Maybe Some Territory Should be Left Uncharted

 I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had started trying to declutter and organize the house a little earlier this year than last, partly because I had the urge and partly because last year I started in November and was irritated when this ran into Christmas season and I had to stop and change gears before I was ready. 

Matt was away for four days last week and then he left Sunday again for ten days, so I'm trying to take advantage of being alone in the house to make as much progress as possible with no one here to be disturbed by the piles of stuff and the copious swearing. 

This may have been a terrible decision.

Eve's fall break week was a couple of weeks ago, beginning with Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. My sister and her family were coming here for Thanksgiving and they live just the other side of Hamilton where she goes to school, so they picked her up on the way. It was wonderful, as it always is when we're all together. We talked and laughed and ate and drank and played dumb games. I found Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader in a cupboard in the basement. 

Have you ever played Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? The questions and answers are printed on cards but then scrambled or filtered so they can't be read with the naked eye - you have to put them in a card-reader sleeve that unscrambles them - theoretically. What we found out was that no one over 25 could read anything - we kept going to younger and younger people until my niece, who's 20, could finally decipher them. Am I smarter than a fifth grader? I don't fucking know, can you make the questions legible so I can find out? Hmph.

The game was still fun. If Charlotte thought the question was too easy, she'd read it in French. Eve or my nephew would shout out the answer while the rest of us were still trying to translate in our heads. I said the wrong answer for whether stalagmites go up or down, which was upsetting because I made a point of learning which was which a few years ago and I KNOW the right answer, I just said it wrong. I did, however, invent something called the Sizeable Gin and Tonic that weekend, (which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, but whatever, some inventions are beautiful BECAUSE of their simplicity), and I'd like to see a fifth grader do that (no I would not, that would be very inappropriate, I'm insecure and lashing out, I'm sorry).

My sister's family left on Monday and Eve had the rest of the week to recover from the preceding insane week of midterms and assignments and hang out with her friends. Four years ago we did our first pumpkin patch photo shoot with her four friends, and it was so much fun we try to do it every year. Of course, four years ago was right before Covid, so the next year the shoot had to be masked and distanced. Now they're all in university, so we go with whoever we can gather - this year we had Eve, Alison and Davis for the photo shoot and Jackson joined for the pumpkin painting later that night after classes. Marianna is in B.C. at drama school so she only gets home at Christmas.

They usually come here to paint because I used to paint stuff for fun and we always have a lot of craft paint and brushes lying around. I completely forgot this year that this would be happening, and I had moved the box of paint that used to sit at the end of the coffee table behind the chair downstairs. I had to go into the big scary storage room behind the laundry room and try to find some, and kept emerging to where Eve was waiting with boxes containing a few bottles of paint and also marbles, ribbons, crumpled paper, and a tiny wooden chest I've had since I was a little girl. I apologized for the fact that we still live like this, and she said "I think it's awesome. You get so many surprises". Way to put a nice spin on it, I guess.

I had book club on Monday night and we were talking about home organizing. Someone asked me if I was going room to room systemically and I laughed and laughed because no, my system is not going methodically room to room. My system is not even a system, because why would I not bring the same chaos demon energy I bring to everything? I started upstairs in Eve's closet, and packed up some outgrown clothes to give away, then brought a couple of things down to store in the downstairs closet, which was a disaster so I started moving things around in there, then brought something up to the dining room and ended up emptying out the china cabinets. I've managed to leave the family room largely untouched, which is good because it means I have one more-or-less orderly space to retreat to.

The book we read this month was Michael Palin's Erebus: The Story of a Ship, about the other ship from the Franklin expedition (the one that wasn't the Terror, which is the one I always think of when I think Franklin Expedition), which was also sailed extensively around the Antarctic before Franklin and everyone else involved kind of screwed the pooch and got her sunk. Now that I've typed that it sounds disrespectful to all the men who died, which is absolutely a tragedy, but it really does sound like the expedition was ill-conceived and fraught with poor judgment from the beginning. And whoo, Jane Franklin was a terrifyingly smart and manipulative piece of work. The past couple of days I've been mostly navigating the vast and perilous shoals of my basement and I have to tell you, tinned meat and sleeping in a frozen hammock are not sounding terrible by comparison.

I went to the One World Bazaar with Jody (HI JODY) on Saturday and she was mad at me for engaging in negative self-talk - apparently I'm not supposed to say I'm an idiot even when I'm being an idiot (wait, sorry, that's doing it again. I'm really having to be on guard against that while engaged in this particular pursuit, because all I keep thinking is 1) how on earth did we end up with all this crap and 2) why am I even bothering with this because clearly I am just a worthless slattern who is incapable of maintaining any level of order and structure. This is not helpful. Most of these things served a purpose at one time. Now they do not, and they can move on and serve a purpose somewhere else. I might not be able to maintain the level of neatness and precision I'm aiming for, but that's okay - anything will be an improvement, and it will take a while for entropy to reassert itself. Right?

So right now a lot of my basement looks like this:

But, like Eve says, you get so many surprises. Like this get well card she made for me when she was little, that I found inside a biography of Virginia Woolf:

Also, I bought one of the carved ducks that I yearned for last year at the Bazaar, and quite extensively rearranged stuff on the two pieces of furniture by the entrance solely to show it off to best effect, and I regret nothing.

No Horses Have Been Lost in the Writing of This Post

 I am sitting at my kitchen table beside a sliding door through which a beautiful fall day is visible. To my right on the table is a tape measure that looks like a square Pinocchio head, and pulling out the tape means his nose grows. Because it's so brightly coloured, I keep catching it in the corner of my eye and thinking it's my phone and I'm getting a text. This is silly and annoying and amusing.

I just didn't feel like starting yet another post with an explanation of why I haven't blogged for three weeks and an enumeration of all the events since I last blogged (although that's coming), so I went another way. 

What's been going on? Well for starters, does no one lock their cars anymore? I only ask because I have been out running errands and opened the door of my black SUV (which opens automatically when I have my fob in my hand, because I DO lock my door) and then had one ass cheek in the seat before realizing that THIS IS NOT MY VEHICLE on MULTIPLE occasions in the past few weeks. If the door opens, I assume it's my vehicle, but my memory is on life support, I am easily distracted, and there are a FUCKTON of black SUVs (SsUV?) out there. Once I only noticed I was in the wrong car because of a can of nuts in the centre console, and then I wondered what kind of a chump I am driving around with no nuts in the centre console, because come on, that is just a good idea. Sometimes it's only the lack of used kleenex piled behind the gearshift that tips me off (and if I clean it out, then I'm worried I'm in the wrong car the next time I get in). I always leap back out like my butt has been burned, and I haven't been caught yet, but geez, LOCK YOUR DOORS, people!

Speaking of do as I say, not as I do, when Angus was still home in the summer, one night we had just gotten back from somewhere, all gotten out of the car, forgotten to lock it, and gone inside. I only went in long enough to fill up the watering can, then stepped out the front door to water the hanging baskets. At first I thought it was Angus looking in the Rav for something, then realized it was a man I didn't know. I stood there staring like an idiot, nearly saying something massively idiotic like "can I help you?" He calmly closed the door and started walking away, until I shouted "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, FUCKWEASEL" and then he started running. It was only ten-thirty in the evening! Lock your doors, people! (It's me, I'm people).

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had thrown axes at our friends' cottage and was paying for it with a pinched nerve and pretty bad nerve pain shooting down my arm. In an unaccustomed lack of procrastination, I booked a physiotherapy appointment barely two weeks into this being a problem (it hurt a lot). I also called Rocket Doctor (a virtual doctor service in Canada) to ask for an anti-inflammatory and/or muscle relaxant to get me through to my physio appointment. I told the doctor I hurt myself throwing axes and he said "...nice". Stretch before axe-throwing, people!

I had one previous wonderful experience at the place I went to, after switching from a crappy place that seemed to spend a lot of time on icing and TENS machines and other things I could do myself at home and hardly any on effective therapeutic techniques. This time was also extremely positive. After only three visits I was to the point where the medication could take the pain down to zero, and after four the injury pain was gone and this dude was addressing stuff that I thought was just pain I had to live with now. I did end up with some spectacular bruising after one visit. He said "did your husband ask you what the hell happened?" I said "Yeah, I just told him I got dry-nailed by an Italian man named Luca". He said "NEEDLED, Allison, dry-NEEDLED". 

So yeah, fall. My favourite season has been throwing pretty good favourite-season vibes. Some rain, but then some great weather when I really needed it. Some tea and reading outside until I couldn't feel my fingers (all I need is some gloves that leave on fingertip naked for turning ipad pages and I'm set). Anyone else want to flip a table every time you see the word 'shacket?' This is a new, super-stupid marketing thing. It's a combination of a shirt and a jacket but sounds ridiculous and, as my friend Marilyn (HI MARILYN) pointed out, evokes a jacket made of or associated with shit. Could they not have gone with 'sweater' instead? Is 'swacket' any stupider? What genius was responsible for this abomination? And are they related to whatever brainiac came up with "Feel again, at the movies" to get people back in theatres? Did no one think that one could use a touch more workshopping? 

Enough, I'm getting cranky and this is not a Surly Thursday post. Love you all. Lock your doors. Button up your shackets. Be well.