Pre-note:: This is MY blog and if you find typos, deal with it :)
This week has been one of major purging. Purging (the ridding of impurities and while they might not be impurities like smog or platstic water bottles lining the ocean shores (e.g brita water filter commercials) I'm fiding impurities in things, stuff, junk, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and more stuff. I haven't done a blog post in a few days so I thought I'd just jot down some thoughts on the things that have happened this week so next week I can look back at all I've accomplished and remember that I'm making progress.
The biggest task of the week was getting through Sunday. Sunday was a pivotal day for me. I woke in a pretty good mood but on Saturday I sold some of the furniture and coming out of my bedroom the reality of "things missing" hit pretty hard. The house was so empty and it just really made me sad. I thought some music therapy and deep cleaning would help divert my attention but it didn't, it just made it worst and I started crying. I sat in the middle of what was my dinning room going through pictures and bawled my eyes out. A friend called offering some encouragement and I cried even more, even harder, and more so because it was like I was "busted"...showed someone else my raw emotions and I'm not really one to do that. I'd rather cover it up with humor and deal privately with things but this person opened the conversation with "how are you doing? really" and I tried to give my pat answer "I'm ok!" and it came out like "sob sob sob I i i i i i am sob sob sob sob" and this friend just listened to me cry and there was healing in that that I can't explain. Then, I got mad. I hate hate hate hate hate crying. I hate it. So I dried my tears and went for a walk and came home and tried to start a new normal. I'm finding that the new normal is nothing like the old normal, I can't seem to sit still, I have to be moving and doing something and I'm thankful at the end of the day I can melt into my bed and just sleep. Sort of.
Things I learned/dealt with this week:
1. Goatheads are the spawn of Satan. They really are. I put a bucket of weed killer on them the other night. I have a sprayer with a pump handle, you pour in your chemicals and add water to the fill line. Well despite the memory of my mother having to go to the hospital with chemical induced pneumonia after cleaning the bathroom with bleach and ajax one time I let the old school thinking that more is better. And I did what every new suddenly single person who hates lawn work did, I googled "goat head exterminator" and found all sorts of recipes. Some involved diesel and fire....um, yea, me and fire? no way. Some involved napam..seriously? can you get that at the lawn & garden center in Walmart? and then I found one that wouldn't be caustic nor require me to go anywhere to get the ingredients. I had a little bit of roundup in a jug but was pretty sure it wasn't enough to do the job so I had to add to it, I took vinegar and dawn dish soap and added it to the roundup and water. I hid behind the shed for about 10 minutes "practicing" because the goatheads are at the end of my driveway and I didn't want to look like an idiot in case anyone was watching. So after I figured out how to use it I set to work and I mean I soaked those evil little puncture vines something serious. The vinegar acts like a tracheotomy, opening up the pipes to let air and other things in, the dawn dish soap kills the waxy coating of the leaves breaking down the protective barrier and the roundup was fed into the trach pipe. A couple of days of hot weather and those babies are not just merely dead they are most sincerely truly dead (and if I had a Mayor of Oz costume I could sell tickets because I sound just like him when I sing it). So yesterday (Thursday) I went out and was going to try and get them up from the roots and clean up the patch at the end of the driveway. Things were going ok, I had my tank top on to catch some rays, my cute garden gloves and set to work. Here's a clue for you, even though plants are dead those damn stickers never stop stabbing you. Note to self: pick up some heavy duty leather gloves, the lady bug gloves are cute and work for ...um nothing, they're just cute. Oh, and get one of those garden weasel things, my back is killing me from being all bent over pulling weeds this week. I had no idea how many weeds we had until I became responsible for cleaning them up.
2. Crabgrass. I learned the crabgrass blocker pellets don't do any good unless you water really well and soak them down into the soil. If you don't do this they just lie on top of the grass and make me think of winter and that makes me think of the Christmas Village and that just streses me out. So how did I learn this? well, I knew that you had to soak the pellets into the soil so after spraying the goat head and spreading the pellets I reset the sprinkler system to come then instead of the next night. By this point it was starting to get dark and I went inside and made my dinner, took a shower and went to bed. The next morning I have to admit I was a bit disappointed to see that the crabgrass and goat head vines were still green but was counting on the sunshine to kill them off during the day but I noticed that the pellets that I spread along the edge of the grass were still on the surface. That kind of made me mad because had I not fixed the sprinkler head that was watering the road all would have been well...which reminded me of getting locked out Saturday night...had Don not fixed the sliding glass door I could have wiggled it and got inside and nobody would have known but me that I was an idiot and locked myself out. Ah. Lessons. Gotta love lessons. So that night when I got home I took the garden hose and soaked the bejezus out of the area where there were surface pellets...the goat heads are dead, the crabgrass? not so much. I did learn though that if I were in Florida, I could sell it as sod so now I'm trying to find a warehouse in the Keys that will help me get rid of it and make me some money. See? my brain just never stops.
3. Stuff. Stuff. Wow, did we have stuff. I started going through the boxes of stuff we had in our 2 storage sheds and spare bedroom. I found papers dating back to 1997 - nothing important mind you, stuff like taco bell receipts. Really? So I sorted the "documents" from the crap that should have gotten tossed in 1997...bagged up the garbage and shredded most of the rest and filed what I didn't. That cleared out practically one whole shed. Then I started gathering tools. Really? How many sets of allyn wrenches do we really need? and tape measures? crap, lets not find one of the 30,000 we already have lets just buy a new one. Geez. There are all sorts of things out there...I even have a can of stuff called "bgone" - it supposedly gets rid of tar and oils on cars, kills bugs, etc., but nowhere on there did I see directions for getting rid of either goat heads nor stuff. Did I tell you I HATE goatheads? they're right up there running a close tie with Okra. So I'd open one box, probably rolled my eyes and finally got to the point where I'd skim the surface and realize I haven't touched it in at least 4 years so there's no reason to keep it and just started chucking stuff. And I was smart, I took empty boxes with lids and tossed stuff in those so that when I filled up a junk box I put the lid on it, put it out for the dump and didn't open it again...out of sight, out of mind and if given a chance I knew I'd somehow be able to justify keeping a broken music box that played over the rainbow but I didn't, I dug my heels in and got rid of it. I bought my mom's truck from the estate when she died and it served us well for many years but it now has nearly 300,000 miles on it and it just sits in the driveway housing wasp nests and other assorted critters. I knew it wouldn't take long to fill my garbage can so I opted to put the boxes and crap in the back of the truck and wait for my day off to be able to go to the dump. Stuff that was usable but unneeded my me any longer that survived my yardsales went into a box and into the back of my car and I took it all to the Goodwill donation trailer at Walmart. And, seriously I contemplated taking a cute little fisher price picnic table that someone had left but then decided against it because just my luck I'd get arrested for stealing them and I could just see the headlines in the paper and forced myself to leave it there and drive away. So in 2 days, i managed to kill the goat heads, reset my sprinker system - oh yea, when i was watering the pellets I had to break the normal programming so the sprinklers would come on right then...well those sprinklers have been watering my grass every night instead of every other night and now I have to mow...again! gah it never ends. but the storage sheds are clean save a few boxes of Ashley stuff, some of Don's stuff and yes...Christmas decorations...coming soon to a driveway near you.
3. Truck full of shi*. So after all my cleaning I now had a truck full of boxes of crap and I had worked it out with Don to go to the dump today (Friday off) but we got in a fight and he told me to "have fun getting it all to the dump" so I thought "screw you, I will!" So I put an ad on Craigslist and found a guy to come out and load it up and haul it off. But then I had 2 days in between the time I called him, he quoted me a price over the phone and the time he actually took it all away for me. I had thoughts that plagued me like, what if he goes through all the boxes and sees what a horder I am or what if I missed some financial documents or what if...what if the skies suddenly opened up and you got stuck without an Ark...trust him, Karen, trust others till they give you a reason not to. He showed up a day early because i asked him to, I just needed to stop looking at the boxes and fighting the urge to put it all back in the shed, after all it was my stuff and I like Stuff...no actually I don't. He put me at ease right away, gave me his card, showed me his business license, was pretty good looking and treated me like an old friend. So I helped him load all the stuff into his trailer and did a little happy dance when he pulled out of the driveway headed to the dump. Mission accomplished. Misson accomplished with no help from anyone else but me, myself and I. Great teamwork girls.
4. Bee stings. SUCK!
5. Blisters on your little toe. SUCK! I now remember why I don't ever wear those cute sandals I found under a pile of other shoes in the closet.
6. Don't do yardwork in flip flops.
7. There's a reason your mom used to get so mad at you for getting sunburned. There's this stuff on the market called sunscreen, amazing stuff really, too bad I didn't have any and use it this week. Sunburned shoulders and sunburned where cleavage should be (I don't have any, not even enough duct tape in the world will change that, I've accepted it and moved on? SUCK!
8, 9, 10 - The lawn needs to be mowed today. I was going to do it this morning but I'm not. I'm blogging and blogging wins every time no holds barred. I'm doing something for me today...I'm splurging and getting my hair did - the whole package - haircut, color and highlights - can't wait, thinking I'm gonna shake it up a bit and go blonde with some crazy color highlight - purple maybe? just kidding, my goal is to cover the gray and fix what turned out to be the worst haircut in my life. Lessons learned here, if the hair looks good the rest falls into place, wait for your hairdresser, don't ever cut your hair yourself (that one was actually learned a long time ago when I used to drink Tequilla!) which I managed not to do but I didn't wait for my hairdresser to be able to get me in, I caved and went to one of those walkin places..never again.
The best part of this week was pulling into my driveway and being able to see the changes I've made through purging and digging in and just getting it done. It was time. It feels good. It's done. I now have 1 completely empty storage shed, 1 almost empty storage shed, 1 completely empty guest room and 1 almost empty guest room and there's still toilet paper in both bathrooms and there's still no pee on the toilet seat, floors or wall. I'll never ever figure that one out.
Yea, it's been a good week. My plan for the weekend is to get my hair did, enjoy mowing my lawn, planting some flowers and going to a party at the Pub...alone. HUGE step but one I'm warming up to.
Can't wait till Sunday to find out how that turned out.
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