Shoot the Whole Month Down

This post came up in my Facebook memories today. It's slightly more comforting than depressing to be reminded that this is just what November is for me - less embracing than enduring. This is also about the time when I give up all pretense to witty and entertaining blog posts and start using this space as therapy, so let me just take a moment to thank you all. To everyone who shared weird and embarrassing incidents of missed appointments due to completely inexplicable time changes - thank-you. To Anonymous who encouraged me to start decluttering - thank-you (especially because seeing the tag Anonymous always makes me think I'm about to be offered penis enlargement or something). And to Hannah and Nicole, who have talked me down from one crisis or another repeatedly over the past week (because it turns out this is also, weirdly, becoming the part of November where my husband goes to Japan for two weeks and gets home on World Trivia Night) - all the thank-yous ever.

I was wandering around Loblaws today with my stupid list that had, like, five weird things on it (taco sauce, ranch dressing and Blistex do NOT constitute a meal plan, Last Week Allison!). In a wild stab at making Future Allison's life better, I bought a bunch of toothpaste and deodorant because they were on sale and it sucks when you run out of toothpaste or deodorant. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I'll probably run out of soap or laundry detergent.

In the interest of decluttering, the first thing I did was gather up all the bags of crap I already had sitting around - there is a time for figuring out what can be freecycled, and there is a time when stepping over the bags of books at the bottom of the stairs while I'm carrying a laundry basket ONE MORE TIME will send me over the freaking edge. So I loaded up the back of the car with books, clothes and shoes, went to lunch with some wonderful women and then let one of them take whatever she could use, hit Value Village on the way home and got rid of the rest. I have another bag started already. Right now I have to attack the kitchen carnage resulting from half-put-away groceries and cooking two dinners (found a roast that should have been cooked two days ago, stuck it in the slow cooker). I've been feeling that particular shame that comes from wasting food too often lately - trying to improve.

It's Angus's last volleyball final tomorrow. Naturally it's at some weird-ass hard-to-get-to school downtown tomorrow night. I'll be back tomorrow, either whining about how nervous I am before going or letting you know if I actually made it there.