Why Is This Necessary?

Oh, I am sicker than even I thought.



Today I have been packing my art room.



I can only manage it in little shifts. So, I follow a pattern. I grab four boxes, fill them, label them and stack them.



Then, I sit in front of the air-conditioner for a bit while wondering "What is WRONG with me?!"



I did at one point reach a level were I could tell that at one time I actually had something resembling organization going on.



The room I am disassembling is upstairs and very warm. It's not too hot today, but up there it is rather muggy. Mostly, I am trashing a bunch of stuff I must have at one time thought I could not live without.



The room I am moving it all to is in the basement at the new house and will be much cooler to work in. So, I am only packing things into boxes. The real organization will have to happen at the new place. Hopefully, the book "Where Women Create" and the sequel about organizing it all will come in handy. But first, I have to get it all there.



Seeing what I have kept has made me so angry I want to slap myself. I actually found the cardboard from an empty roll of duct tape. I had painted it with gesso and decoupaged a picture of my mom and her two sisters on to it.



WHAT was I planning to do with THAT? If you can picture an empty roll of duct tape, it is large and bulky. Not what one would think of as bracelet material. Maybe I was going to use it to hold up a rather large round object. But if I were going to do that, the large round object has yet to appear.



I have a book packed away here somewhere called "String to Short to Save" which is a description of a labeled box someone found while cleaning out their parents home. Made me laugh when I first saw it. Now it just makes me sad. I'm appalled by the short pieces of ribbon I have saved. FOR WHAT?



I come from parents who in their prime and even past it were meticulously neat and orderly. Everything had a place and everything was in that place at all times. As a child we never had to hunt for lost objects. Objects were not allowed to become lost.



Then there was my grandma. I must take after her. She had piles of stuff around, and bowls with snips, snails, puppy dog tails, sugar, spice and everything nice to rummage around in. I miss my grandma.



Anyway, while sorting through a box of old Christmas cards, I came across the Christmas letter I wrote in 1998. The year I turned forty. The year we moved here.


The year that just days after we moved in, THGGM traveled to Disney World for work and brought Oldest Son and Daughter with him.


No Disney World this time.


It was fun to read, and reminded me that, yes, this too shall pass.