May 1, 2003

My brilliant plan to simplify my home went off like a lead balloon. I had this vision of empty space and rooms you could walk right through without tripping over anything or toppling a teetering pile of miscellaneous crap dusted in dog hair. I had a fantasy about being able to find my phone before it stopped ringing. But a month of culling and a big fat sweaty estate sale later, I'm back where I started. Maybe worse.

Now there's banana boxes stacked 4 deep to the ceiling and unsold furniture and mountains of stuff hastily dumped from drawers, plus an extra person and an extra dog and the fancy huge new bedroom set I had no business charging on its way (luckily, it's supposed to take 6 - 8 weeks--but what if it's early?). And I'm about to go out of town. And as much as I can't wait to abandon this chaos, the thought of returning to it is nauseating.

The plan was to move all my crap to the shed, move Suzanne into the storage/guest room, sell all our furniture, clean out her place, clean out my place, and live happily ever after (for the next six or so months, until she gets ready to buy a place of her own). But most of the furniture didn't move. And there was enough good leftover stuff for a church rummage sale. And we're both more or less broke, so we couldn't quite abandon one last yard sale before hauling it all to Top Drawer. So the new plan is to sell the furniture through the paper, have one last massive yard sale at the end of the month (May 31, 7 - 2, mark your calendar), immediately pack up everything and take it to Top Drawer, and then clean out my place and live happily ever after.

So. Another month before I'm not too mortified to have guests.

Meanwhile, I'm bloated and hairy and disgusted with my inability to just relinquish all the crap that I'm disgusted with myself for acquiring in the first place. Who needs 3 dressers and 2 vanities in their bedroom for crying out loud? Who needs enough underwear to avoid laundry for a year? Who needs this many condiments? Why did I think that buying a giant box of wrapping paper would improve my quality of life? How can I pretend to have any meaningful opinions or ideas when there are 64 banana boxes in my living room and another 3 or 4 dozen scattered around the house?

No wonder I'm so boring.

At least dull, obsessive self-absorption takes my mind of the existential dread! Hooray!

3.16.03