Archaeology and Inventory

Well, today looked promising--for a brief space of time. It was sunny this morning for about an hour, and then WHAM--dark, foreboding, moody grey mounds of clouds came rolling in. What is this? Oh, yeah...that's right...winter's coming.

I need to find a sugar daddy who gives me an allowance to go to Italy every year between October and April. I'd be a much nicer person to be around. Mostly because I'd be eating better food and drinking a heck of a lot more wine.

Haven't posted the last couple of days because I've been trying to get my household in order. I do this twice a year: a full, top-to-bottom, inside-out overhaul and cleaning of my house. This means that each room is minutely examined, cleaned, disinfected, mopped, swept, and vacuumed. I go through all of my clothing, bathroom items, food, and papers, and decide what to keep and what to give or throw away. It's an arduous, tedious, frustrating project, but if I didn't do it, I think I'd be buried under the flotsam of my life within six months, and no one would ever find me again.

For instance, my closet and bureaus. It's appalling how many clothes I have and never wear. I have two full bureaus, plus a good-sized walk -in closet, chockerblock full of garments that will never touch my body again. I've gained fifteen pounds in the last year and can't get most of the slacks further than mid-thigh. So I inventory all of my clothing and force myself to get rid of anything I haven't worn in the last six months to a year. Which is difficult, because being female, I will delude myself into thinking that I just might be able to fit back into those cute Ralph Laurens again, if I really try. And this is a complete lie. I'll never fit into those things again; that boat has sailed. If I tried to get back on it again, it would sink. Talk about Titanic.

It took a couple of hours, but at the end of it all, I had quite an impressive pile of defunct slacks, jeans, shirts, pullovers, and shoes, which I then separated into "trade" and "donate" piles. I felt like I was on a dig in Egypt--finding things I didn't even remember having or thought I'd lost forever. If Zahi Hawass ever needs a volunteer to scrape away at an underground tomb, I'm his girl. I've honed some skills. Donations went to Goodwill, I gave some cute outfits to a couple of girlfriends, and I traded the others with a secondhand clothing store I patronize frequently. At least I got some jeans and a pair of boots out of that, and didn't spend any money. This is what my mother would call "thrift". I'm in my mid-thirties, and I'm only now grasping the concept.

Now you have an idea of just how exacting this "overhaul" project of mine is. If you think the clothing inventory was intense, ponder for a moment doing that over an entire house. Hence, no posts for the last three days. I thrifted. I divested. I cleaned and scrubbed and inhaled so many cleaning fumes that I think I now know how the denizens of Studio 54 must have felt when they stumbled out into the cold, grey, New York dawn. It'll take me days to get the smell of Formula 409 and Bartender's Friend out of my socks.