More about the Christmas Tree, House Rotation and Sundry Other Stuff

Huh, so the previously mentioned Christmas tree is finally off the property altogether, along with last year's Christmas tree, assorted cat furniture, the old couch, some mattresses, and a whole U-Haul full of garbage. Yay! I feel lighter. Of course in the time-honored tradition of never making a clean break, I forgot to put the old vacuum cleaner in the truck, so that's still hanging around in the middle of the backyard. I think of it as an art piece now. Plus I enjoy the reaction I get when people come over and look out the back door (which has two muddy boy hand prints right about at viewing level) and say "hey, do you know your vacuum cleaner's in the backyard?" and then I say, "It's not my vacuum cleaner." There's always this moment of silence which I think of as a golden opportunity for a really witty comment. Mostly people let me down though.

What else is new? The clean up was accompanied by my roommate moving out, and a Korean exchange student moving into the revolving room. I think I'm going to start calling it that, because it seems like someone is always moving in and out of it. I wish I could find someone who would just stay in it, and not have to keep finding new roommate options. I wish I could afford to just leave it empty or turn it into an office.

I need new area rug for downstairs, and being the incredibly cheap person that I am, I think I will start trolling the free items on Craigslist and Freecycle, hoping to find something semi-presentable, since I don't want to spend money on a new one. I figure the cats will pee on it anyway, so something used is easier to let go of, in theory. Of course if we follow the example of the old couch, which sat in the carport for six months because I couldn't bring myself to admit that it wasn't still a viable asset that SOMEBODY would want, or the example of the desk that sat in front of my house with the free sign on it, getting rained on and warping until one of my neighbors begged me to let him cut it up with his chainsaw and dispose of it, once I own the carpet, it will pretty much be a permanent part of the inventory until...well, until it falls apart I guess.

One really comforting thing about owning a lot of crap: I never worry about anything getting stolen. I figure I can find something just as good at the next rummage sale for under $20, so where's the anxiety? Ok, I am a little anal about the silverware, but hey that's good stuff! I had to pick through a lot of Goodwill bins to get that matching stuff!

The More Things Stay the Same

I wish I could find the magic formula for keeping my life together. I can see quite clearly that I'm doing something wrong, but I don't know what it is. And once a year, everything goes all to hell. I need to find a new job, possibly a new place to live and a new direction for my energy. I have hated what I do for a living for most of my adult life, but the idea of changing makes me feel desperate and shaky, because I really need to have steady money, and changing careers usually comes with unsteady money. It all sucks. I wish I could back up 20 years and start again. I wish I could believe that if I did, I would do something different now.

The most insane part of this is that I'm not only in charge of my life, I'm in charge of two other lives, and how am I supposed to give them guidance when I am acutely aware, every day, that I have no fucking clue what I am doing? If there was a business I could sign up for that would just call me every morning with a list of how to run my life, I think I would subscribe. The problem is that the only ones I know of want to throw God into the mix, and I'm not interested in hearing a justification for why someone else knows how to run my life better than I do, I'm just interested in having someone do it.

Ack, I told myself that I should have gone to bed hours ago. See what comes out of my head when I take cold medicine and then don't go to sleep?

Start this soon

http://www.web-writer.net/fantasy/30days.shtml

I think I'm going to build an interactive website for submitting worldbuilding ideas, and then the ideas will scroll continuously. Or something like that.

Or, I will go and watch Buffy reruns and eat sweet potatoes.

Buffy wins!