Cleaning the junk drawer

 

My junk drawer

Cleaning the junk drawer for the sake of my soul

A friend recently wrote about how important journaling is to centering her in her world—overcoming the writer’s block (which she says doesn’t exist and is really fear), getting her in touch with her inner self. Okay, I get that, sort of. I’m not much one for getting in touch with my inner self—I sort of think it’s all one package, and what you see is what you get. I frequently say that blogging is my form of journaling, and yes, someday I may do the cheater’s method of a memoir, by assembling a selection of blogs. Then again, I may be fooling myself about what blogging does for me.

But I do recognize every once in a while, the soul needs a boost. Last night, I sent off to the editor my final version of Irene in Danger. Of course, it won’t be the final version when I get it back with comments, but still, getting there was a big accomplishment. This is the manuscript I started, stopped, started, put aside again, and then all of a sudden was on fire about finishing it, with ideas and scenes coming quickly (I hope not too easily). In addition, ten days ago it was really short, somewhere in that no man’s land between a novella and a novel. By last night, with my last read-through and plugging up some holes, adding recipes, it had picked up a whopping ten thousand words. Almost a respectable length. And as I read it through for the last time, I thought, “I really like this.” I hope others will too.

So there I was this morning: what should I do? Too soon to jump quickly into one of the other projects waiting on my desk. I don’t know if it was what a counselor calls my executive mind or what I call my soul, but I needed a bit of space. So I cleaned and sorted and straightened. I began with computer files—managed the payees on my bank account and deleted a whole lot that I will never use again; then I went through the pictures for my blog—a lot were stock pictures; others were ones that were clearly dated or had no long-term significance. I kept all the family pictures, and I’ll have to go back another time to delete all those food pictures I’m not sure about.

From the computer I moved on to the bookcase. A good friend dropped off a copy of Rodham, a novel based on the fantasy that Hilary did not marry Bill. My friend  recommended it, but right now I am deep into other books. Rodham is a thick book, and I literally did not have a space for it on my bookshelves. (And no, my cottage has no room for additional bookshelves.) So I sorted a stack of books and found enough to donate that I could fit the new one in. Now I burn to sort more books.

Finally—and this was a big chore—I turned to the two top drawers in my office file cabinet. They are not file drawers but flat, for papers and the like. If nothing else, I am the queen of that American institution, the junk drawer. The one I tackled today held thick stacks of really old manuscripts—I always thought I’d be environmentally conscious and use the blank sides, but since the computer has taken over my life I don’t do that anymore. And my notetaking is on legal pads So I discarded at least two reams of paper, destined for recylcing. The drawer also held batteries, and a couple of things I couldn’t identify but looked like computer accessories.

And an appalling mismatched, disorganized collection of assorted greeting cards. My big problem was I took them out and piled them on the worktable in the kitchen, but they kept falling on the floor. It is a royal pain to pick flat papers up off the floor when you cannot stoop or bed down to get them. I was breathless by the time I got them to my desk for sorting.

But sort I did, and discard heartlessly. If a card didn’t have an envelope or an envelope didn’t have a card, it went in with those reams of paper. For the time being, the drawer is neat, sparsely filled. I can’t wait to show it to Jordan. But the real work lies ahead tomorrow—the top junk drawer is an awful mess.

I feel sort of righteous tonight, having done all this. But as I took a picture of my junk drawer, I realized I should also sort and delete the photos on my phone. It’s like unravelling a knot on a ball of yarn—there is no end.

What about you? Do you have one or more junk drawers?

A not-so-minor explosion

June Bug enjoying happy hour on the patio

You know that big storm we had last night? The one that came up in two minutes flat, turned daylight to immediate dark, and blew so hard I feared for my lovely old oaks? Yes, that one. It was nothing compared to the explosion in the cottage this afternoon.

Let me back up. My younger son, Jamie, is coming over from Frisco this week. Knowing he’s partial to Diet Coke (which makes his mother frown because of the aspartame), Jordan bought a twelve-pack and stocked my fridge. Four cans left over, so I put them on the butcher block and this afternoon was busily transferring them to the bottom shelf.

I dropped one! I’m not sure how, perhaps my hand was wet and slippery. But it fell at my feet, puncturing a hole in the surprisingly fragile can and sending sticky sweet liquid everywhere. I resigned myself to mopping the floor and wiping down some of the other things on the bottom shelf.

Just then Jordan walked in, looked at my desk  (probably five or six feet from the kitchen) and asked, “What happened? It’s all wet?” The more she looked, the more frustrated she became. Long story short, she mopped the floor three times, washed down cabinets and walls, appliances and the fridge and sink, muttering all the while about a forthcoming invasion of ants. She found it in my bedroom (next to the kitchen) and at the other end of the cottage on the coffee table. She was hot and frustrated, and I sat helplessly by. I know better than to get in her way. Worst of it is she had spent an hour and a half yesterday thoroughly cleaning the cottage.

Sophie observed all this with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty. She watched from the bedroom doorway and then tried to investigate what was on the floor when Jordan pulled out the butcher block. Jordan kept saying, “Out from under my feet!”

Order is restored, and I’m going to cook one of Jordan’s favorite dinners—spinach fettucine with mushrooms, artichoke hearts, green onion, pesto, and lots of lemon and butter. The boys can fend for themselves since they don’t eat mushrooms or artichoke hearts.

I did a bit of creative cooking earlier today. Made gazpacho from a recipe by Texas food and travel writer and cook extraordinaire June Naylor Harris, only I halved it and made it my own by substituting green onion for a red onion and leaving out the serrano chile. I am just not a chile person—I guess it’s because way back when, over fifty-five years ago, I was a northerner, and I’ve just never learned to like spicy. I’m letting it chill until tomorrow, but it smells wonderful.

It was a joy tonight to sit on the patio comfortably. The air is not cool but not oppressively hot, and we had the fan on. Loved being out there again and not cooped up behind closed doors. I wish spring and fall in Texas lasted all year.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Satisfying job on an unsatisfying day

See Clifford the leopard in the foreground?

He's keeping watch over my books

The weather gods ae playing tricks on us. They give us a couple of sunny, bright days so that we think fall is here in all its glory—and then they turn the world drizzly and gray. I swear this weekend I looked at the extended forecast and it was for seventies Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But if today got to 70 it was in some other state. Here, it was drizzly and gray, not really cool but the kind of damp that makes you feel a chill. I had turned the heat off but turned it on again this evening. Rain forecast for the morning—my new winter rye grass will appreciate that.

It was the kind of day that it’s good to have a project or else one (this one anyway) might mope and grouse the day around. Mary Dulle came to help me finish sorting my bookcase. Saying “help me” is a misnomer, because Mary does all the work and I sit and pass judgement on titles like some sort of authority. She can do all the bending, standing, reaching that I can’t, and she graciously includes dusting shelves and tops of books. Today she even asked for a broom and swept up some spider eggs. Above and beyond.

We divided books into those that I want on my shelves, those that can go to the storage locker (extras of books I’ve written and by far the biggest category we had—anybody wants to buy a book just let me know; I can probably open a store), and books that I will give to the library’s used-book store. What I kept on the shelves we roughly organized into books I had written or had chapters, essays, etc., in, books by good friends of mine, and books that I cared about. I was delighted to find some treasures—a few cookbooks that I thought had been lost in the great deluge that ruined most of my cookbooks, a book of William Barney’s poetry—the Fort Worth postman who became a Texas poet laureate, two copies of Bartlett’s Quotations (who needs two?). and other treasures.

One half-shelf holds old books of sentimental value—hymnals from my childhood and  a copy of the songbook that my dad and I used to sing out of on Sunday nights—he’d play the piano and we’d both sing, though neither of us could carry a tune in a bushel basket. There’s a copy of Get Thee Behind Me, a preacher’s kid’s (pk) account of trying to counter sin—a book that made me laugh when I was a kid with a dad who was a pk—and a terribly worn copy of Foster-Harris’ invaluable guide, The Look of the Old West. I used that research tool a lot when I was writing westerns. Lots of treasures.

We were dusty and dirty by the time we went to the Black Rooster for sandwiches. I’m a fan of that bakery, and it puzzles me that some of my friends aren’t. Chicken salad on a croissant—what’s not to like?

But the upshot of the day is that I have neatly arranged bookshelves with some room to display family photos and the like, and an accessible shelf for office supplies. Well, it will be accessible when we get one box and two shopping bags of books to storage. Then even I can get to printer paper and book mailers.

Doing this massive undertaking with Mary made it fun instead of a chore, and she was the one who pointed out it was better to be busy than to mope. There’s nothing like a good neighbor and friend.

Banishing the Saturday night blahs

I decided to banish the Saturday night blahs by cleaning a shelf or two in the pantry. Jordan has been after me to do this for some time, claiming there were probably things back there ten years old. Let me tell you first that this turned out not to be a way to banish the blahs--but it sure did make my sore back ache. At first, I was quite smug--didn't find much that needed to be thrown away--a couple of individual packets of board-stiff prunes, a stray lollipop, an individual cup of applesauce that had turned a really funny color. So I washed the first shelf--hadn't thought to buy fresh shelf paper nor extra garbage bags because I knew I wouldn't have much to throw out. I'd just straighten a little.
When I went to put things back, I began to examine the sell-by dates which they often make way too hard to find--and loaded two garbage bags. The worst offenders were Crisco (who uses that anymore?) and CoffeeMate (ditto--no one uses it) with 2002 dates. Even in this house, with a grandson who inhales peanut butter, I had to throw out an unopened jar--out of date (I thought the label looked different!).
Once I offered my oldest granddaughter some dry cereal. She took the box and then went over and whispered to her mom, who said to me gently, "She doesn't want to eat it. It's out of date.' At tne or eleven, Maddie was smarter than I am.
Tonight I picked up an open bag of ziti wrong side up and it scattered all over the floor. Had to stop and sweep--in spite of my efforts I heard Sophie crunching away on dry pasta I'd missed. Hope there are no gastric repercussions from that. I could feed an army on the partially used packages of pasta I have. Why do I have two unopened bottles of malt vinegar, two bottles of chocolate sauce, and a barely used, years old bottle of red plum vinegar (must have been a dilly of a good recipe). I think things got pushed so far back in the pantry (it's very deep, which is bad) that I thought I didn't have any and bought new--like two out-of-date bottles of Worcestershire.
I've barely made a dent in the storage places in this house where I've lived for twenty years but I quit for tonight. Maybe that old advice to move every five years or so is good--makes you clean things out.  Periodically I clean my closet floor and straighten all the shoes into neat pairs--pretty soon it's a mess where I have to hunt for the mate to the shoe I want to wear. Wonder if this will be the same?
I'm going back to my manuscript. I'm convinced writing is easier than cleaning. Erma Bombeck once wrote that she'd rather scrub the floor than face a blank sheet of paper in her typewriter (okay this was a while ago). You got it wrong, Erma! I'd rather look at that blank screen.