What Happened Next

I chose:

– desk & bedroom
– to work on the novel, when I have a surface to write on (which is now, yay!)
– any day now, running, as soon as I find the digital watch with the timer on it, oh and then get a battery for it, oh now I have a battery but I can’t find the watch
– enh, screw the fruit. That’s what multivitamins are for.

I am already sitting at my desk in my bedroom as I type this. Hi! Except for the part when the skinny bookshelf I thought looked so nice next to my desk fell down and almost smashed the gas fireplace this morning at 6:30 – I guess it was time to get up anyway – all has gone smoothly. I have dug things out of closets, put other things in same closets and made almost another square foot of space in our storage room for Saint Aardvark’s little beer hobby. We have enough kids’ junk to make a million dollars at a swap meet in October for which I have already reserved a table (if you would like to buy my kids’ junk and help make me a millionaire, let me know and I will give you the swap meet details)(or if you want to sell your own kids’ junk)(but it is in the Mizzle, just so you know)

um, where was I.

Right. A little bit of organization is addictive, more so than opium or newborn babies. Once I started putting things places, I realized that nothing was where it ought to have been and I could. not. rest. until everything was right.

Most days when there are two parents in the house, nap time is my cue to bolt from the house like a spooked stallion. I go to Superstore. I get my hair cut. I hit up Value Village for sundresses and skipping ropes. One time I went to a cafe and wrote in a notebook. That was fun. But the past few weekend days I have spent here, in the house, cleaning, straightening, vacuuming. You might think this would suck, seeing as I spend all my time in the house anyway and cleaning is lame. But no! It has been almost as cathartic as when you move houses and you have to clean and pack and sort and toss things out. Except I’m NOT moving! Which means now I just get to enjoy my cleaner, unpacked, sorted, uncluttered house. And drink beer because even if you don’t move, you still get beer. Double your odds if your husband makes the beer in your house.

In fact, while I was sorting my bedroom junk, I actually repeated to myself, pretend like you’re moving! Pretend like you’re moving! and then I would get “Pretend That We’re Dead” in my head and that made me happy and suddenly, presto! I had way less stuff.

Love.

It’s doubly good to be bitten by this organizational bug right now because over the past few weekends our mornings have been spent at garage sales and so we are still acquiring new old crap over my left shoulder even as I toss old old crap over my right.

And so, this morning, I felt absolutely no hesitation in my heart when I spotted the Wiggles Guitar on the lawn of a neighbour. Trombone and I had been to the library and were on our way home, winding through the shady tree streets, me looking for garage sales, he looking at one of the books he’d picked out.

We stopped in our tracks. We both saw it at the same time.

“I need that guitar,” he said, in an astonished sort of voice I recognized from my own past as a shoe shopper. It’s that moment when you realize you want something more than you thought possible. Those size 11 Nine West shoes are on sale. It’s like some kind of beautiful, butterflied miracle.

“Hm, let’s see,” I hemmed. I looked at it. It had little buttons shaped like the different Wiggles and other little buttons that were unlabeled. It looked like a loud sort of toy.

“Two dollars!” shouted the woman from the front porch. Yes, clearly a loud toy if she was giving it away for two bucks.

“Mommy do you HAVE two dollars?”
“Yes, I do.”

“You just put batteries in it,” offered the boy who lived at the house, “and it just plays.”

Trombone’s eyes widened. “It just plays!” he said.
“OK,” I said.
“Oh, but,” said Trombone, “does it have a strap? My daddy’s guitar has a strap.”

Despite it not having a strap, he carried it all the way home, pausing every few feet to air-play one of his Wiggles show favourites: “Play Your Guitar With Murray” and mutter to himself about how he was going to go home and find batteries and put them in and then it would JUST PLAY. After three blocks I convinced him to get in the buggy so I could get us home before sundown. And there, we did find batteries, figure out how to turn it on and then were amazed. Capital A, Amazed. For 45 minutes!

One of the best $2 I have ever spent.

So thank you, all you people, for providing your input, helping me choose which tasks to tackle and by doing so helping me free up just enough space in my house for a Wiggles Guitar of Amazement.

Tomorrow: the PNE and much less amazement for much more money. Will attempt to get video of Fresco trying to out-moo a cow.