preraphaelitepunk.com

The dog situation seems to have deteriorated the past few days. Molièrestill plays too roughly, and insists on nibbling ears, which irritates Nigel to no end. Now, though, instead of just yelling for Molière to back off, he yells and then chases Molière under the futon. It’s a little scary. I’m trying to convey to Nigel, through reprimands when he goes too far, that it’s okay to express anger or pain when Molière nips his ear too hard or launches himself from the futon and lands on Nigel’s back, but not okay to chase an irritating dog who’s already in retreat, but success has been limited so far. (It doesn’t help that Molière gets overstimulated and fails to notice Nigel’s facial expressions that indicate he’s getting pissed off, or seem to hear me telling him to back off a bit.)

Heaven knows what the neighbors think, with all sporadic racket, yelling, and occasional sobs and/or shouts of “No licky!”

The food situation has gotten worse, too. The first week, I was able to feed them on opposite sides of the kitchen; now, Nigel has to be in the kitchen (with extra treats like a splash of hemp milk, to make it more tempting) with Molière in the bathroom, on the opposite side of the flat — except that Molière stops eating if I get out of sight, and comes to investigate what I’m doing, so Nigel winds up yelling at me for guarding Molière’s food and not letting him steal exactly the same kibble as is in his own bowl from someone else’s bowl. This evening, in fact, he had to go into time out because my hands-on-hips, “I’m not going to take that crap from you” intent stare (which is usually bloody effective, astonishingly enough, and is copied from Victoria Stilwell) didn’t work, and while I was putting him in isolation, he bit me. Didn’t draw blood, but I’ve got a red raised area on my wrist that is still quite sore.

Yes, I’ve tried shutting the bathroom door to keep Nigel out while Molière eats, but that makes Molière think he’s being put in time out, and he throws himself bodily at the door.

I don’t know what to do. They were supposed to be settling in by now. I can’t tell whether it’s a dominance issue — and if so, which one is dominant? Nigel is more assertive over food, but he’s a beagle; on the other hand, he yields pride of place on furniture without a whimper, and hasn’t slept on the bed since Molière arrived. As an experiment, I kept Molière off the futon all day today, to see whether Nigel would take up his previously accustomed place, but no dice.

Nigel’s stomach and kidneys are still wonky, despite medications. He’s had accidents for the past five days. The stress doesn’t seem to be doing my stomach any good, either, though I’ve managed to avoid any major episodes; still, I’ve had mild, maybe half-hour episodes of pain most afternoons this week.

Oh, and Molière has eyedrops now, to treat an infection the vet thought they had cleared up while he was still boarding. That’s at least five minutes, three times a day, of wrestling with a squirming dog who really, really hates eyedrops and is one of these days going to fling his little body in the wrong direction and impale his eyeball on the damned eyedrop dropper. Explaining rationally that I know it sucks but that it’s necessary, and will all be over soon if he’ll just stay goddamned still for thirty freakin’ seconds, does not seem to be causing the necessary neurons to fire in his little coconut head, because he still fights me with every fiber of his being. As it is, probably half the eyedrops have missed their mark because I can’t immobilize him, and I’ll probably need a refill to finish the course of treatment.

I really, really wish I hadn’t taken in a second dog, but it’s too late now. I’m stuck, and I’ll have to figure out what to do, even though I don’t think I’m up to handling this. I keep telling myself that I had a lot of the same frustrations when Nigel was a puppy, and that Molière is still quite young. That doesn’t help so much, though, when it’s the older dog who’s apparently sulking because he’s ready for the house guest to go home.

Working theory number one: no more dogs on furniture. I hate the thought, because it makes me sound like a total dog nazi, but everything I’ve read suggests that it’s a big dominance issue for dogs. Possibly Nigel thinks he’s being forced off the furniture by the newcomer, and is acting out because of it?

Working theory number two: take Molière out on his own, for a few minutes in the evenings and longer periods next weekend, and put in some serious one-on-one training time. He’s young and not hugely bright, but concepts do sink in eventually: he knows his name now, he remembers that “sit” means “put your butt down on the floor” and not “lick my hand all over, please” about 10% of the time, and it only took about five million instances of me saying “Get off the bed” and plopping him down on the floor for him to learn what that meant (though he’s still not sure about whether the instruction applies for more than four seconds). “No licky,” though, still apparently translates in his head as “My sunscreen tastes really good; here, slurp it all off!”

(On the up side, though he can’t distinguish between “toy” and “not toy,” Molière does stop chewing, worrying, or disemboweling things when I tell him that the shoe, throw pillow, and yarn are not toys. On the down side, as I was typing that, I realized he was idly chewing the leg of the side table. Yes, the dog has chew toys, and soft toys that he’s finally realized are in fact toys; it’s just that everything seems to be fair game until explicitly ruled out. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to want to eat yarn, but so far he’s disemboweled and seriously tangled about $20 worth of yarn. [And now he’s just been trying to chew another leg of the side table, apparently on the theory that if the upper left-hand corner’s leg is verboten, then maybe the lower right-hand corner’s leg is okay to gnaw like you’re a beaver.])

The idea behind the training is to get him to listen to me more seriously, so that when he’s overstimulated and playing too roughly with Nigel, maybe he’ll actually hear and heed my telling him to back off and settle down. That way, I won’t have to intercede when play gets too rough, nobody will have to go into time out with quite such frequency, and I might actually be able to relax a little bit in the evenings, instead of wondering when the next canine wail or bellow will come.

Third plan: sedatives for everyone! There must be some sort of doggie Valium, or maybe doggie beer. Barkweiser, perhaps, or the microbrew Sweet Woofer Ale?

Maybe we’re not all completely doomed. I just wish things were going more smoothly. There’s so much more smoothness that could be had, and I would like just a little of it, just a little tiny bit. . . .

Molière — the Dog Formerly Known as Gizmo — is nice enough, but we’re all still adjusting to each other after a week. (One of my neighbors, who does small-dog rescues and has her own permanent dog, says it generally takes them about two weeks to settle in with a new rescue.) It doesn’t help that Molière, well, just isn’t that bright. For instance, he’s just now discovered the mirror, and the fact that there’s another dog in it; he’s spent the last five minutes growling and occasionally barking at the weird-looking intruder. (At his age, Nigel had completely sussed out what mirrors could do and used them to get a better view out the window from the comfiest spot in the room.) My attempts to reassure him that he’s only seeing himself have had less of an effect than I might’ve hoped.

We’re still trying to get across the following points to Molière:

On the up side, he’s a very nice, friendly little dog, albeit one who is as dumb as a box of rocks. He seems to like Nigel and plays pretty well with him, though occasionally he gets a little rough and Nigel has to do his cranky-old-man yell to tell him to back off. He’s also figured out — mostly — that he must sit before the leash goes on and we go outside; this rule was instituted many years ago, when I realized that, unless I asked him to sit, Nigel would caper around joyously at the very thought of going outside, and it would take five times as long to actually get ourselves outside because I couldn’t hook up the leash on a constantly moving target.

Molière also, shockingly, doesn’t like peanut butter, or bread, which meant that giving him his pills for his irritated skin (from the mats all over his body, and a flea infestation) was no fun for anyone. He also doesn’t seem to like the little squeaky carrot toy I bought him, and seems perplexed by the endless games of fetch that Nigel so dearly loves. (On the positive side, that means that he’s not trying to take over any of Nigel’s stuffed toys, most of which are almost as big as Molière is.)

On the subject of mats, the vet had managed to shave off all of them over the course of two days, except for three of his legs. I’ve got an appointment for him with a groomer for next Friday, but in the meantime I’m working on what’s left, snipping away. (I’m sure the resulting trim looks like crap, but the point is to demat the dog. Pretty can come later.) Last night, I finally managed to get the mat entirely off his hind leg. I tried to upload the photo and post it in the regular manner, but for some reason WordPress is ignoring my instructions to resize it and won’t let me post it as a thumbnail, so I’m just linking to it instead:

(Penny is provided for scale, and was not found embedded in the original mat.) If you click to embiggen the photo at the top, you can see one of the remaining mats on his forelegs; I hope to get those completely off this weekend.

In non-Molière news, we had a bit of a scare with Nigel’s kidneys (suspected glomerular disease, because his urine was foamy and had too much protein in it), but his bloodwork came back normal for kidney function, although his liver function was a little off again. Consequently, the vet doesn’t yet want to switch him from his sensitive stomach food to a kidney-protective food, but has given him meds to reduce his blood pressure and sort out his liver again. (We’re thinking that, although he seems quite happy to have Molière around, the stress of a change in his routine has thrown off his system again. His digestive system in general has always been a bit delicate and easily upset by changes.)

My own liver and other bits seem to be functioning normally, however, according to my bloodwork. Stomach biopsy from the endoscopy came back normal, all non-thyroid blood results normal; I’ve got an ultrasound scheduled for next Friday, to check out my gallbladder and various assorted organs in the region, but the GI guy seems to think my occasional stomach pain, vomiting, and general malaise is just one of those things. Well, technically, I think he said “stress-induced gastritis,” which is remarkably similar to Nigel’s stress-induced colitis. (Most dogs and their humans are said to start resembling each other physically; apparently Nigel and I resemble each other medically.) He hasn’t yet offered any suggestions for how to handle future attacks, but seemed fairly confident that at least it won’t kill me. (Though he didn’t say there wouldn’t be times I would wish it might do so.)

No big plans are made for the holiday weekend at Chez Moi. Basically, I hope to finish the cupcake hat for Christi and Jarrett’s upcoming sprog; maybe get a few more rows in on my Giselle sweater, which is now safely past the French cable waistband and moving on down the waist decreases; and maybe do a little baking and/or bookstore browsing. I’m hoping that Molière won’t be too freaked out by tonight’s fireworks; happily, Nigel’s hearing loss has meant that he hasn’t even noticed them the last few years, which has left him much happier and less stressed out.

This morning, this little dog showed up at my vet’s, apparently abandoned.

He’s apparently about two years old, friendly but calm, and very sweet. I’m not sure what’s up with the pink skin around his eyes; possibly it’s because his hair is completely, horribly matted — worse than anything I’ve ever seen in my life, the poor little guy. The mats are all down his back, on his belly, on both ears, and seem to gather up all the loose hair around and pull it tightly. Despite the obvious neglect and probable abandonment he’s been through, he seemed very happy just to lie on the floor and let me rub his shoulders and belly.

I’m seriously considering adopting him, if he and Nigel get along. I’m pretty sure that Nigel would love to have a companion, and given the state of the real estate market, it’s unlikely that I’ll be moving to a larger place with a yard during his probable lifetime. A little dog like Gizmo, as they’re calling him, is about as big as I probably should go. He seemed pretty laid-back, which is definitely good, and I loved his little pointy ears.

The thing is, it’s scary considering adopting another dog. I’ve never had more than one dog at a time; what if I screw it up? What if the pack dynamics are horrible? What if there are dangers in my flat that I’ve never noticed because Nigel doesn’t care about them (e.g., yarn), but the new dog finds irresistible and then gets hurt? What if I decide later it’s all a horrible mistake, and I can’t deal with it? (There were times in Nigel’s puppyhood, usually when he’d just taken the sheets off the bed and torn holes in the mattress, that I was convinced the whole thing was the worst mistake possible.) Do I have the time to do this properly, and make sure both Nigel and the new dog get what they need? Can I afford another dog right now, one with an unknown medical history and ongoing grooming needs, with my medical bills and the possibility that, as he ages, Nigel will continue to surprise me with $1000+ emergencies?

On the other hand, can I sit back and do nothing, if there’s a reasonable chance it could work out well?

This is bad timing. I’m leaving for the meeting tomorrow, and really should be asleep by now, but I’m too worked up. I don’t know what to do. The vet is holding him, though, and will give him and Nigel a chance to get to know each other. At least I’ve got a little time to decide, though I’ll hardly have a lot of mental energy to devote to the task.

(Access to the Internet will probably be spotty for a while. I’ll post when I can.)

In the vein of trying to get things sorted out before I leave for the meeting, I finally got around to getting a haircut. Probably about time, because it’s been . . . um, a really long time. I know I haven’t had a haircut since I moved into my flat, and that was just over four years ago. Consequently, the split ends and such meant that quite a bit needed to be chopped off:

The left image is, obviously, the before shot. Cheeks are pink because it was bloody hot, and though the car windows were down, I was at a stoplight and there was no breeze worthy of the name, and when it’s warm I tend to turn crayon-type pink.

Still getting used to the new length. What perplexes me, though, is the fact that hairstylists always twirl my hair around to form ringlets. Do I look like the type of person who should be wearing ringlets? Who am I, Shirley Temple? (At least she didn’t put seven types of styling gunk in my hair.)

The upper GI endoscopy yesterday didn’t show evidence of ulcers, and apparently I’m negative for Helicobacter pylori, so apparently that’s not it. Hmm. The gastroenterologist wants to do either a CAT scan or ultrasound next — he had mentioned it might be my gallbladder. Not sure about that, but maybe. He also said that a couple of areas of my stomach showed ribbing that was a marker for Crohn’s disease in people with Irish ancestry, but he seemed to think that was a long shot.

(The GI guy has a tendency to shoot apparently off-topic questions at me out of nowhere: I was in the recovery room and kind of dozy, talking about my interior bits, and suddenly he started questioning me about my ancestry. Somewhat perplexing; it might help if he’d explain the reason for the question early on, but whatever. Oddly enough, when I replied, “General British ancestry,” he initially didn’t think that included Ireland, even Northern Ireland. Perhaps I should’ve been clearer and spoken geographically rather than politically, and said “All over the British Isles,” but I plead dopiness from the sedatives.)

Anyway, just because it’s been a while since I’ve posted a photograph, here are the stills from the procedure. You can see the ribbing in the left upper and right lower corner shots; click to embiggen, if you’re into that sort of thing. Anyone know any doctors or med students? Maybe we could play Snapshot Diagnosis; first one to pick the disorder that matches any eventual real-life diagnosis gets a pair of hand-knit wool-free socks. Anyone?

In the meantime, at least I’m doing okay. Occasionally my stomach kind of gently nudges me, as if to remind me that it holds the power of life and death, or at least productivity and lying in a limp puddle on the floor, over me, but no real pain, and only minimal nausea. It’s been a week of significant savings on the food front, as well as on the coffee beans and wine fronts, given that I’ve avoided all three pleasant occupations as much as possible through abject, cringing fear of pain — today I’m having my first cup of coffee in over a week, and am equally thrilled with the caffeine and the lack (so far) of negative consequences. Oh, coffee, how I’ve missed you. My appetite is even coming back a little, too, which is a pleasant surprise. I’ll probably hold off on reintroducing the wine for a while longer, because the thought still makes my stomach clench a little with worry.

Little knitting has been accomplished, because for a while there the very thought of yarn somehow made me queasy. (This makes no sense, but I chose not to argue with the body and its peculiar tantrums.) At least yesterday, after Cindy very kindly took me home and I crashed for a couple of hours, I got about 10 rows done on my sweater; I’m about to start the French cable for the waistline. There’s no bloody way I’ll get it finished before the meeting next week, which was my original deadline, but at least some progress has been made.

So, aside from the grisly photos of my interior, not a whole lot to report. I was hoping to have a firm diagnosis by now, but I’ll take what I can get: at least I’m functional, and doing reasonably well, and don’t apparently have anything obvious and life-threatening. It could be a helluva lot worse.

No sooner did the air conditioning at work get fixed (and, to their credit, they did close the office after lunch on Tuesday) than all kinds of hell broke loose on the health front. Yippee. Two visits to the urgent care clinic later, including one in which I started throwing up in the waiting room, they are pretty sure I have a gastric ulcer, and, as an added, surprise bonus, are positive that I’m rather hypothyroidal. (The word “goiter” was bandied about. Sexy.) I don’t know the exact levels yet, or which exact thyroid hormones are involved, but when the doctor called, he sounded a little concerned. I think the words “extremely low” were used.

I have apparently flipped straight into middle age: a week ago I had no prescription medicines at all, taking only vitamins and an omega-3 supplement; now I have two prescription acid blockers, an antinausea medication they usually use after surgery or during chemo treatments, and a fairly heavy-duty painkiller, and will pick up the thyroid meds sometime today. The last is something I’ll probably be on for life. Hopefully, I’ll be able to drop the others, or at least not take them on a daily basis, if my probable ulcer responds to antibiotics. Otherwise, I’ll have to start looking for one of those pill organizers with the daily and AM/PM compartments that all the cool kids are carrying.

We’re still waiting for the blood test results for Helicobacter pylori, but the doctor I saw yesterday wants me to go ahead and schedule an endoscopy as soon as possible, to get an idea of what’s down there. Whee: my very first camera-down-a-bodily-orifice test. I’m thrilled.

Well, okay: the upsides are potentially pretty good here. I’ve had sporadic stomach pain of the “feels like someone’s holding my stomach and making a fist, and occasionally digging in with fingernails” sort since high school, and if I can get that under control, that’ll be a vast improvement. At least knowing what it is helps, too. And it’s probable that getting my thyroid hormones back to normal will help with energy levels, and will almost certainly help me get rid of some of the extra weight I’ve mysteriously gained lately.

Anyway, at the moment at least, I seem to be doing okay. Heavily medicated, but okay. There were a bunch of things I’d wanted to do this weekend — Summerfest, the Indie Craft Experience in Centennial Park, and the fundraiser for a local filmmaker — but I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to do any of them. At the very least, I’m a bit nervous about driving if I have to take any of the antinausea or pain meds; also, if I start going downhill again, I’d rather start whimpering, displaying abominably poor posture, and possibly vomiting in the privacy of my own home, rather than out in public.

If I ran the world — or even just ran the place where I work — things would be very different. Different in many ways, but at the moment the most important difference would be what would happen when the office HVAC broke down. (This happens with grim regularity, and is rather darkly amusing because, without naming names, heating and cooling technology is kind of what our little nonprofit group does.)

Firstly, I’d make sure that our office building had operable windows. Also, outlawing fans is a bad idea. Stagnant, hot, humid air feels ten times worse than hot, humid air with a bit of air circulation.

Secondly, I’d give everyone an automatic Heat Day, which is like a Snow Day except in reverse: close the office the instant the heat rose to 80°F (just under 27°C; for convenience, SI users could leave when it hit 25°C).

If that were not possible — visitors were coming from out of town, meetings were scheduled, etc. — then I’d at least try to do something to demonstrate sympathy and concern. Personally, I’d set up a little tiki bar in the break room, and serve free frozen drinks and chilled tropical fruit nibbles to all employees all day.

What I wouldn’t do is just tell people that they had to come in regardless, and to dress “lightly but appropriately” and just suck it up and be a mensch about the heat and the locker-room smell, all the while taking the day off myself.

I’m just saying. . . . It’s currently 84°F (about 29°C), and I’m about this far from either rebellion or melting. Or possibly subliming; it’s hard to tell.

It took me about two hours, I’d say. That’s slow for someone who actually crochets well, but pretty darned good for me.

Most of the afternoon’s been spent playing with yarn and hooks. The good news is that I’m getting better at working the chain — I find it helps if I insert the hook in the first loop, then twist it around and sort of hook over the bottom loop, then twist again so the hook is facing up again. Somehow, that seems to be faster and more reliable for me than trying to slip under both the top loops in one go, or (as I usually wind up doing) trying to pry the second loop over the hook with my fingernails.

The bad news is that my fingers are a little sore, and I only just now remembered that Cindy had a photography show that was closing today, and I’d meant to go to the reception. Given that the reception was supposed to end right about, er, now, I suppose I’ve missed it. Oh dear.

I officially do not have enough time. Well, part of that probably is because of my habit of wasting weekend mornings by faffing around on the computer, and then taking a nap, so it’s largely my own fault, but still, I think it’s a valid point. (I also apparently have enough time to write this long and rambling blog entry, but even that’s taken me the best part of two mornings, so I think it still counts as evidence that I have too much to do in my available free time. Either that, or I’m a really slow writer, which is probably also true.)

I started making a list of all the things I want to organize, redo, finish, or inflict an extra-thorough cleaning on around the flat. When the list reached 35 tasks, I had to put it aside and go for a little lie-down. (The sad part is that I hadn’t even finished adding items to the list — though, to be fair, I did break them down into some reasonably small subtasks, so maybe it’s not quite as overwhelming as it feels.)

My cooking and baking have been virtually nil lately. This week, for instance, I managed to prepare one thing totally from scratch: tofu frittata with asparagus and sun-dried tomatoes, from Vegan with a Vengeance; except that halfway through the baking my neurotic oven freaked out and thought it was overheating, and shut itself off (no, I still haven’t gotten that fixed), so it came out more as a scramble. That, plus the pizza I made last night, which doesn’t count as home-made because I cheated horribly with whole-wheat pizza dough from Trader Joe’s,* prefab LightLife soysage, and Teese. (At least I made the tomato sauce myself, and the broccolini was fresh, not frozen.) Everything else has been from a box or a tub, with a little fresh fruit and raw veg thrown in to fend off scurvy. I’ve got to do better. It’s expensive eating prefab stuff, and although most of the packaging is recyclable, it’s still a waste.

I’ve also been meaning to print out all the recipes from my favorite food bloggers — marking them as “keep new” in Bloglines works, but when you’ve accumulated maybe 150 recipes, it is rather difficult to remember which blogger created, for instance, the cool-sounding chestnut and apple muffins I’ve been meaning to try for the past three months — and put them in a notebook, organized by type and with credit lines so I remember who created which things. It just seems a little wasteful, though; instead, I should probably find some recipe software for Errol the Mac, who is portable and small enough to perch on my toaster oven as I prepare things, and move the recipes into that. (I’ve tried clipping recipes to Google Notebooks, but found it got overwhelmingly chaotic too quickly.) I really need to figure out the best solution soon.

In addition to not doing as much food prep as I’d like, I don’t seem to have enough time for knitting. I’ve got almost all of a sock that I knitted on the plane to Vancouver:

(The lace pattern doesn’t show up well in that, but trust me: it’s there. Once I get around to finishing the last four rows and doing the cuff, I’ll post a picture of it on an actual foot, probably mine — though I should probably shave my legs before taking the photo. Eeep.)

There’s also about 12.5 inches (about 31.75 cm) of a sweater, although the only photo I have shows significantly less progress than that:

Plus the cupcake hat for Christi’s baby, and a couple of projects that are currently hibernating (cabled scarf and checkerboard ankh afghan), and two projects that I haven’t had the nerve to admit to Ravelry I’m working on (hat for myself using this yarn, and a simple lacy scarf in black bananasilk). I like all these projects, but trying to split my time between them all means that nothing is moving very quickly at all — no way I’m going to finish the sweater before our annual meeting, which was my original deadline — and of course the knitting is a distraction that prevents me from getting other things done, too.

Then there are the non-knitting crafts I want to pursue. I spent yesterday afternoon practicing crochet with my grandmother, and actually succeeded in making a small single-crochet swatch. My how-to books have been helpful in learning the concept, but it actually helped a lot having an experienced crocheter right there to watch, to ask questions of (e.g., “Is it supposed to be this hard to work the chain, or am I doing something wrong?”), and just to chat: my grandmother and I get along pretty well but don’t have oodles in common, what with her being the widow of a Southern Baptist pastor and my being a godless heathen, but somehow playing with yarn and hooks gave us some common ground. It was actually one of the most relaxed visits we’ve had, and we’re planning to get together again on the last weekend each month. (Next month, I’m going to try teaching her to knit. Oh boy.)

Eventually, I hope to be able to make some of the cool lacework cardis I’ve seen floating around the Innarwebs, but maybe a good first non-swatchy project would be something small, maybe like these cupcakes. No idea what I’d do with them once they’re finished, but they should be fun and just challenging enough to help me learn.

I still haven’t been able to find the Pebeo Porcelaine pens I want, or the ShrinkyDinks, though to be fair I’ve only looked in one of the more indifferent craft stores. ::cough cough::Michael’s::cough cough:: If I can’t find them in a proper arts supply store, I suppose I’ll just order online.

I’m also curious about beading. This got started while I contemplated another sweater I really want to make, which calls for a silk beaded yarn for the contrast lace band around the waist and arms. Obviously, bug silk is right out, but I’ve got some vegan soysilk yarn I think would be a great substitute. The only thing is that it doesn’t come in a beaded version, and I’m not sure how to tell what size beads I should get to fit the yarn. (You can make the sweater without the beading, but I think the extra sparkle on the accent areas is rather prettier than the plain version.) I’d better learn, because there’s a throw blanket I really want to make, as well, that calls for beading along the edges. Then there is the possibility of making my own stitch markers, which doesn’t look all that hard. . . . What I may do is drop by one of the yarn shops and ask them if they could order a batch of the soysilk for me, and then ask if they have any suggestions on how to bead it.

Of course, if I had truly unlimited time as well as oodles of cash, I’d take pottery lessons and make all sorts of cool and practical mugs, dishes, and ovenware. Last time I looked, though, the classes were priced well out of my reach. I guess I’ll have to save that for when I win the lottery.

***

* The organization of the Trader Joe’s near me still baffles me, and I still cannot figure out where they keep basics like baking soda, but they’ve definitely grown on me. I adore their Tuscan white-bean hummus, they carry whole-wheat pita (staff of life around here) that actually doesn’t contain honey, and their price for Gardenburger ribz is actually rather good. I also appreciate the fact that they slap a big honking V on the front of the packaging of their vegan store-brand items, and the staff actually know how to pack groceries in canvas tote bags. I just wish they didn’t overpackage their produce so egregiously, and would tell me where to find the baking soda.
(back to the top!)

I never used to feel spring cleaning urges, but they’ve kind of snuck up on me the past few years. Not that I generally do much about them except get cranky, and maybe clean out a drawer of chuck a few old clothes on the donation pile, which then sits in the corner cluttering up the place for another six months minimum. (I tell myself that this donation layover is strategic: if I haven’t missed the item in six months, then I definitely didn’t need it; if I suddenly need it or want it during that time, though, I’ve still got it. This attempt at self-delusion would probably be more successful if I could put the donation boxes in a garage or attic, rather than leaving it as a big box o’ clutter on the little end table right by the door.)

Part of my problem is my tiny flat. I mean, I love the low utility bills, the efficiency, and the fact that it is the work of a moment to run the vacuum cleaner over my entire floor (or would be, if Nigel would stop shedding and/or I had a vacuum cleaner powerful enough to lift more than one dog hair at a time without then requiring several minutes’ rest to recover from the exertion). What I don’t love is the fact that, in order to declutter any area or rearrange any furniture, a space must first be cleared to put everything you’re organizing, relocating, or chucking out.

I really should just go through the entire place with three big, biodegradable garbage bags: one for donation stuff, one for recycling that has been lingering for a while (e.g., magazines I might want again at some point, but probably won’t), and one for throwing away the truly useless stuff that cannot possibly be rehomed. While I’m at it, I could collect all the stuff I’ve borrowed from people but not yet returned, and centralize it all in one box. (I could also go through the yarn stash and make notes of where I’ve stowed which skeins. When I first started Ravelry, I noticed that feature and thought, “How bizarre — who could ever forget where they’ve put their yarn?” Let’s just say that I have learned better since then.)

If I’m feeling really ambitious, I could even repot the houseplants, and deadhead them. Clean off the bookshelves and reorganize all my books, which have gotten into disarray over the past couple of years. I could even redo the blog template, with something with a wider text column, better layout, and room for widgets.

I probably won’t get to any of that, quite frankly. I’ll probably spend this weekend getting not much of anything done, as usual. The end of May is leaving it rather late for spring cleaning, anyway.

But at least I’m thinking about it. That counts for something, right?

Right?