Getting It Cleaned Out!

My morning mug is my favorite Paris scene. Works for me no matter what. A little street, a little bistro, an enormous croissant. Not time to pull out the snowflakes yet. (After last winter that is a terrifying statement!)(Must buy a new snow blower..the blizzard of 2013 took care of the little snow blower that could..and did for about 20 years!). So I start the day with the best of intentions. We all  know where those intentions usually get us. Well, I know where they get me: avoidance, avoidance, avoidance!

Local SB store is having a "tag sale". Due to being educamated by the staff there, I have found out that I can sell my krap gently used paper crafting supplies BUT I get a store credit and not the show me the money thing. I get to show THEM the money when I return to the store with my earnings and buy even more krap, newer, recently on the market stuff! After thinking about it-it works for me. Until I went down to the basement lower level and started to haul my massive pile of go aways out! With some herniated disks working against me I have had great fun looking at all the things I bought at the beginning of this journey to create and make believe I am an artiste. What the beginner doesn't know is a lot. A lot means buying stuff you will never use and really don't like and you stand there screaming -why did I buy this shit- and feel the true meaning of the word ADDICTION.  So my take to the tag sale pile is a mountain and is using up all my space so I can't do a thing but price today. HA! Do I want it to sell? Yes! Do I want to give it away? No! So is there a happy place where I can feel mentally healthy about this? Hell No! But I have to be ruthless. Ruthless! So I will pull my little stickers out and write a low number on them and hope that it all goes. Why? So I can make room, of course, for everything that has arrived this week! Like the squirrels and other animals (Note: I live on shaky ground with nature. Trees and grass? Butterflies and humming birds? That I can do. Moose, deer, snakes, bears, coyote, strange looking alien bugs from a black hole somewhere and mice all fall into the I hate nature category. Just being honest. After hearing a friend say that snakes were LIVING in their daughter's car which is parked in their driveway I am quickly falling into the give me your trees, your grasses but take your freaking critters and go far, far away.....) who get ready for winter by hoarding, I am doing the same. Distress acrylic paints, Distress embossing powders, Claudine Helmouth paints, stamps, stamps, stamps from Stampin' Up, Memory Box, Hero Arts, and my new favorite Gina K Stamp TV Kit! There were inks and the odd small tool and embossing folders. Spellbinders for cutting (will someone PLEASE help me set up my Cameo? Please??) It was a magnificent week of deliveries with me checking hour upon hour for the UPS officer who piles my boxes at the garage door directly behind the bay where my car blasts out whenever I go out to forage for food and friends. For this reason alone I have developed OCDelivery. I can never catch this guy to ask him to please put my packages on the front steps. Do I have to lure him with sweets like I lure my dogs with doggie dots? A trail left from the driveway up the little walkway to the front door where NORMAL delivery officers leave their goodies? If I put a sign out there he will probably deliver my stuff to the guy next door who is cranky and crabby and never says hello but just stares at you as in -why did you move in next door to me-I liked the empty house because then I didn't have to see PEOPLE- (yup, he's nuts). So instead, I run out with my bare feet and PJ's if I think I hear a truck approaching. Like a kid at Christmas you think? Nothing so innocent. It's a craving that has a heartbeat of it's own. Bam, Bam, Bam.  Must to get the box. Must to get the stuff in the box. It's a sickness and no insurance company will cover it. 

I have the little stickers to price my sale krap stuff. I WILL not put anything back. I will not! I will tie one hand behind my back and write with my feet if I have to. It's not going to happen. I need this. I need it bad! I need it so my husband does not choke me when he sees one more little envelope (OK it is bigger than little. OK, I admit it so zip it!) or box arrive. And he will torture me while I try to sleep whispering things like -the asylum is going to haul you away today so pack your bags-.  Another reason I am an insomniac. Last night he asked me if he could help me price my stash and there was this gleam in his eye that looked a little bit like Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining. (HEERRREEE'S JOHNNY!) I have it all under control I say. Total lie. Horrific and complete falsehood. I am not allowing that. No way. Do I touch his RECORDS From 1966? Do I get a look on my face like Kathy Bates in Misery when I herniate another disk picking up the boxes of records that are hidden in the storage side of the basement? And YES, he wants a record player for Christmas. We, who have entered the ipod era (kicking, screaming and trying to remember our itunes password) now will purchase a turntable so that we can listen to that scratchy, swirling dark disk of decades our recent past. And he listens to jazz which is a noble musical art form but makes me twitch and blink too much after a riff or two on a wind instrument that takes his breath away but renders me writhing with pain. And the hours of each piece. We could spend the entire winter waiting for one of those records to get to the last note. Then, instead of just using my finger to slide to the next song I have to heave my herniated disks to the record player and smash change the big, giant, could kill an entire village of moles  RECORD. Oh, the things I have to put up with for my own weakness! It's a lifestyle. It's not a choice.

Somewhere under the house, that's where you'll find me-today. Not like The Wizard of Oz under the house when it flies through the air and lands on the bad witch, but in the lower level cave room the dear one built for me to be locked away escape to and imagine I am artistic and creative and logical. These are all delusions, but some things are allowed in your own home. Just look away! Look.Away. By evening I will have it all packed in boxes, labeled, priced and ready to go to the next sucker crafter who will laugh all the way to their car because I under priced every freaking thing. May they enjoy pricing it next October for the 2014 tag sale..hehehe.

In other news, I have finished a book this week and started another one. See? I CAN read. Just like Maria in My Big Fat Greek Wedding "SEE? I KNOW!" (re Bundt cake) (you had to be there.) This Kindle thing is growing on me. I have 6 books on it and not one spot on my night stand, bookshelves or floor are taken up by them. I watched very little TV but caught Hostages, Boardwalk Empire, Revenge, The Paradise and I snuck in super trashy Real Housewives of New Jersey (I will not snark as I do not want to find a horse's head in my bed tonight) (shut up). Love me some trash TV at the end of the long day. Thus the Bravo TV diversion but only in the dark and with headphones on so nobody knows..NO.BODY. Also caught up with Survivor. ( I think I will make my own buff that says Woman Warrior on it. The show inspired me to try to move again.)  I went to a meeting and played nice and made pals and did not guffaw when the dog walked into the meeting and peed on the floor and then simply turned around and walked out. I was very polite. I think they will invite me back. I had people over for dinner and laughed and talked and cooked (filled my quota for 2013). It was a productive week. See? I know! I have a life. Herniated, heaving and quaking at nature life on the shoreline where the boats are nifty and the basements by the water get flooded. A real, honest to fertilizer life. 

Wine glass tonight. Fingers covered with ink and stickers, but I'll manage to lift it anyway.