Another Goodbye

My grandmother lived with us for a year, and when she went back home she left her cat, Socks, with us. I don’t know exactly when, but the name Socks slowly went away and he became Thomas. I promised my grandmother I’d take care of him, that he’d always have a home here. We did give him a home, and he was very loved, but I feel like I failed her, and him. I still need to call my grandmother and somehow explain how little could be done, and that letting him go was best, but calling my grandmother is something I just cannot do. Not yet. I’ll cry, then she’ll cry, and it’ll just make it worse. How do you break an eighty-nine year-old woman’s heart? I don’t know, and wish I didn’t have to figure it out.

He was Thomas, he was a jerk when he wanted to be, and he was loved.

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I Can’t EVER Clean Just One Room

Nor can I stop acquiring books. It’s an addiction, and I’m not about to deny it, but that’s for another day. Today, we discuss my inability to focus and clean just one room. I prefer to call it my ability to multitask on house-sized levels.

It started with a forty percent off coupon for Hobby Lobby that was set to end yesterday and me changing my mind on which dollhouse I wanted because in stock, on sale, and forty percent off.

Lucky for me, a very sweet lady helped me load this beast of a box into my van, and then hubs was home to get it out again. I swear I did the excited pee-pee dance for two hours, waiting on him to just bring it in the house. It’s deeper and taller than the one I originally picked out, so I’m stoked.

Dollhouse, good. But also dollhouse, bad. I’m nowhere close to being ready for this thing in my sunroom/former mancave. NOT EVEN CLOSE.

As I mentioned last week, I’ve wrecked my shelves, added more books, and have to take things out of the sunroom and find some way to put them in The War Room, or get rid of them. When the hubs moved out, I moved in… sort of. I used it as a place to move boxes out of the way until I could go through them. He also left a metric ton of just stuff behind that I have no idea what to do with. To say it’s a daunting task is putting it mildly considering I refuse to throw perfectly good things away (you should see my attic–OMG). And yet…

THAT is what I need to clean up.

Did I do it? Nope. Not one damned box. I did move a few little things out of there. What I did was wash five loads of misc laundry, got distracted with choosing a color to paint the bathroom (and the sunroom), washed dishes, made beds, mopped floors, and generally cleaned every single room but the two rooms I should have cleaned. My excuse is Christmas is coming and I don’t want to clean the house proper again until after the new year. Both dogs need baths and I can’t have clean dogs on dirty dog beds, or dirty dogs on clean people beds. I’d have washed the cat, but he wouldn’t stand for it.

But that’s fine, that I didn’t clean the room. I have daylight left, so I’ll probably go back in there. See, I have to have daylight because there’s no overhead lighting in the sunroom. And no heat when it’s balls cold out. Air conditioning for the hell of summer? Nope, just a ceiling fan that won’t support a light kit. Hubs did promise to get me a huge work table for Christmas, but damn–where am I gonna put it? I’ve got less than two weeks.

I’m beginning to question the wisdom of using that room for the dollhouse, but it’s really all the extra space I’ve got.

BUT DID YOU SEE THE DOLLHOUSE? IT IS HERE! 

(I seriously can’t believe I actually bought the dollhouse. What have I done?)

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Diversions are a good thing.

Over the last few months, I’ve torn the house apart, redecorating and rearranging since my husband abandoned the sunroom-mancave and gave me a whole lot of space to work with. He loves all things Asian, while I love whatever eclectic strikes my fancy, and lots of it. Minimalist vs. Manic is an interesting game of compromise. With all my trips to book stores and estate sales (the tales will come, my friends), my TBR shelf had become an entire bookcase, The War Room was a jam-packed, total mess, so something had to be done there. I donated my crumbling curbside-find desk to the cause at his new shop, made a trip to Lowe’s, and bought myself a Wal Mart special.

I built those shelves ALL BY MYSELF!

That’s about as minimalist as I get.

The wood for the shelves was reclaimed (with permission) from The Mill ™, so that made me extra happy. That was over a month ago, so it’s not nearly as neat at my desk now. In fact, I’ve wrecked it all again, added all sorts of Halloween decorations I snagged on clearance at NINETY percent off! SCORE!, and will wreck it even more today when I–once again!–swap furniture from one room to another. I have a vision, and it never quite plays out, so things keep changing. At least, they did. After today, I’m not moving anymore furniture. And I blame The Bloggess for stopping the madness.

Dollhouses? Really? I’d never given them too much thought, until I saw Jenny’s.

(Is it cheating to use a blog as a bookmark so you won’t lose links because you have eleventy-billion links on two different browsers? Tough.)

I spent a week picking out THE dollhouse, but it took less than sixty seconds for my husband to say, “I’ll buy you a dollhouse!” with such enthusiasm. See, I’ve been looking at puppies again, and he’s not ready for another puppy, so I could have said I wanted to paint the house pink and he would’ve jumped on board.

Honestly, I have to admit, I’m not ready for another puppy, either. When I typed the word ‘clearance’ up there, the only thing I could think of was how Clarence got his name. My heart still hurts, my eyes still well, when I think of Clarence. And I know I’ve been using tearing my house apart over and over as a diversion, and an excuse not to pull the trigger on this puppy or that. A dollhouse will keep my mind occupied, when I’m not writing, and is a hella lot easier on my back.

Not to mention, it makes good blog fodder and is totally bad-ass.

But first, I have to put the house back together. Because, to quote my kiddo, “Where in the hell are we gonna put a dollhouse?”

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