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Friday December 29, 2000
Most of this stuff on the floor came out of my old car.
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time and things What a wonderfully peaceful day. A little productive even. I didn't set any hard and fast goals or anything. I saw the sunshine and decided that a walk with Chalow would be good at some point. I wanted to get the piles of stuff off the guest room floor. This meant not only sorting it but finding some place to put it away. Which might mean cleaning out some space in a closet. This is always the dilemma. Do you straighten things up by shooving everything in a closet and shutting the door? Or do you clean out the closets and drawers and discard some things and try to organize. The former technique is often used when I'm in a hurry, I'll confess. I did manage to sort the detritus from the old car. There were three and four-year-old magazines, a couple of books (including one entitled The Unknowable), gloves, old glasses, a huge assortment of books on tape and quite a few French instructional tapes. There was a pile of maps including two of most big cities in Texas (Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio) and one of Sherman/Denison. There were these containers meant to organize the trunck and so forth, several umbrellas, receipts and estimates to repair the dented front fender from the garage encounter last June. Perhaps the most interesting stuff were maps and party invitations with maps. Several to long-forgotten locations and a couple to parties with people we never see anymore. One was a perfect map to my parents' house...made by my friend the former owner for a party. I decided that I could find a place for the books on tape and French tapes (besides the truck of my new car) by cleaning out a few shelves in the closet in my office. This went pretty well. There was an old Rolodex in there that had lots of old addresses and business cards. Mostly for forgotten people or people long moved from the locations. I have an easier time with these cleaning tasks since I discovered that you can just throw house fluff away. (What is house fluff? Paper clips, rubber bands, caps to lost pens, out-of-date batteries, bits of plastic parts to forgotten gadgets, keys that open you know not what, etc. Just drop them in the trash!) Anyway, I made room for the tapes and arranged the stationery nicely and also finished cleanling out some drawers...a task started months and months ago. The place is still a disaster, but the guest room floor is empty of junk. Chalow and I took a walk around the neighborhood. I expect a real estate downturn soon enough and I am watching a couple of houses in the neighborhood as test cases. There was a cool wind but the day was bright as a new penny with a cloudless blue sky. Very pleasant. Dad came over to 'borrow' some clay pots that we'd seen piled behind our potting shed. I helped him put them in the van. He's going to pot his amaryllis bulbs. He promised us one when they bloom. I made up a couple of wine gifts for the neighbors and delivered one to the next door folks who are moved in again after their remodel. The place looks nice. SuRu picked me up a little after six and we went to my friend LG's house for a fondue party. It started with a gemichte salad...a nice plate of sliced and chopped things all separated into distinct piles. Typical of Swiss or German fare. I love cheese fondue and stuffed myself. We looked at pictures LG made in Switzerland, Belgium and France. There were lots of chocolate shop facades from the chocolate research that our friend Pam, also present, is doing for her book. Somehow it got very late and we didn't get home until midnight. I feel into bed with a thud. |
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