Still cleaning. We have now moved all furniture that's scheduled to be moved, and Dealt With the storage-under-the-stairs in a satisfactory manner, and we're mostly working on mopping-up a few last pockets of resistance before things really start being assigned to their permanent locations. I have lost track of how many times we've been over to drop stuff at $CHARITY... We are going to get the house clean just in time for the gas company to blow the building up moving the meters. (And we nearly got flooded yesterday when the condo-board didn't bother to point out to the guys who came to power-wash everybody else's back decks that our space isn't just an expendable basement... Bah.)


meeksp has rendered an interpretation of the previous installment of the Trevor And Jason Variety Spectacular:



And now I'm kicking this next bit out of the nest so I can Stop Thinking About It. There's a line that I still kind of want to take out back and shoot, but rather than spend another month wrestling with it, I'll move on for now and just ask if it seems as glaringly obvious to you...


( Trevor and Jason, Vignette #33: Jason owns a tie... )

Tags: fiction:hiraeth, this_so-called_life_of_mine
feeling: exhausted

I'm not sure whether to be humbled or depressed at the realization that I've almost-singlehandedly built 3/4 of our furniture. Although it does explain why we have an entire pint of allen-wrenches.

Tags: this_so-called_life_of_mine
feeling: accomplished

( and now, more BAAAABYanimals!! )

...Okay, maybe not the sort of BAAAABYanimals!! you were expecting. But ain't they just the cutest, grossest widdle things? :)

Tags: wildlife

...Aaaaand have Yet Another Meme, to make it look as if I still have a life beyond the Great Houseclean of '12:

Post the first sentence(or 3) from every WIP you're currently working on, even if it's very short. Then invite people to ask questions about your WIPs. With any luck, the motivation to take that WIP one step closer to completion will appear as if by magic!

( I do mean to finish SOME of these, someday... )

(Note that RE a previously posted To-Do List these are only the ones that have first lines as-such, in case you were wondering where the rest went...)

Tags: fiction_and_sausages

Milestone: the studio is now to a point where more or less everything in the room has either been granted permission to stay or a definite plan to be removed as conditions allow (since this includes some furniture that needs to be picked up by or dropped off at various places). Now the emphasis in there shifts to "okay, so exactly where is this supposed to be?", which... could be nearly as big of a job. And next there's Mum's room to start on, with more furniture-moving and the closet-that's-not-exactly-bigger-on-the-inside... we will be at the Great Houseclean of '12 for weeks yet, but this morning we both looked into the studio (which has BIG GLASS DOORS to reveal its shame to the living-room) and said to each other, "hey, that actually looks like a real room now", or sentiments to that effect. So, Progress, indeed. Remind me of this moment when I start whinging about the storage under the stairs...

Tags: this_so-called_life_of_mine

Still cleaning. A meme for y'all to work on whilst I'm otherwise engaged:

Our online journals are little filters that we each see every one else's lives through, the parts others choose to share with us. That said, we all think we are close, but really we seldom know *a lot* about each other. So ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you...

Or, if that requires too much Higher Thought (since god knows I can't seem to muster much of that lately), consider this one instead:

I think everyone is curious about what others think of them. It's a natural curiosity and one that we rarely get to indulge in. So, let's indulge. Comment on this post with the three words that you think best describe me. They don't have to be complimentary. They don't have to be anything but honest. If you want, post this in your journal and find out what three words others would use to describe you.

Or if even that's too much of a mental strain, BAAAABYanimals!:

Tags: this_so-called_life_of_mine, wildlife

Mum has caught on that I'm trying to weasel out of the family's usual pattern of sitting around in clutter moping about it until somebody else gets stuck cleaning it up when you die. Fortunately she more or less sees the wisdom in this.

We moved ALL THE FURNITURE, with a slight hitch when it turned out that a unit we rescued from the dumpsters at our last flat actually has runners from different makes of elfa-type storage in it and they're not quite the same size front-to-back, which was a problem when we went to stack the two large-basket pieces for the first time since we've had it; however, a little thought suggested the likelihood that we might have two matching sets of runners and an odd pair, so I just pulled most of it apart and rebuilt it so that the incompatible runners were on the end that wasn't getting stacked and we were good to go. So I now have a nice rethought mailing-center/stash-wrangling unit, instead of laundry-baskets full of yarn and boxes of envelopes all over the house. The shelf that was boxed in on that wall is now on the opposite wall, clear of obstructions, and is already loaded with more or less what's supposed to be on it, including a shelf for my dyeing-business stuff. And we can now reach ALL THE WINDOWS.

So, that was the weekend; yesterday, I went after the shelf above my desk where paperwork had got stored in plastic briefcases. There were six of them. This took me all day. My life is now lighter by an 18" stack of 20lb bond, among other things, and it's probably a good thing that it was somewhere in the middle of this that I hit the case with mementoes of a couple of actually-successful-projects in it, because going through reams of old writing was enough to make the chuck-it-all-and-become-a-bricklayer brainweasels show up in force. My brain is way too weird to be allowed out in public, apparently.

(Also, the first thing Mum said when she came home from work and saw the 18" stack was Paper hog, and then went off in a huff when I took offense at the suggestion even in jest that my art was a waste of resources. Example #I've-lost-track of why I'm neurotic about my basic right to take up space in the world by existing at all.)

Overall, we're making a lot of progress, although it's still mostly been on my stuff. We still have a wall of attached shelving and two bookcases to tackle, most of which is Mum's to deal with, and two filing cabinets which need to be replaced with one three-drawer file at some point $$ allowing. And then we get to do Mum's room and the storage under the front stairs... {sigh}

Tags: brainweasels, this_so-called_life_of_mine

Still more-or-less on-course with cleaning ALL THE THINGS, although at the moment I've decided to take a break because I'm in ALL THE PAIN from all this unaccustomed activity. But so far today we've successfully gotten the $CHARITY pile dropped off (I'm not sure whether to be amused or embarrassed that I called the interior volume of the car exactly RE what-all I stuffed into it -- part of our problem in the first place is that we've gotten far too efficient at tetrising stuff into holes...), and the next stage will involve Mum being home anyway so we can go move ALL THE FURNITURE. This may yet end in tears, but at least I remembered to bring the good measuring-tape in from the car...

Tags: this_so-called_life_of_mine

Housecleaning is at "wandering around muttering oh dear god" stage. But at least having gathered ALL THE HARDWARE into the same place has led Mum to have a breakthrough RE conceding that possibly we do have more screws and fasteners than we'll ever need/use and the population can be thinned into a smaller receptacle... It's almost too embarrassing even to do a series of progress pictures, so have some miscellaneous photos instead:

( A photo post, containing wildlife and plant identification questions and other Items of Interest )

Tags: photo-post, wildlife

Day five of Operation Not Ending Up On A Hoarding Show, or, "wow, did we just get all of the hardware put onto the same shelf?" We took a trunkload to $SPECIALTY_RECYCLING yesterday (Tuesday morning being their only open hours we can get there during), and the $CHARITY pile has reached "= volume of car" status so we'll need to make a run there over the weekend. Some progress is beginning to be visible, although unfortunately for the "studio" a lot of it's been in my bedroom/office. (It took about half an hour to swap out the lightbulbs with Mum's and... it's kind of a good thing that I started cleaning in here before the illumination was back up to full-strength...)

We've gotten a lot of stuff out of here or assigned to be gotten out of here already, but I feel like almost all of it has been mine; last night I threatened to find a bell and ring it every time Mum says good money and now you want to just throw it away about something. I did manage to think of a way to repurpose the kitchen-cart-that-wasn't-really-suited-to-keep-the-hardware-on into a cleaning-supplies shelf for the bathroom that we'd sort of been thinking about needing (one thing for metro-type shelving, it's adaptable), but it's slow going with all the "still good" arguments. I'm just happy to have found that box of my juvenilia when she wasn't home to object to how much was going into the recycling bag... (I did save a few bits, which I might even post here someday, but overall, um, yeah, don't really need to drag around all of the Million Words Of Crap through my life. Also apparently I'm just not wired for writing Plot...)


The cats think we're moving.

Tags: this_so-called_life_of_mine