Homemaking: July 2004 Archives

There's been a funny smell at my desk for a while. At first I thought it was coming from something I had spilled on the chair, then from the monitor, then from some mysterious item on the desk, although there didn't seem to be anything terribly toxic on there; just a gigantic pile of school papers and reports from my stockbroker.

Today, I was blazing through the paper pile with sword and flame (better than filing, I assure you) and I found a small envelope of vitamins that stank to high heaven tucked into a quarterly report as a bookmark.

Now it smells nice at my desk again.

I'm making slow but sure progress on the bedroom. And after talking to Noel this afternoon feeling much calmer about the mess; he must be getting plenty of sleep and having a good time, because he was completely blase about the prospect of coming home to find his bedroom a pile of rubble.

(You can read more about the bedroom project on Casa Decrepit.)

While the bedroom project goes on, the rest of the house is in chaos. I've been sort of keeping up on the dishes, but that's only because with Noel away, I keep forgetting when mealtimes are and just going hungry until I suddenly feel dizzy while climbing the ladder, and realize it's been eight hours since I've eaten. Not bright.

There's also the small matter of the laundry, still in a basket downstairs. There's nowhere to sort it, as our bedroom furniture is all over the hall and bathroom upstairs. And I really should do a load of whites before Noel gets back, so he has some underpants to wear. Or, well, clean ones.

And then there's the elephant in the living room, which is that we decided it would be a good idea for us to get a lodger to live with Noel while I'm away at school; somebody who could share housework and animal care, for example, when Noel comes to visit me. We have asked a friend to move in, and he's intersted but just wants to sit down and talk about it with us, but in the meantime, we need to figure out just how we're going to empty the front bedroom so he has a place to live. We're talking about having him move in in August, so this is far more critical a situation than I'm making it out to be.

Have I mentioned that I have to find housing in San Luis Obispo? Well, I do.

Noel will totally kill me if I don't finish the bedroom repainting project by the time he gets home.

And, um, it's quite a bit more complicated than originally anticipated.

Fortunately for me, it turns out that in California, an annulment based on insanity requires that the condition have existed prior to the marriage. And a divorce based on incurable sanity requires a doctor to certify it. I've been told that it's quite hard to get somebody certified as insane, so I'm guessing that destroying the bedroom by trying to redecorate while one's spouse is away at English Country Death Camp might not be sufficient.

Unfortunately for me, none of that actually gets the plaster stabilized in the bedroom, does it now?

I just found the most fascinating thing while tidying in the bedroom.

A chart, made by me in 1987, of my friends and acquaintances in high school, and who dated who, plus who had a crush on who.

The chart has different symbols for level of relationship (crush, one date, actually dating) and a method of showing what order the relationships happened in. It's fascinating, and I have absolutely no recollection of having made it, even though it was clearly made over a period of a year and with extensive commitment required.

Now I have to leaf through my other diaries and see if I made more of these. I guess this proves that I'm a natural information organizer. Or a psycho stalker.