Neat Freak

There's a show called "Neat" (that I think runs on the Fit TV cable station) that involves the host going into people's messy and overflowing homes and helping them sort through mounds of stuff that have accumulated through the years, while simultaneously teaching them new methods for prioritizing whether something is worth keeping and if so, the proper way to store it so it's accessible and doesn't get dumped in some dark corner closet and forgotten.

This is my dream job.

I am ruthless when it comes down to what stays and what goes in my own home. I know what's in every drawer and closet in my house and if an item isn't where I look for it the first time, I know it's not in the house, period. Stuffed animals from childhood, gifts given by loved ones over the years that I no longer use or like (the gifts, not the friends), an expensive sweater I thought I liked in the store but then never wore...out the door they go.  Luckily, I'm married to a man who is mainly of the same mind set because from what I hear from friends, storage and what stays and what goes can be a sticky point in a marriage.

My one weakness is books. One dream that I think will happen  is I want to put bookshelves on every wall in one of our sitting rooms and turn it into an actual library. When that day comes, I will need piles of books to fill the shelves. Hence, my reluctance to part with them.

I LOVE helping other people sort through rooms of stuff in their homes. It's like a treasure hunt as you help them find forgotten memories and show them how it really is okay to let go of 5 years of back issues of newspapers and magazines that they're never going to read, no matter how much they say they plan to.

I know there are professional organizers out there and I even know a few, but my observations have been that's a hard way to make a living. People are reluctant to allow others into their mess of a home, and then they're reluctant to pay for the organizers time. (I suspect this is because in the back of their heads they're thinking, "I could do this myself." Which they could, except they've already proven that they won't...)

There's a home of one friend in particular that I'm dying to get my hands on. It's one of those homes where there are literally paths carved out amid the debris that allow you to travel from room to room.  I helped this friend clean her living room once and she was thrilled with the result. It sparkled and shown and everything had a home. "We are keeping this room clean!" she declared.

Yet within twenty minutes of the room being clean, a Pepsi can and bag of pretzels was left on the floor. Her daughter came out to blow-dry her hair and talk to us and the blow dryer was left plugged in on the floor next to the couch. The mail arrived and my friend tossed the junk mail on the mantle... It was like watching a dream dissolve in slow motion. I'd say within 48 hours the room looked as though we had never touched it.

I admire the mess in some people's homes. I have creative friends whose messy homes I think reflect--in the best way possible--the creative messiness of their minds. I almost can't think straight when my home needs straightening. I've got to have things in order around the house in order to be able to do my work and I see that as a limiting factor. So some dishes aren't in the sink--big deal. But it will make me mental until I put them away. There's such a thing as too much structure.

But we all have our quirks and oddities and are the stronger for them, yes? So I'll keep picking up cups and moving the lamp back 1/8 of an inch to the right when it gets bumped out of place because that's what I do best. And here's to celebrating on a lovely Friday morning whatever it is YOU do best. Cheers!

If You Don't Talk to Your Cat About Catnip, Who Will?

I'm debating whether to turn my mother into the cops. It seems she left a "stash" sitting on the kitchen counter, available and tempting to whatever innocent party might happen to walk (or crawl) by.

The stash in question is catnip and the being who crawled by it--and then turned and crawled back--is her new cat, Charmin. (Or Prince Charmin, as I like to refer to him). Being nocturnal creatures, cats get into the darnedest things. One morning she awoke to find an entire role of toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom shredded beyond recognition and one very satisfied cat sitting in the hall, licking his paws and looking pleased with himself.

But the other morning Mom awoke to find her normal docile cat replaced by the Tasmanian Devil of Warner Brothers Fame. She came downstairs and a whirlwind tornado spun itself at her feet, from the middle of which she heard panting and gasping. After the dust cleared, she realized it was Charmin--high out of his mind. Apparently kitty got bored, investigated the kitchen counter and hit paydirt.

Wheeeezzzz.....the tornado whirled away, chasing his tail and pouncing on dust particles.  Bailey, my mom's dog, came down to investigate. Charmin usually steers clear of Bailey but the little high-on-life kitty raced over to him, looked in his eyes and said, "Bring it." (Bailey wisely chose to hide under the bed.)

The effects soon wore off and Charmin collapsed, exhausted, like a 21-year old college student after a night of pub crawls. He had that slightly dazed, "What the hell just happened here?" look about him followed by the "I think I need to ralph" look.

Bad kitty? No. High kitty, but not bad kitty. And not bad Mommy either. Who knew Charmin had a drug habit? Maybe it's best not to call the cops after all...

Makeup at 75% Discount!

It really doesn't take much to make me happy. Today we were at CVS (Blair, aka "Coupon King," decided we needed to stock up on something like 80 rolls of toilet paper and 20 boxes of Kleenex--tissue, anyone?) and I wandered into the makeup aisle. I'm not typically one for buying makeup. I own mascara bottles that probably have new and undiscovered forms of bacteria residing in them. But I like to look at the products and pretend I know what to do with them, so off I went.

Well, call it Christmas in February folks because half the makeup was labelled 50% off and the other half--oh, oh, catch me before I faint--was 75%.  Can you say bonazi?

Blair found me twenty minutes later, huddled on the tile floor among mounds of "mocha almond glaze" for eyes and "lucious luminenscent lipstick," also, oddly enough, in mocha almond glaze. 

"Right," he said looking at me. "I'll just be over in the asprin aisle until you're ready to go."

I came to my senses and whittled my horde down to two lipsticks, 1 super cool eye-color thingee where you put it on dry for a daytime effect and wet for a metallic night look (I have no where I currently need to wear a wet, metallic eyeshadow look to, but one never knows), and a clear base nailcoat--all for the low, low price of $13.12.  Happy Day!

My fun continued when we returned to the car and our errands. I ripped open the new lipstick. "How does this look on me?" I asked.

"Great," said Blair. It was true. The color looked smashing. Bonus. There's nothing worse than buying new makeup only to discover it makes you look like Elizabeth Taylor during the fat years.

I pulled down the visor and applied eyeshadow--also stunning.

I'm telling you--we women never outgrow our little girl enamorment of makeup. Having new stuff out of the box is like sneaking into your mom's stash, trying everything on at once and then leaving her room with powder and rouge dripping off your 5-year-old face and hoping she won't notice.

I'm off to a superbowl party in my new mocha almond glaze lips and eyes.  If the Colts win, I think I'll go all out tomorrow in celebration and wear the eyeshadow in wet metallic.

I'm pulling for ya, fellas.

Bad Computer!

My advice to my computer is to be on its very best behavior because it's a looooong two-story drop to the ground.

Blair and I were up past 11 last night, alternating between cussing and flipping off the computer and each other. (We don't do well late at night.)  I've got an important e-mail to send with 4 attachments. All together, it's just under 3 MB of information. A large amount, yes, but people send larger files every day with no problem.

At first we thought the files themselves were the problem, specifically one very large pdf. So we zipped the file individually and with the other files. Only when we went to send it, it was as if the file had unzipped itself as the full MB was still showing as properties. So we tried saving the PDF as a word document. Fine, except when we opened the document, although the file was there if you clicked around the page, it initially showed up blank. Grrrr....

I can't even convey the amount of Adobe, jpg, Word, pdf aerobics we went through. Finally, Blair was on the phone at 11 PM with Road Runner, and after 20 minutes they determined it was an Outlook problem and we needed to contact Microsoft. Words to strike fear into the heart of even the bravest computer user.

I think our system is set to crash. Here's just a partial list of poltergeist hijinks we've been dealing with:

• If someone sends me a jpg, I can see it in the e-mail and I can save it to a file and open it. But I get an error message if I just click on the attachment to open it.
• About every 15-20 minutes the computer "freezes." I have to walk away for about 1 minute and then it's fine. Only sometimes I have to close every program that's open, frequently losing online work I've been doing. These are the days I wander to the wine cabinet about noon and think, "Maybe..."
• I can't send any large files via e-mail and it takes 5 minutes to download one someone sends me
• I frequently get messages that my e-mail is at capacity, even though I'm more religious than anyone I know about deleting old messages and I CANNOT believe I have more on my e-mail then the average worker bee.
• Updating to this blog is troublesome. Pictures take forever to upload. I have several friends who use Squarespace and they don't have this issue, leaving me to point blame at our computer.

And that's just what tops the list. I have to admit, as much as I felt bad for Blair last night that he was so frustrated at the expense of trying to help me, I was secretly glad he got a taste of what I feel like I deal with daily with the computer from hell.

I don't mind figuring out something new. There are always rules to be learned. But what drives me absolutely batty is when a tool or program that has always worked suddenly doesn't. For no reason. You haven't changed anything, no updates have been made. Everything is exactly the same except it no longer works. Makes me mental.

Bad computer! Bad, bad, bad computer!