Ground Zero in My Neighbourhood

It's official. My house, both inside and out, appear to be the epicenter of the recently fallen atomic bomb. Literally, there is stuff everywhere. The outside is looking vaguely better, with the recent addition of the garden edging and the mulch strewn about ... but there is still a pile of clippings, various cutters and choppers and sharp stuff, a wheelbarrow, a dusty old hat and other sundry left here by Grumpiest Garden Man on Earth (GGME)*. The inside has 'new carpet smell' (mmmm...) and everything looks fab in the carpeted rooms. The other rooms (housing all the crap from the carpeted rooms) look like hell.

I'm typing this on the computer at the end of our kitchen table. Within eyesight of me are the following: a box of leather furniture cleaner, 2 leather belts, a 6 tier cupcake stand, 3 dirty dusting rags, a plastic bowl with a peach pit in it, a non-functional laptop computer, a few carpet scraps, and some picture frames precariously piled up. And that's the stuff which is about 2 inches from my right elbow. If I told you the rest of what's here you would shudder in horror.

Here's the problem. I LIKE all those carpeted rooms being barren. I love the vast expanse of soft cream carpet. I like being able to see all the way under my bed, and all the way to the back of my closet. I LOVE that there are no coffee tables for kids to pile stuff up on. I love that the dog can lay wherever he likes without knocking into something or being on top of something. I love the fact that there is just a whole lot of not much around.

However. I hate that the rest of the house looks dirty and messy and disastrous. I hate that I will help DH put stuff back into it's rightful place and I will need to BEG him to throw out stuff like his 10-tape set of "Japanese for Businessmen." I hate that I will have to put stuff back at all - because if I had my way it would be a giant rubbish tip and me squealing with glee as we fill it with crap. I have come to hate having STUFF a good 30 years before hating stuff is a normal part of growing old.

*sigh* I'm going to spent the next couple of days restoring order to this crazy place. So don't expect anything witty. However, I've nearly reached the end of NaBloPoMo ... and until this week I like to think none of my posts were just 'filler' posts. I've also still got a couple of things I'd like to post about in the 'coping mechanism' theme. So I'm going to do my best to stick around for a while, and I'd like it if you did, too.

In the meantime I'm going to throw out that tape set before DH comes back.
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GGME - so named because, in the four days he's been here, he's done nothing but look irritated and annoyed and basically only grunted at me. Current theory is he's annoyed at having severely under-quoted for the job and is pissed off at himself for doing it... sadly for him, this is not my problem. Except for the fact that he's kinda unpleasant to have around, he's doing a good job.

Editor's Note: DH threw the tape set out, of his own accord! Sadly the book "Japanese for Busy People" is still here...