Footprints on the Moon

It occurred to me just a minute ago that I am always mentioning that I “need to clean” but I haven’t really clarified what I mean by that. You might be thinking of washing the dishes, and vacuuming the carpets, but that’s not really what I need to do. Since explaining wouldn’t really convey exactly what I’m dealing with, I decided to take a picture.

This is my couch. It’s a mess, huh? Luckily, this is currently the only pile of crap in my living room. You might be thinking, okay, Jenn, but it’s still a very large pile of crap! Yes, yes it is. But there used to be a whole lot more than this. (Thank you Roomba! I cleaned so I could run my robotic vacuum LOL) So when I say I need to clean, I really mean “I need to sort through the piles of crap in my living room.” On that couch are a year’s worth of several magazine subscriptions, many things that need to go in the trash, many things that need to go in the garage sale next spring, and many things that need boxed up and put into the storage unit. Oh, and that long white box on top? That needs to find a UPS drop box, if I could only figure out where one of those is! I almost get a migraine just thinking about tackling that mess!

After a long day, I was just glad to be able to head home for the night. Imagine my delight when I opened my front door and saw not one, but two packages on the floor just inside the door. And most importantly, one of those packages contained my ROOMBA! The oh so amazing Jules had graciously offered to ship it to me from Vegas, and it finally arrived, ready to be played with!
Of course, like many other things, it languished in the box for some time while I did other things. It is, after all, a vacuum and that means cleaning. I was watching a lousy movie though, and decided to get it out of the box and start playing. There is now one small clean patch of carpet in my living room! LOL Just what it happened to clean up before I sent it searching for the automatic charging dock. My brilliant plan was to dock it, and then start actually cleaning (or at least piling all the things currently on the floor on top of the furniture) so that I could run the Roomba. But then my mom called, and she was over at my brother’s with Killian. Always the one to take advantage of the chance to play with my nephew, I went over there instead. Ah, the best laid plans.
So tonight I plan to clean the living room (again, or pile things on top of the furniture) so I can run the Roomba through a cleaning cycle. I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited to clean my living room before. So hopefully I’ll do that between baking cookies for tomorrow. First plan of action after I get home from work though– a nap!

I finally decided last night to sit down and balance out my checking account after the trip to Vegas, so I would know exactly how much I spent, and how much I had left. I would have kept right on putting that off, but I desperately needed to go grocery shopping, so I couldn’t delay that any longer.
So I got the numbers all squared away, and headed out to Meijer to pick up some food and necessities. By the time I got everything home, and lugged it upstairs, I put away the refrigerator and freezer stuff, and left everything else on the kitchen floor. This morning, however, I went to put my groceries away and was confronted with a problem– a pantry so full of things that needed cleaned out and thrown away that there was no room for anything else, not even a single can! It’s a job I’ve been putting off for awhile, but it was time. Seriously, the amount of expired food in my pantry was appalling! But it’s all cleaned out now, and the trashbags are sitting outside the front door waiting to go down to the dumpster.
I didn’t get a “Before” picture, but trust me when I tell you, my pantry did not look like this this morning!

I’m such a horrible unpacker… I still haven’t unpacked from the Vegas trip. This is not horrible as I’ve only had 2 or 3 days to get it done, but it doesn’t bode well. When I went to pack for Vegas, I had remove items from my suitcase that were still in there from Labor Day! I managed to get all the dirty clothes out of the suitcase and into the hamper, and I’ve snagged the toiletries I needed, but that still leaves a lot in my suitcase. Like the clothes that were still clean. (How in the world did I manage to come home with clean clothes?! I pack too much!) And the swag… ooohh swag! Several t-shirts involved there too… too bad I’m out of hangers for my closet. Maybe if I had a clothes folder, I’d be more excited about putting my stuff away. Not to mention that I probably could have fit even MORE stuff in my already bulging suitcase!

I’ll get around to unpacking soon… if for no other reason than because my suitcase is still taking up valuable space in my living room and it needs to be packed away in the closet. How about you guys– do you have items still languishing in the bottom of your suitcases, or are you “unpackers”?

Those of you who followed my twitters during the Vegas trip will already know this. Saturday was PostieCon and they gave out raffle tickets at the door. They then used those tickets to draw prizes between all of the sessions. They gave away everything from Roombas, GPS systems, Ipods, gift cards, and stereos! The very first prize, though, was a Roomba.
They started reading off the numbers. 311, yeah… 2, yeah… 6, yeah… 8!! YEAH!! I won!!! Holy cow! If you’re anything like my mom, your first response is “What the heck is a roomba?” Well, a Roomba is a vacuuming robot made by iRobot. I’ve linked there to the exact model that I won. I’m seriously excited for it to show up here so I can set it to work on the cat hair embedded into my carpet.
You might be wondering why I’m waiting for it to show up if I’m already at home. Well, that is due to the awesomeness of my friend Julie. I was trying to figure out how in the WORLD I was going to get this large, heavy roomba home. It wasn’t going to fit in my suitcase… I didn’t trust it to come off of the turnstile at baggage claim. Julie was completely fabulous enough to offer to ship it to me. So my Roomba is currently in Las Vegas, Nevada waiting on FedEx to come pick it up. Soon it will arrive here, and I will have to clean. I’ve been told you have to get everything up off the floor before you can run the vacuum. Yeah, I’d say I’ve got a lot to do before I can use it!

I’m not looking to buy any new furniture anytime soon, being both BROKE and mostly satisfied with what I’ve got for now. But every time I watch one of those home renovation shows, I can’t help but wonder why on earth someone would want one of those modern platform beds. Maybe I’m just used to the traditional look… or maybe I just can’t figure out why someone would want a bed that can’t hide things underneath?! Not that I do that… *shifty eyes* Actually, usually the things under my bed are the things the cats managed to drag there. Maybe everyone who has a platform bed is a pet owner.

I didn’t blog at all yesterday. This is not because I had nothing to say– on the contrary, I had a whole list of things to blog about. Like the Self Portrait I post every week. I just didn’t have the energy to do it. I spent all day yesterday doing laundry. And I do mean ALL day. I started the first load about 10:30 am, and got the last of it out of the dryer just before I went to bed at 9pm. In between, I treated a boil (ouch), and played games on the computer. I kept meaning to open my blog, but I just didn’t want to write anything. Sundays are made to be lazy, right?

I’m sorry, but do you live here? That’s the question I was asking myself earlier this week. If you read my photo blog, you saw that I had a clogged tub, and called maintenance out to fix it. They started on Monday, and came back to fix the job on Tuesday. And left me wondering if it might have been done differently had it not been my uncle. On Monday, I had a funeral to attend, so I left work early, stopped off at home for lunch on my way, and discovered that my bathtub had been taken apart, the pieces put in a bowl I had sitting near the tub, and there was a leaf in the toilet. Um… okay. Come to find out, my uncle was in the process of working on my tub when he found out he had 20 minutes before he was “supposed” to be at the funeral home.

So my tub stayed torn apart Monday night, and he came out to finish it on Tuesday. It’s the subtle differences that left me wondering, with the whole “do you live here” question. Moved washcloths, the “dirt” (chemical residue) left in the bottom of the tub, but most importantly the cats. Now, that statement might leave you confused, so let me explain. When I got home on Tuesday, the cats greeted me in the living room, then ran back to the bathroom and meowed. Usually that means “Where have you bee? The bowl is empty, feed us, we’re starved!” So I glance in and their bowl is full. I told them such and ignored them. Later, they keep repeating this. Sitting near the bowls and talking to me. Finally I look closer. Yes, their bowl is full, but not with the food that I feed them. My uncle fed my cats. It would be weird in and of itself, but here’s the really strange part– he didn’t get the food from inside my apartment. Where I keep the cat food is probably not in a very intuitive place, so it’s quite likely he looked around, and didn’t find it. But there was a sample bag of cat food (which just so happens to be the same kind that he DID put in the bowl) in the bathroom, and he didn’t use that either.

So best I can figure is that he went home and got food to feed my cats. Which of course they didn’t want because they were like, what the heck is this?? It was just very strange to me. I appreciate him feeding them if they were hungry, but he’s got my phone number– he could’ve called and asked me where their food was! And then I couldn’t help but wonder… does he feed other people’s cats too? Or just mine? Maybe I’ll have to ask him next time I see him.

It is currently 10 till 6 in the morning. On a Saturday. And I’ve been up for more than an hour already. Oh, that’s just painful. I am up earlier today than I am on days that I have to be at work!!
I woke up about 4:30 or so, and got up to go to the bathroom… I was still tired. I get back in bed, get all comfy… and nothing. The kitties realize, hey, she’s still awake, so they both decide they need attention. They got a few ear scratches, I waited for them to settle down, and tried to go back to sleep. Wasn’t happening… I found myself wide awake, so I said “Screw it!” and got out of bed. Before 5 am. Can you hear me whimpering? There is definitely a nap with my name on it today!
And, it’s cold in here. I think I’m going to have to give in, move things off of my baseboards, and turn the heat on.

The great excavation of 2007 continues, after a good amount of ignoring. I had gotten to the point that there was so much stuff to sort through, it was literally taking over my apartment. You couldn’t even walk through the living room. I’m trying to seriously weed out things and put alot of stuff in the garage sale. I’m a serious pack rat because I attach emotional memories to the silliest of things, so I have that added on top of the typical pack rat “I might need it someday” syndrome. I reached the point where I just couldn’t make any more decisions about what to keep and what to give away. I put everything that hadn’t been sorted back into boxes, and back into my bedroom. I got them back out this weekend, and made a good amount of progress. I need to take things over to my mom’s to store so I can really get a feel for what I’m dealing with now.
One thing I have discovered though– I don’t need to buy any more crafty things, as much as I want to. I’ve got so many unfinished projects already. I keep discovering so many things that I’ve forgotten about that I’m half-expecting to discover I was once into slot cars or something! I know that’s not the case, but I do have many, many unfinished crochet projects, plus yarn for countless projects yet to have been started. I also found an unfinished cross-stitch project or two that I started almost TEN YEARS ago! That’s just sad! It won’t stop me from buying new things when I decide I need them, but is sad none the less.