Eating the Elephant

(I'm making scrappy blocks--i.e. blocks out of leftover scraps--fun and frugal!)

I'm back from my last trip. This time I went to Chicago for a convention. Here's the thing about spending too much time in a convention center: you will slowly lose all bearings until you can't remember where you're from, who your people are, or what your purpose in life is. You just wander around, hoping you can find a bathroom that doesn't have a line snaking out the door.

It's good to be home, but now I have no excuses. Home must be dealt with. Attics and closets must be purged, wallpaper must be peeled off, cupboards must be put back to order.

Oh, when, oh when will I be rich enough to hire other people to do these things? But that's the rub: with the exception of peeling the wallpaper, these are jobs you have to do yourself. A stranger doesn't know which books can be safely shipped off to the used book bin at the library. A stranger can't intuit how you like your pots and pans piled up.

A couple of weeks ago I read something that I really liked. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Dealing with my house is going to be like eating an elephant. A really, really big elephant who's in a very bad mood. My plan is to tackle projects in fifteen-minute increments, then break for iced tea and snacks. It's the only way I'll ever get the job done. Wish me luck.

***

Yesterday the Man and I attended a poetry reading at Our Fine Middle School. Jack's Language Arts class read from the poetry books they've written this spring. The poems were delightful and funny, and a few of them knocked our socks off.

The Man and I couldn't wait to hear Jack's poems, of course. What would this quiet boy tell us about himself through the lines of his verse? Well, we learned that he likes computers and computer games and reading. Oh, wait--we already knew that. But we also learned that he likes the smell of old books, which I always have, too, and that the literary figure he considers himself most like is Sherlock Holmes. We learned that Jack considers his father "funny and kind, but sometimes stern," and that I am "beautiful and pleasant, most of the time."

This, my friends, is what I want on my tombstone: She was beautiful and pleasant, most of the time.