Day 3.4: Nuts!*

I am a squirrel (though not nearly as cute as the little guy above). There's no getting around it. In fact, there's almost no getting around this room as the shelves empty and boxes slowly pile in the only spot without furniture. Yes. The doorway.

This room has too many activities crammed into it. We know that. But one of the most important, to me, is my scrapbooking. I am reluctant to even discuss such a middle-class, suburban housewife past-time in such erudite company, but other than painting furniture and decorating, (which, honestly, happens hardly at all) it is my creative outlet.

And, to be frank, it hardly happens, either. I am way too compulsive in my habits. Scrapping is just like The Cure. I get busy and the family goes hungry, children are left ignorant and ignored. So, I haven't done it in a while. A long while. It's beside the point, really, except to say I've been longing to get back at it for a couple of months now. The only way I can do it is to have everything handy, here in the dining room. If it were down in the basement, I'm afraid I'd forget what my children looked like. And so, everything waits for me to establish the habit of moderation, here in the dining room. But scrapping not only eats time, it eats space. It is not a hobby for those with space issues. The amount of stuff you need to "keep handy" is unbelievable.

My husband and I bought the Expedit to house it all. It was the subject of at least two arguments. We even took it back (I thought to leave it there) when I had doubts about having purchased the dark one and wanted to exchange it for the light one. (We wound up getting the white one.) I don't dare NOT put it up in the dining room. But it will overwhelm the space. It will. And I'm second guessing my decision to paint the wall behind it blue. It will, as Wende says, STAND OUT.

All this and bristol board squirreled away behind the shelving units. (Will I be able to stash it back there when the unit goes up? It doesn't have a back. Probably not.) What about my collection of long rulers? Where does one put those? I have a really tall book, a legal sized clipboard, and two 24" cutting mats now homeless too. There are two little drawers in my storage units--scissors and sewing stuff cozy up in one, math manipulatives bed down in the other. They, too, will be homeless. (Have you seen what the drawer inserts for the Expedit cost? You need at least two for balance. They're on my Christmas list.) Yet, what little matters in the scheme of the whole wide world.

But in my little world right now, we can't have dinner at the kitchen table because I'm still painting two chairs. The Expedit, still in its three boxes, lies in our narrow entryway. I finally removed the two little "drop leafs" of the little round table on the dining room table to the basement, while at the end of it, two chairs prop up the disaster that is the centre. I'm sanding off the work of the last week because the brush screwed up the final coat of varnish. (There's a whole story behind this little table, but telling it to you will make you wonder about the stability of my marriage (or why I keep risking it for furniture) and this post is depressing enough.) I now have packing tape, scissors, newspapers and one lone box left for packing up the China cabinet and the walls of books and the scrapbook stuff.

I find myself fearful, packing up. We moved a lot as a kid. Lots of things were always given away when we moved, sometimes accidentally (like the time we moved from Ottawa, Ontario to Yellowknife, NWT and found ourselves with a bag of garbage but without all our skiing stuff) and sometimes on purpose, but always without my consent. I'm afraid I'll never be able to find this stuff I'm packing. Again.

I feel like I'm moving backwards. A lot of this stuff, like my china and wine glasses used to be kept in boxes. I'd schlep it up from the basement and unpack it when we needed it. It'll all be packed away for Thanksgiving this year. And I won't be doing any schlepping.

I'm worried the colours won't work together. I'm worried my design for the shelving will look dorky. I'm worried about how we're going to function while the nerve centre of our home is dismantled and in disarray.

But there's nothing for it but to keep on. I'm going to "officially" cancel school for the next two weeks. We haven't been doing it anyway and I already miss the Spring days we will have to work through to make up for it. It would be ironic if we finished painting on Thanksgiving Monday. (Oct 8). But that's all right. I like irony.

*It's what General McAuliffe of the 101st Airborne said to Germany's invitation to surrender after they had the Americans surrounded and cut off at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944. The Germans and their translators were a wee bit baffled.