The terror of the three day weekend.

So I’ve always liked the way that Ms. Manners refers to her “gentle reader” and Rudyard Kipling to his “O best beloved,” so I’ve been trying to think of a way to refer to you, oh reader of blogs. In Julie and Julia http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/ Julie Powell refers to her “bleaders” (blog readers…get it?), but “gentle bleader,” has a rather gruesome ring to it…which, come to think of it, might be just the thing.

So, gentle bleader, here we are at Thursday, and my weekend looms ahead of me. I am spoiled by my three day weekends, and I’m sure I will get no pity from you when I say that all that unscheduled time makes me feel pressured to accomplish, accomplish, accomplish. I have an artwork with deadline pending, and many a quilt that needs finishing. In my previous life, when I was an artist and not an office drone, my guaranteed income came from finishing quilts, and I still have half a dozen left to get back to their owners. My entire living room is taken up by a 12 foot long sewing machine, and I have (admittedly optimistic) hopes of actually getting some work done on my broken down, piece of shit house this summer. That work cannot be done until I breakdown the sewing machine and wrap it in plastic so it won’t become encrusted with drywall dust, and that means moving these quilts out as soon as piratically possible. I have also taken on several knitting-for-other-people projects that I need to get finished so that I can go back to knitting for me-me-me-me. So why do you care? You probably don’t, but my hope is that by writing about what I hope to accomplish I may actually feel some responsibility to get some of it done, har har!

Here are some things that I may possibly do this weekend. Finish the quilt currently mounted on the machine AND put the next one on. Finish artwork with looming deadline. Haul a load of trash out of the basement in preparation for basement destruction. Start tomato and basil seedlings in preparation for summer gardening. Work on special birthday project for Adrien-Alice…everyone wish Adri many happy returns, she gets to add one more number after February 4th. All that and I have to get enough drinking in so that I’ll be able to come back to work on Monday!

Ah! So thinking of hauling trash out of the basement made me think about one of my favorite rants, the therapeutic value of throwing things away! Is there anything more satisfying than coming home after a long day and throwing out a whole bunch of shit? I think not! I reduced a couch to something that could be thrown away in our curbside dumpster with a scissor, a standard screwdriver, a bolt cutter and a crowbar….with some help from the Manimal and a sledge hammer. I think you could properly say that we dissected it. There is an old skanky dresser in the basement that is going to get the same treatment this weekend, but I think more sledgehammer and less screwdriver on that one. When we started the home improvement project…ack…two years ago, our first objective was to get rid of over half of the shite that had accumulated in the house. I called up everyone I knew with access to a dumpster and found out the dump schedule. So on Monday nights I would call Kevbot and see if his dumpster was full, on Thursdays it was another friend, and the friend with the venerable breakfast establishment on Sundays. Then if there was room I would load up everything I could in the back of the truck and dump it. So satisfying! It got to be sort of an addiction. What can I throw away today? I took all the doors off the kitchen cupboards….hell I took out two of the cupboards themselves. We went from having three couches and four chairs in our living room to having, two chairs. Microwave? Who needs it? The basement went from being a place you couldn’t walk through without fear of being smothered in something, to being a big empty room with a few pieces of random furniture that need to be given the sledge hammer treatment before they can be dumped….and frankly I’m a little disappointed. I miss the good old days of making dumpster runs at 2 o’clock in the morning. The most amazing thing is that the more you throw away, the more there is to throw away, it’s never ending. Sometimes I find myself looking into my dresser drawer thinking, “Do I really need eight pairs of pants? I could probably get by with three.” Pirates didn’t have all this crap cluttering up their lives. They kept their boats light so they could go faster, slept on the deck, and only had one pair of clothes. After they took a prize they either had to go into Port Royal and spend it all on whores and drink, or bury it so it didn’t slow them down. Well a pirate’s life for me I say, and what shall we throw overboard this week.

Just don’t touch my knitting needles, my sewing machines (all 7 of them), my yarn, my fabric, or my spinning wheel….yeah I know I’m a hypocrite!

So, gentle bleader, I'm off until Monday.
Ta!
Ragnar!