to have our own house. We don’t have to worry about the neighbors upstairs, downstairs and on every wall (just about) complaining about noise. Our oldest niece and my sister-in-law came over last night for a visit, and she got to play around all she wanted. We didn’t have to quiet her because it was after 8pm and she was laughing. She’s four, I don’t want to stop a four year old from laughing to make her think she’s done something wrong.

My husband loved the presents I bought for him, and I loved mine as well. Mostly, I’m looking forward to a nice lunch with my family, and playing games after. We did the same at Thanksgiving last month and it was a nice day. I don’t get to see my husband or my parents as much as I’d like.

Honestly, I don’t get to see my house as much as I’d like either. We’re always so busy with work!

We love our house though, and I’m really enjoying my new job ¹. The two things I miss the most about our old apartment are the dishwasher and the central heat/air. Oil heat is too expensive for us to leave it set at 74*F like I’m used to. Now, we leave it at 65*F. I expected to be cold, but the bathtub is cast iron inside (I think, it’s still got the coating on it like a regular tub but it sounds metal when you tap on it) and that thing just cups the freezing cold air inside.

Dishes used to be a quick thing, just toss them in and go do something else. Now, they’re a chore again. The one chore I hate more than anything. I’d rather scrub the bathroom than the dishes! They take so long, and since we’re recycling, I’m also washing the trash  Laundry is much less of a chore now, so I guess that’s a bit of a trade off. Now that we have our own machines in our place, instead of going to my parents’ house across town, it doesn’t take a week to do a load of wash! I can do several in a day.

It’s the little things which amuse me.

It’s fun to dream about all the things we’re planning to do. It gives us something to work for. When the days at work are long, we can remember why we’re there, and that X amount of hours will add up to fixing the chimney, or the porch, the basement, taking down the paneling, getting rid of the ‘70s pink carpet, adding a second bathroom, adding more than two electrical outlets to each room, rearranging and modernizing the kitchen, etc …

The main thing about it is the trading of patches to form an online quilt, but its most basic element is to make new friends. There are bees from all over the world, of varying ages and backgrounds.

The highly anticipated version 3.0 is in the works, and it’s going to shake things up a bit. There’s all kinds of cool new things going on. On top of that, there’s all the regular cool stuff going on. Every month there’s an activity, or three. The B*B*S is always buzzing. There’s a chat room to hop on to talk with bees about anything. There are groups to hang out in to discuss something you’re especially interested in.

This month, in addition to three cool activities, we’re also doing a Christmas card exchange. It’s so much fun. I love getting mail from far away places. I’m still in the process of writing out my cards, but I hope to have them in the mail soon. Otherwise they won’t arrive in time!

For my part as a Princess bee, I make the monthly newsletter. The last few months have been out late, with everything going on. I’m hoping that with the January newsletter, after things settle, that I’ll be able to add some more things into it. I’d like to create some more excitement around the newsletter to bring in more submissions, feedback and to draw more bees to the site with it.

There are going to be a lot of bees raving about the club, but the best way to really get a feel for it, is to head over and explore. If you join, tell them I sent you

My first blanket

It’s done, after about four months worth of working on it. I found a cute pattern. I didn’t buy the same type of yarn, since I didn’t know what a cone was. I prefer a chunky yarn anyway, and the stuff I did find was really soft. I used Lion Brand, Baby’s first in Pixie Dust, Honey Bee, and Beanstalk. My hook was a US J10 /6mm. I used 1 skein of the white, and 4 each of the yellow and green.

I did follow the pattern, except I decided to alternate the colors to make stripes. The scalloped border really through me for a loop (pun, intended, hah). I just didn’t get what they were talking about. But, as usual, The Qbee saved me.

A close up of the details

I made it for a friend’s baby. She had the little girl about two weeks ago. I had wanted to be done with it to give her the blanket when the baby was born, but obviously that didn’t work out. I chose not to go with the standard pink colors for a girl, since when you have a baby girl you get inundated with pink. I figured this would be cute, and not end up being just another pink blanket. Plus, if they ever have another kid, and it turns out to be a boy, they can use the same blanket without the little boy being swathed in pink. Not that boys can’t like pink, but it’s easier than for a stranger to think your little one is a girl instead of a boy.