Sunday, March 28, 2004

A "lesbian day"

...

Sorry, that has nothing to do with sex. Someone on another forum I hang out at posted the quote from the Kids in the Hall: "I wish I were a lesbian, they get so much done in a day." I may have mangled that a bit, but you get the gist.

It cracked me up.

Anyway, today was a good & productive day after the vast nothingness of yesterday. I set up the kids' playroom with some help from the kids and DH, and that took most of the day... but I also managed to finally put away the Christmas/Winter dishes and take out the rest-of-the-year dishes (DD: "But these are the summer dishes! Why don't we have spring dishes?" Hee!). And I made a tremendous dinner of roast chicken, mashed cauli, green beans, gravy, and salad. It was awesome.

The playroom-setup was quite a project, because I didn't just toss everything in there, oh no. I went through everything, and sorted out stuff to go to charity, and stuff to toss (yes, exactly like CleanSweep). All the remaining toys got re-sorted back into their appropriate bins: cars, planes, superheroes, etc. I have a huge lawn+garden size trashbag filled with stuffed toys that I'm donating to charity. Two things are important here: 1) the kids really like the room and 2) they haven't even noticed that there are a lot fewer toys around.

They may eventually notice, or miss specific things (doubtful), but them's the breaks. They had way too much stuff. That would be OK if they kept it picked up, but they don't. I'm sick of picking up the same toys 5 or 6 times a day -- that's not an exaggeration. Now, at least, they'll be upstairs in the playroom, not in the family room for me to trip over. And yes, I have tried the "take it away if it's left on the floor" tactic, and that just means that something else gets left on the floor!

Now, I have to get to work on my closet (still a pit), and sorting through the boy clothes and setting up some kind of system for storage and retrieval, I can't just leave them all piled in the box, that won't do at all...

The family room is feeling a bit cavernous right now, as we took the climber upstairs along with nearly everything else. I didn't have the energy to bring the table down, I may get to it tomorrow, depending on how things go. It's really quite nice not having (literally) 20-odd Bionicles draped all over the piano anymore. Now I can think about putting all the family pictures back up again. Yes!

Speaking of pictures... I even took digitals of the Al Fords, but not the big one -- it's under the bed in the guest room, I'll wait until after Papa leaves on Tuesday to dig it out. In the meantime, I'll flip through my photo albums to see if I have a regular print I can scan, that would be a lot easier.

It's funny how things trigger certain trains of thought. On tonight's episode of The Sopranos, Feech told this old joke about the accountant in heaven getting a huge sumptious mansion and all sorts of luxury, whilst the Pope got a hovel and a crust of bread. God explained that it was the first time a Jewish accountant made it into heaven -- hahaha, only, not. So that really stupid joke, on top of all the purging of material goods I've been doing lately, made me think about what heaven would really be.

I don't think of heaven as having everything I ever wanted, or a continual state of bliss, or anything like that. I view it as a truly transcendent place, but it's not really a place at all -- it is a state, I guess, a different way of existing, that is so different from the way we exist now that we can't even comprehend it. And I do think it will be better than this physical life. Sometimes I just feeled so weighed down by everything, I look forward to casting it all off and being really free.

Then again, I like stuff and experiences as much as anyone, arguably more. I really adore good food and drink: reading or writing about it, preparing it, eating it. I love being with family and friends. I love to travel and see new things, I love to read books, I love to write. I love music but rarely get any these days! So when the time comes I'm sure there will be sadness about having to leave all that behind. I do hope that there is a sense of satisfaction, too. I have a really great life and I have every intention of making sure it continues in the same vein!

Now: to work, I have been procrastinating but it's time to get to it.

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