Category Archives for Me

Taking Up Space – Part 1

Last Saturday was a biannual event that I look forward to with great anticipation…the elementary school yard sale. The week-long period for dropping off stuff to be sorted, priced, and sold by someone else is major motivation for me to clean closets and open bins that have been stored for years. Usually I’m one of the first to jump in and volunteer to help with any task, but my ability to work on the yard sale is mostly limited to supplying the goods. The sight of all that *STUFF* makes me nauseous.

Yard Sale 2

When this stuff came out of the garage, I didn’t recognize most of it!

The same thing happens when I go into one of the kids’ bedrooms and they have stuff covering every flat surface including the floor. When they want “snuggle-time” and their room is like that, I just can’t do it. I think they’ve figured that out because Norah (the most frequent snuggle-time requestor) keeps her room really neat. She even makes the bed every day! When my own bedroom has stuff all over it, I don’t want to sleep there. And I avoid the basement and garage because of all the stuff stored there. The stuff is suffocating me.

I took 7 car-loads to the yard sale last week. I have been doing this for YEARS, but this time I was able to dig down to the next layer. There were 2 bins of CDs and a bin of VCR tapes that I sorted and delivered, plus 2 bins of DVD cases that need to be recycled. There were at least 3 giant trash bags of clothes that don’t fit anyone in our household and never will (we store Aliya’s for Norah). There’s another giant bag headed to Morocco. I purged several boxes of books and we still have 3 floor-to-ceiling bookshelves full. Housewares, toys, a couple of small pieces of furniture – out it all went.

Yard Sale

Norah was concerned about reusing wine boxes for yard sale drop-off.

But there’s still more. A lot more. As I sorted, I kept thinking about the depressingly huge amount of money all of this stuff represents…tens of thousands of dollars. Before I became rabidly stuff-averse, I was an easy target of any type of marketing. Once I saw Julia Roberts on Oprah talking about how she was addicted to a handheld Yahtzee game and I scoured the stores until I found one. I was a “collector”…if one Reba McEntire CD was nice, owning her entire collection would be even better. I saw a lot of soundtracks in the CD bin, and I remember going to see the movie Cocktail with my friend Sherry and then driving directly to the record store. I also had a huge collection of games – we actually used to play them a lot back in the 80’s, but many of them had not been used since then.

The collection of stuff got worse when I had kids, because I would look at the lists on BabyCenter.com or in whatever article I was currently reading, and feel like my baby needed all of those things – plus the baby stuff is so cute it’s hard to resist! I had several slings, every type of baby seat, the entire Baby Einstiein DVD collection, and so many clothes that I could have dressed my baby in a different outfit every day. The baby stuff left my house long ago, but so did the money spent on stuff that was rarely or never used.

Ben is not as list-motivated or as vulnerable to marketing as I am, but he doesn’t like to get rid of stuff. In Morocco, there are a lot of things that are still not as available as they are here, and 40-50 years ago he had even less access to stuff. If someone in the posse had a soccer ball it was a big deal, and they played with it until it could no longer hold air. We probably have 15 soccer balls somewhere in this house. If I try to get rid of one, Ben sees it as an item with value and wants to hold onto it. The same goes for clothes…“someone in Morocco could use that.” He has all of his old college textbooks because they were a big investment. We were a lethal combination of 1 who buys (or USED TO buy) and 1 who can’t let go.

Stay tuned for Taking Up Space – Part 2…Gifts.

3 1/2 Days – Deadlines & Progress

I haven’t started to panic yet, and having the looming deadline has really helped me make some headway.  We spent 2 weeks with a broken washer (long story) and as of tonight, the laundry is officially caught up.  It may not seem like a big deal, but if you had seen the pile you’d understand.  I’ll bet we had 20 loads between all of the bedding, towels, and clothes.  I’m so happy to have it done!

The kids picked their outfits out of the clean laundry before putting away the rest, so they’re all packed!  I haven’t finalized my own packing but I have some piles going.  The soccer balls and frisbees have arrived!  We keep coming up with a few more items that we need to find or buy, but at this point we could leave without them and be fine.  It’s not like we’re going to Antarctica.

Speaking of Antarctica, it is SO HOT in the ‘Ham this week, and several people have assumed that it will be hot in Mexico.  Makes sense since we are headed pretty far south, except that SMA is at an elevation of 6200 feet.  The high temps this week have been 72-77 degrees, and the low at night is 55 – great sleeping weather!  It’s the rainy season so we do expect to see some rain most days, but we’re just going to step into a doorway like the locals and then get on with our adventure.  Here’s a short article on 10 reasons people fall in love with SMA…I can’t wait to get out of this heat and fly away!  At that point we can live without whatever we forgot, or Ben can bring it in 2 weeks.

The other big task that I’ve made progress on is my email inbox.  Two weeks ago I had over 400 emails sitting there.  And none of them were junk mail – they all needed to be answered.  I’ve been working really hard on them, and last week I got down to just over 200.  I set a goal to cut it by 40 emails per day (net – they’re still coming in), and I’ve actually been able to do it.  I’m now officially under 100!!!  WOOHOO!!!  Since each email represents some time to research and respond, I’m amazed that I’ve finally been able to slay the beast.  Now if I can just keep it that way!

I love infographics, and I found the one below about email that I think is pretty interesting.  I don’t know how any of us are getting anything done other than answering email.  I couldn’t find a good one on dirty laundry, but I did find one on keeping/tossing dirty underwear that I had to post for a friend of mine who may need this information (you know who you are, Kale-Boy).  Do not click this link if you’re poop-averse.

77 hours until take-off!

 

That New Car Smell

Or maybe it’s just the absence of that old car smell.  We cleaned everything out from all the nooks and crannies in the Jeep Cherokee this morning, and ended up with 2 laundry baskets full of crap.  I don’t know how this happens.  Every time we pull in the driveway, when all the good mommies are saying, “Welcome home!!!”, my trademark line is, “GRAB SOME CRAP!”

I know…kids aren’t supposed to hear/say crap, but “transport your personal belongings into the house” doesn’t have the same ring to it.  So theoretically, each time we go into the house the car should be empty.  Everyone should be able to gather up all the crap they brought with them, or make two trips.  But NOOOOOO.  The car just gets more loaded up with crap until I finally lose it (or there’s any possibility that I’ll have to drive a client or coworker somewhere), and I’ll have the car cleaned – inside and out.  This usually happens once a month, so I don’t know how it gets so bad.  It’s a company car, for crying out loud!  It’s embarrassing!

I swapped the old crap-mobile at the dealership for the shiny, new, slightly more petite Ford Escape.  Aliya picked the color because she figures I can buy it for her after my time with it is done.  After a 5-minute discussion about what’s in the owner’s manual pouch and one signature, I had a half-hour lesson on how to use the phone and radio controls on the dashboard and steering wheel.  It’s still a little intimidating, but I made a phone call and didn’t crash, so I’m good.

And in the interest of keeping the new ride crap-free, everything that’s left behind when the kids exit the vehicle will be scooped into the strategically-located trash can at the end of the driveway.  All done.

Doors of Morocco

I found out today that Doors & Hardware magazine is going to print some of my photos of Moroccan doors in their November issue.  Isn’t that crazy??  I posted on my work blog during my vacation, the editor of the magazine saw them and loved them, so today I chose 14 of my favorites, wrote the captions, and sent them off.

Here are my work-blog posts in case you’re not a follower of iDigHardware.com:

http://idighardware.com/2012/07/glaoui-kasbah-telouet-morocco/
http://idighardware.com/2012/07/hassan-ii-mosque-casablanca-morocco/
http://idighardware.com/2012/07/bahia-palace-marrakech/
http://idighardware.com/2012/07/king-mohammed-v-mausoleum-rabat-morocc/
http://idighardware.com/2012/07/medersa-abu-al-hassan-sale-morocco/

Here’s another door photo I thought was really cool:

There are men who actually make the trim that goes on caftans, and they usually tie it to something, like these door pulls, stand half-way down the block, and work their magic to create the trim.  I think it’s really neat to see so many years worth of work tied to this door. 

Here’s what the trim on one of my shirts looks like:

And here’s Norah getting cozy with the tailors, all crammed into this little room.  The threads going across her knee led to a guy who was standing outside twisting the two sets of threads, while the guy to Norah’s left sewed them onto the seam of whatever garment he was working on.  Talk about labor-intensive!

I don’t have oral cancer. Yay.

Aside from an unexpected professional house-cleaning which I am still rejoicing over, the other stand-out event of last week was a trip to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned.  Normally, I wouldn’t expect a teeth-cleaning to be very exciting, but I spent almost 3 hours in the chair followed by a separate appointment with the oral surgeon a couple of days later.

One of my crowns had fallen off a couple of days before the cleaning, and luckily I recovered it right away rather than losing it down the chute.  I had the crown with me at the dentist, but the hygienist had to clean the exposed tooth before re-cementing it.  She needed to give me Novocain before the cleaning, so she gave me 2 shots and then as she prepared to give me a 3rd, she suddenly exclaimed, “Oh my God!  It’s huge back here!!  Are you in pain???” and on and on.  She felt around for a few minutes and peered in several times, and then decided that she didn’t dare give me another shot because she didn’t want to stick the needle in the “problem area.”

The hygienist’s reaction made it very obvious that she thought there was something wrong with me, and that it was serious.  I literally trembled through the whole cleaning.  When the hygienist left the room I started Googling for possibilities, and none of them were good.  When my dentist (who I have known and loved for many years) came in after the cleaning, she was white as a ghost and had a very fearful expression.  I told her that she should never play Poker…it was obvious that she was worried.  She said, “You know why I’m concerned, right?”

Well, I had no idea other than the Google results, but she started talking about oral cancer.  ORAL CANCER??  What are the chances?  I’ve smoked 17 cigarettes in my life (I remember this because I bought 1 pack at the age of 16ish, and I managed to smoke all but 3 of them before the pack was discovered in my secret hiding place – a can of tennis balls with the pack on the bottom).  I’m not a big drinker, and I even tested negative for HPV.  I guess anything’s possible, but when I obsess about what I’m going to die from, oral cancer isn’t in the Top 20.

The dentist FINALLY looked into my mouth and within 2 seconds she said, “Oh.  That’s not what that is.”  O-M-G.  W-T-F?  Couldn’t we have squared this away before the cleaning??

What the hygienist saw was bruising and swelling caused when the missing crown allowed my cheek tissue to expand into the void, and then I bit it a few times.  I’m sure it looked scary when she saw it, but she should have either a) kept it to herself rather than exclaiming about it, or b) brought the dentist in right away rather than making me fear the worst through the whole cleaning.  I still love my dentist and hygienist, but I think a change in procedure is in order.

I had to go see the oral surgeon because it’s their protocol in that situation, and at that point he couldn’t even see what had been visible two days before.  He said my cheek was “within normal limits,” so I guess I can go back to obsessing about the other possibilities for my demise.