Wait, one more project:

The Music Project!

When I was getting ready to go to Scotland--by which I mean "getting ready to risk thrombosis by sitting for countless hours on a transatlantic flight, God bless it for taking me to see my daughter!"--I charged up my iPod and the Historian's iPod, so that we would both have lots of music to listen to which would hopefully distract us from the clots possibly forming in our legs. While doing this, I confronted the shift in my iPod paradigm. A sketch:

my iPod(s): a love story. by lisab

Well, suffice it to say that in the rush to leave town, I was not able to summon the sober wisdom of Solomon to decide what music should depart from the portable jukebox of my iPod, back onto the archives of iTunes. So that meant that I left a lot of new music behind, which was sad in retrospect, because the Jet of Thrombosis would have been the ideal setting for discovering that music. For getting comfortable with it.

Alas, no. It's true that at one point, I found myself listening to a Genius playlist of 80s tunes. Which had its comforts, and that's the truth.

Anyway. I have spent some time over the past couple of days assessing the contents of this iPod and removing some stuff. For instance, when I was in the car, listening to another Genius playlist, a Jack Johnson tune came up and I thought, I don't ever need to listen to Jack Johnson again in my life. That was a rather emphatic judgment, but I made it. Jack Johnson does not come with when me and my iPod are out and about, although if I ever reconsider my judgment, I know where to find him.

What's good is that I now have some new music to listen to. I told the historian last night that I hated this streamlining, paring away project, even though it's a project that presses on me, because it seems like preparing to die. Because he is empathetic and because he is kind, he didn't laugh. The thing about streamlining your iPod is that you can have your cake and eat it too, because you don't have to really get rid of things. You can rearrange them--some things are on the iPod, some are on one or another of your hard drives. What's harder is culling out the books to give away, or the clothes, or other non-digital stuff. When that's gone, it's gone, and your life may be sleeker, but it may also be poorer.

I can hear my daughter telling me things are not people, Mom. She is right. She is right. Well, my music is in much better order. Now, onto the the things.

Findings.

Today, we came home from the farmer's market with our bounty: Asian pears from the Asian pear guy; peppers, purple potatoes, brioche, broccoli, basil; a big bag of arugula; and more grapes.

"What are you going to do with your day?" the historian wanted to know.

"I need to do a little bit of grading, and maybe a little bit of writing, and some cleaning and straightening," I said with grand optimism.

The cleaning and straightening was an idea that came to me--sort of a fall cleaning thing, because summer with its windows open and in-and-out all day and night is coming to a close. This week has been so full of things--two grandsons' birthdays, the onset of full meeting mode at work, troubles with the LMS for teaching, evening outings...I felt I had lost a little part of my brain and, on Thursday night, forgot something kind of enormous. I had been looking forward to the weekend so that I could collect a little bit of my collectedness. A meager portion of that to begin with, frankly--I can't stand to lose much of it.

Pretty quickly, I got busy putting away summer clothes and shoes, setting aside a few things to give away, getting out fall clothes and shoes and sweeping a good amount of summer dust. I put away a bunch of things and that felt great. While I was going through the vast troves of apparel and footwear, I found my red suede ankle boots, which seemed both fortunate and propitious--both lucky and also a different kind of lucky--and I wore them tonight when we went out to see The Master.

I also started to organize stuff on the hard drive of my iMac. Things were a little out of control there, especially the amount of music and photo files. I spent part of the afternoon in the thicket of Mac forums, trying to find out where in the hell Mountain Lion puts my actual photo files. Apple! Why are you so bossy! I ran across the letter my youngest son had written to his grandfather--my dad--explaining his college plans. It was so elegant and mature sounding, and not really meant for me to read, which made it an extra pleasure.

This afternoon, after I had set aside my labors, I got an e-mail from my dad:

Found the attached pic while rummaging through some thumb drives.  A little photo shopping and it turned out quite nicely.  Your Grandmother, Mother and three aunts are in this photo.  I hope you will treasure it.

My mom looks so young there, smiling and leaning forward. I think I have a picture of myself at that same age, when I was the young mother of a girl with a brand new trike.

I would get organized, but what about the rummaging? and how perfect it is to find the stuff you forgot you have?

Two days and counting.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, today I looked into the abyss that is my soul and was a little terrified by what I saw there. Which is to say, my daughter came over and helped me clean my kitchen. I had already done a once over and a twice over and was congratulating myself a little bit on how spiffy certain areas of my kitchen were looking. But my daughter does not believe in congratulating yourself on a clean (-ish) counter when there is the devil behind your cupboard doors. And by "the devil," I mean pretty much everything about the way I carry out my daily kitchen affairs.

Let's take, as just one example, my candle situation. I had, in the way of candles, many a votive, tea-light, pillar, and taper. I also had a half-burnt candle in the shape of an evergreen tree. Well, half of an evergreen tree. As you might surmise, this candle was a Christmas purchase. I had not actually set eyes on this candle in at least a couple of years. At least! Moreover, I also had candles that were set into pieces of bamboo, or maybe simulacra of pieces of bamboo. These I had purchased when this same daughter got married, for a party along a luau theme. Which was about five years ago. Literally, the last time these candles cast flame, it was five years ago. The world was younger then, and probably my cupboards were just as messy.

My daughter held up a lone little votive candle. I sobbed a little. She held it ever more firmly for my inspection. My shoulders sagged.

"Okay." I said.

"Good girl," she said.

This went on and on. There are many categories of kitchen items that were culled, sifted, and within those categories, many items weighed in the balance and found wanting. It was a veritable Day of Judgement at my house. Many were the colanders, old hand mixers, sandwich makers, electric kettles, ancient food items, spent tins of spice, and bad tea choices that were cast into the fiery pit, aka the garbage bin or the Goodwill bag.

Each and every cupboard and drawer is now organized, spare, and sparkling. I am chastened. My daughter is something of a champion--something like Jesus driving the moneychangers from the temple, but with kitchen dirt and stuff as the moneychangers, and my kitchen as the ancient temple. Well, now it's a temple.

And in two days, there will be visitors from Scotland at my house. I dare them to mess my kitchen up.

Decorated.

Well in advance of Christmas! Before the grading is done! I give you the megastore Christmas tree!




Bonus: little grandson pictures from last Wednesday.



(The Scotland grandchildren, along with their Christmas joy, live here on the web, in case anyone has missed that fact.)