I strongly dislike nail polish. It’s not the colours, or the smell or even the fact that using a toothpick to painstakingly paint little pictures of stars, flowers or hearts on 10 teeny, tiny canvases seems like a rather frivolous waste of time. Nope, it’s not any of those things. The reason I strongly dislike nail polish is because, strange as this may sound, I’m a little claustrophobic and when I put polish on my nails my fingers can’t breathe. That’s right. For some reason, which I suspect will forever remain unknown, nail polish does that to me. So I do what any reasonable and clear thinking human would do. I don’t wear any, ever. Which is why you will probably be surprised when I tell you that I am, right now, attempting to remove some glossy, red paint off of my thumb nail. All this because, if I can put it this way, curiosity appears to have killed the cat. But here’s why.
I’m cleaning. This is not your run of the mill “a little dust, a little vacuum” kind of clean. Right now the entire family is in the midst of a knockdown, drag-out fight against clutter. And we’re about 30 years too late. Do you have any idea how much junk four people can accumulate over 30 years? Well I do. And to put an end to this guessing game, let me just tell you, it’s a lot. But what has to be has to be so without further ado the time has come for us to rid ourselves of the treasures we have somehow managed to accumulate over these many years. Because, as you may have heard, we are moving. Soon. And we simply can’t take all of this stuff with us which I believe is a reasonable, and rather easy conclusion to have arrived at based on the fact that we have less space in the new place than we have now. Not a whole lot less. But less all the same and, to add some insult to the injury, that “less space” comes in the form of no basement. And we all know that the basement is such a handy place to put all the stuff that you don’t really need but hate to part with. Which I am afraid has caused some, but not all of the problem we now face.
The most difficult part of this whole exercise is figuring out what to take and what to leave behind. That’s figuratively not literally since the person who is replacing us in our home probably, and I say this with some confidence, would frown upon us doing so. Now if I was the kind of person who played by the rules I most likely wouldn’t be in this pickle. I mean I’m a big fan of reality TV and, at least for a while, there were any number of shows dealing with the organization of “stuff”. So I am no stranger to advice on how to manage this whole thing. I know about the “keep”, “donate” and “discard” bins. And I can’t count the number of times I have heard that, perhaps now overused and almost impossible to abide by rule, “one in, one out”. Let’s face it. I don’t always buy something to replace something else. Sometimes I just buy something because I like it. And maybe, just maybe, I like all the other ones I have that are like “it” too. Sometimes I need an “extra” one of something. Like a spatula. Who doesn’t sometimes need an extra spatula? Or something in another colour. Maybe I bought a green T-shirt. That doesn’t mean I can throw out a blue one. Does it? I rest my case. One in, one out simply does not work.
I suppose that’s why I now find myself wading through a plethora of stuff, which wouldn’t be so bad if I could at least follow that “touch things only once” rule. But when you come upon things that you haven’t seen for a very long time, sometimes you get distracted. Which seems to be the case, even for a shallow person like me. Call it nostalgia or call it whatever you want, but sometimes you just have to stop and smell the roses. Like finding pictures of your kids when they were really, really small and spending a little time remembering the days before they could walk and talk and stay out all night at the bar. Or coming across a rock you brought back from a camping trip you took years ago because you liked its colour or shape, and thinking back to how much fun it was to sleep in a tent and cook hot dogs over an open fire which you had almost forgotten you ever did because they very rarely allow you to do that at the Hyatt. Or finding a little bottle of nail polish that you never even knew you had and deciding to try it on because you are curious to know if it still makes you feel claustrophobic. These are the times you discover that rules really were made to be broken. Unfortunately, what t has also made me discover is this cleaning thing is going to take me a lot longer than I thought.
I’ve been busy. Perhaps not in the conventional sense, or busy like many of you have been. But those walks on the beach each day take quite a long time, and then there’s coffee. Coffee is an event in and of itself. I mean who wants to hurry up and finish when there’s sun, surf and a nonfat, no foam latte all wrapped up in one? So that’s where I’ve been but, as you can plainly see, I’m here now and I have something I want to say.
I’ve been sick. Not earth shatteringly sick. Not the kind of sick that people should worry about. I mean I haven’t spent the last month ticking off the boxes on my “things I need to do before I die” list. Which, as you know, I don’t have but if I did, this would not have been the time to use it. Really, I should have known. About three weeks ago I got off a plane, one that I had spent five hours sitting on beside my friend who had a cold. She can’t help it. She has little kids and that’s what happens when you have little kids. But I don’t so I can only conclude that you don’t have to have little kids to get sick if you are sitting beside someone who does. For five hours. On a metal tube without any real ventilation. It’s not like I could have opened the window and stuck my head out to get some fresh air. They frown upon that on a plane. So there wasn’t too much I could do except sit there and get sick. Hence, for the past three weeks I have not been feeling that great.
Another year, another 18 bucks and I’m back. Back from the beach and back to the blog. I know. You thought I was dead and I’m not. Just recovering from the shock of returning to the cold and snow. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking because I have. Mostly about all of the things I learned I like about being down south. It’s true. I have a very strong preference for warm weather over cold. And I like walking on the beach much more than I like walking on the treadmill, which is what I have to do now because it’s so cold. I like sitting outside at Starbucks better than inside and I relish the concept of being able to order cold drinks all year round. Not that I would. But I could. I like Sunday street markets where I can buy strawberries and avocados picked locally the day before. And they taste the way strawberries and avocados should taste. I really like being able to stay up as late as I want and not having to worry about getting up in the morning for work. Although it’s not as if I don’t stay up as late as I want every night. So I suppose it’s the “not getting up in the morning” that’s the best part of that “like”. But what I like more than anything else is that I can wear jeans, T-shirts and flip flops all of the time. Which quite surprisingly leads me to something I didn’t learn. Apparently, I didn’t learn how to pack light. And I say this with some confidence having lugged two “almost overweight” bags along with a “more than regulation weight” carry-on around several airports.
Shallow Be My Name 