Pink Prickly Pear

Eight...

The truck arrives next Tuesday!

I have pared down our belongings considerably.  Yard sale, craigslist, donations to The Book Man, our local library, AMVets pick-ups, and gifts to friends have all helped.  Freecycle has not.  The moderators on our local list will not let my slightly snarky post through.  You cannot humorously suggest that people who are going to "come and take a look", hem and haw, call their significant other from your driveway to debate the finer points of my cast-off belongings and then ask me to determine whether or not it will fit in their vehicle need not bother this busy mother in the throes of packing for a cross country move. Apparently only very dry descriptions of your offer are allowed.  I'm not trying to hate on SoCal, particularly at the very end, but it is my observation that a good sense of humor is well under-appreciated 'round these parts.  Maybe I'm just too mean.  Maybe you can take the girl out of the east coast, but you can't take the east coast out of the girl.

You want it?  Come get it.  You load your own car because I'm too busy making dinner.

I was thinking that I was doing quite well, ruthlessly cutting the chaff, but then last night I stayed up late reading through various minimalist blogs and challenges and I started to feel, comparatively speaking, like a hoarder.  I should have been a monk.

I'm tempted to open sealed boxes and purge further, but suspect this would send Mr. Pear over the edge.  I actually already did this a few weeks ago.  Lightening the load is my new addiction and I like it.

I do think I need to get the boy his own set of measuring spoons though.

Approximately* half-way...

 to next year's gag gift of the season, and what I really want to know is What does your Snuggie look like now?  I'm sure it's got cat hair and herbal tea stains all over it.  Do you fold it up and drape it over the back of the couch when you're not wearing it, or do you hang it up in your closet?  

^{* I'm not going to bother with the math.   Not because I'm afeared of it, but because I just can't be bothered.}

Naptime is for de-cluttering.

We had a roof leak - I won't complain, because that would be pretty gauche, considering many of you are practically experiencing avalanche conditions - but it did mean I had to move a bunch of stuff out of the wet zone.  I detest moving stuff.  I always feel slightly suffocated by my belongings, but even more so when I have to actively confront the heft of them.

I'm chipping away.  Last week, a box of books donated to the library.  Yesterday, gently used baby clothes passed along to expectant mama friend.  Two boxes set aside for an AMVets pick-up on Monday.  

I never think to look through our art supplies (with an eye towards culling anything), but the other day, I noticed that more than a few of my brushes were all stiff (pesky kids!).  I chucked a couple of brushes, but then got side tracked by the discovery of all my old intaglio etching plates.  There must be somewhere to recycle these, but the internet will not reveal this information to me.  Maybe just a scrap metal dealer?  Aren't the junkies always looking for copper to hawk?

Yay/Boo "I'm typing this on my fancy new wireless keyboard" edition

Boo - TurkeyDay weekend.  Non-responsive computer.

Yay - I can still retrieve email on my iPhone.  I can even surf the interwebs if I squint hard enough.

Boo - A week with a whole lot less media.

Yay - A week with a whole lot less media.

Boo - (Humorless) Apple Genius sez:  Yes, it's dead.

Yay - Shiny new computer.

Boo - Bank balance impacted significantly.

Smallish Yay for educational discounts!

...and I am back in business.

Can you tell I'm procrastinating?

(And obviously the boy who gets into everything is asleep)

Road trip + cloth diapers = glutton for punishment?

There are laundry facilities at our destination, but we won't get there until the fourth day.  I usually wash our diapers every second day, so I think I'd need to spend a little more to pad our diaper stash to last longer.  Or I could just spend that money on disposables.

I hate to think of the boy sitting in that nasty gel for hours on end.  I'd hate to buy the kind without the nasty gel and have him leak all over his carseat.  Buying more cloth diapers will be a bit more expensive than a pack of 'sposies.

I should probably just pick the answer out of a hat. 

I should have planned a little further ahead and bought gently used dipes online.

Between my efforts to simultaneously rid our home of clutter while also procuring inexpensive second hand items of a temporary nature (ie. high chairs, baby gates and the like), I've spent a considerable amount of time online at places like craigslist and half.com.  People's descriptions are amusing, to say the least.

Someone, while attempting to put a positive spin on the condition of their copy of Chipp's Theories of Modern Art (I am scoping out the competition, not interested in aquiring another copy) noted that in addition to the "nice, tight spine" their copy had "useful underlinings and highlights".  Now, as anyone who's ever ended up with a marked up text knows, someone else's markings hardly ever correspond with what you probably find most pertinent.  Purely speaking for myself, I find other people's hot pink highlights and ill-formed marginalia most distracting.

A certain type of seller can't resist pointing out to potential purchasers how much they initially paid for an item.  I don't find this information useful, except perhaps in pointing out what a boob you were to spend $300 on a highchair you could have bought on craigslist for $50.

Seller's opinions don't hold much sway with me either.  I just want the facts (dimensions, condition, price), preferably accompanied by a good photograph.  I don't need to know how "cool and unique" you think the hidden cupholders are on your (IMO hideous) green corduroy couch.  Do alert me to its presence though, because there's a wealth unsaid in that detail - there are going to be crumbs galore in them there couch cushions, aren't there? 

Also, when taking a photograph, natural light is best.  The photo should be of the entire item, not just the un-stained portion.  You also might want to clean up your scruffy abode, or at the very least, crop it.

We started the day with a poo of such epic proportions that it required a bath.

I'm on my second load of laundry. 

Other than that, I'm having an excellent day.  No sarcasm intended.  Really.  The boy drifted off to sleep early and I ate last night's leftovers for brunch.  I also took a very long, very hot shower.  The new house is a bit rickety and beach-house-y, but we have a very large hot water tank (I know we're having a drought, but I figure since I shower less than the average bear, not to mention less than the average I-get-other-people's-bodily-fluids-on-me-frequently person, I get to take long ones when I do take them).  My shower was longer than that run-on sentence.  Much longer and smelling of lavender.

I'm organizing our downstairs space.  I reconfigured my desk and decided I needed to test the new spatial relationship between the monitor and the keyboard.  Might as well natter on here for a bit.  I also listed some books on half.com.  What books sell quickly?  Books on having babies.  What I am not having any more of?  Babies.  Money in my pocket.  Money I'm going to spend on some expensive organic baby sunscreen since my boy is fair, fair, fair.  Despite his layers and full body coverage, he managed to get a wee sunburn the other day on his wrists of all places.  The coverage of the burn is wee, the actual burn itself?  Horrible.  Not wee at all.

Do not email me and chastise me for letting the baby burn.  I'm his mother and feel terrible enough.  Do not email me telling me that sunscreen causes cancer.  Until I have researched this topic ad nauseum, I'm going to slather him with the stuff.

Decluttering.

Moving is the perfect excuse to lighten the load.  I've written before about how much I detest stuff, to the point where I'm convinced there is probably a medical name for the sense of dread I feel at things like overstuffed drawers and generously filled gift bags alike. 

I'm pretty good at getting rid of things.  I'm not as good at stemming the tide against things coming in.  I'm trying, though.  Here are my latest tricks in the ongoing battle:

When the mail arrives, I immediately tear the back cover off all unwanted catalogs before pitching them in the recycling.  When I get a minute I call the 800 number on the back and cancel the catalog.  The other day, I took 4 back covers in the car with us to karate.  While d'anjou napped, and mini-pear practiced her blocks and kicks, I canceled all four catalogs. 

I've also tried to stop rationalizing the need to pick up little brochures and other ephemera.  I tend to end up with little piles of museum postcards, flyers for classes/community events, etc.  As if I need proof that I was there or something.  For the most part, the same information is available on the internet.  I hope I spend less time filing stuff away or sorting and throwing away most items in an accumulated pile six months from now.

In which I find myself alone on a Sunday afternoon, with a baby NOT asleep on my chest...

Quick!  To the internets! 

I would say that I am as sick as a dog as is Mr. Pear, but I wonder where that saying comes from? When our dog gets sick, she just vomits wherever she likes and gets over it a.s.a.p.  As if she has places to be, visitors to host, x-mess pressies to wrap...

So two nights ago, I was the moan-y, groan-y one, but last night?  Last night I think I could have slept soundly were it not for the boy incessantly banging his head into me (his version of the squeaky wheel) and Mr. Pear's insistence on breathing through his nose, despite the fact that it was mostly stuffed up.  

*

Speaking of x-mess pressies (I was...a bit), I did the bulk of my shopping on the internet.  I was so proud of myself.  Ha ha!  No navigating mall parking lots in December, no snippy overworked sales ladies, none of that dehydrated feeling I get after spending too much time in an enclosed space with all that linty merchandise...

I was not that clever though...because I forgot that Mini-Pear needed black shoes for her choir performance.  I was sure we could accomplish this in a quick trip to the shopping center a few blocks away - there's a Target, one of those big shoe discount places, a TJMaxx, even a Payless if came down to it.  But they didn't have a thing.  You can't buy girls dress shoes at Target without Hello Kitty's face all over them and Mini-Pear was adamant about not getting "those really common ones with the glitter all over them".  None of the other places had anything that even came close to fitting the bill.

So that's how we found ourselves with one visitor-free morning in which to obtain a pair of shoes.  I decided we'd just bite the bullet and head to a massive upscale mall down towards San Diego.  We parked outside Nordstroms, noted that they had exactly what we were looking for (the most adorable little $209 Prada Mary Janes), but decided that we could find them for less in one of the other shops.  Except we were wrong.  Kids here wear flip-flops or go barefoot.  No, really, barefoot - like Little House on the Prairie.  Many's the playground conversation about how such and such got to Disneyland or the Doctor's office or Grandma's house, only to discover that the kids hadn't brought shoes with them.  Mini-pear tends to just keep her shoes in the car, which used to drive me crazy until I realised that when I did move them onto the shoe racks in the garage, she would inevitably forget to pick them up and, like all her little playmates, arrive at our destination shoeless.

We then spent the next two and a half hours trying to locate children's shoes, only to end up back at Nordstrom's sweaty, bedraggled, exhausted and willing to pay through the nose for whatever fit.  You know none of the other department stores even had kid shoe departments?  It's like even the retailers in southern California have given up on getting the kids to wear shoes! 

Our efficient Nordtrom's salesman (why, oh, why do I ever bother shopping elsewhere for things like shoes?) commiserated with us on Southern California's failures (lack of good food, incessant sun, no fucking kids shoe departments!), reminisced about the east coast (he's from South Jersey) and calmly fit Mini-Pear with a pair of reasonably priced sensible shoes (no Pradas until she's grown).

Yes, I reminisced for the east coast.  Something I find myself doing with frightening regularity these days.  My feet.  They itch.  My mouth?  Salivates for Chinese take out. 

Among other longings.

I want to be all done now.

This is what a good portion of my living room looks like at the moment. Re-organizing and purging our paper files is something I've put off for years.  I keep our file boxes in my bedroom, but foolishly thought that if I worked on this project in the middle of the living room, I'd be more inclined to complete said project in a timely fashion.

Ha!

Will someone please come and clean up for me?  Pretty please?  I've never seen so much shredded paperwork in my life.