Housekeeping

I think that times when we have a lot of personal issues to deal with - times of growth and change - make a lot of us appreciate the need for order in our physical environment.

A lot of times, crisis points don't really coincide with the energy or the focus needed to actually maintain an orderly house, but the need is there.

It seems like we might be able to do some basic housekeeping today - maybe even some simple extracurricular projects like hanging the kaleidoscope quilt, which has been draped over the banister since I got it back from the show in...wow. I don't even remember when.

In the spirit of all of that, Konagod's Desk Drawer Clutter Meme caught my fancy this morning. It is also eminently doable. You just:

Open up your desk drawers. Rummage about. List ten things you find there.

Yeah, that's about my speed. And my drawers are plenty cluttered and quirky enough to yield ten interesting things. (I think.)

Let's see...

1. Old calendars. Two from 2004 (the full-sized hanging kind - one store-bought National Parks [of the US] and one freebie from Triad Auto in Greensboro, NC) and one single-page cardboard calendar cut down to just the 12 months - looks like it might've been 2005.
2. Wow. Lots of diskettes - like close to 30. It's been a while since I even used a computer with a disk drive. Although the old laptop that Alex has been using since his bit the dust must have one. But I think I'd be afraid to put them into it anyway.
   
3. A 10-gross box of nickel plated, size 1 safety pins, closed. (You can also get them open, which would have been preferable to me, a quilter.) (10 gross=1440. No, of course that's not too many.)
4. Ooooh, and score. The quilting ruler I thought I lost, along with some rulers I never actually use.
5. Melted rubber bands. Why do rubber bands melt? Every single pen and pencil in my drawer, along with a pencil sharpener, a mini flashlight and a bunch of other crap, is tainted and stuck together by the sticky mess of melted rubber bands. I could probably pick the whole thing up by one end and sell it as art.
   
6. A watch I haven't worn in years...hey. It's still running. Wonder why I stopped wearing it?
7. A 20 year old address book. It's one of those mass-produced personalized things. White plastic with a rainbow and "Jennifer's Address Book" on the cover. Most of the numbers are from high school and the first year of college. Oh, and a Costa Rican phone number written inside the back cover. I know because there are only six digits. Of course, now we have seven. And starting on [Googles the date] March 20th, we're going to eight. (Note to self: Let that fact into your conscious mind sometime real soon. You need to let people know about that, and update the websites too.)
8. A 14 year old pair of glasses. I've never needed glasses for vision correction, but when I worked at the news agency back in the early 90s, I was at an old monochromatic monitor (green, I believe) for eight hours a day and the eyestrain was terrible. These glasses had only a mild prescription, but were photo-gray (you know, they change color in bright sunlight) and allowed me to work at the computer in comfort. Nowadays, the glass anti-glare screen does the trick. Oh, look! A second pair.
   
9. A packet of Ass Kickin' Honey Roasted Peanuts ("Kick Yo' Ass Hot!") that I believe I got at a yard sale in, going by a random store receipt found in the same bag, 2004.
10. A little scrap of pink fabric from a pair of those footie pajamas kids wear. I got the pajamas at a thrift store and used them to make Juila's first Halloween costume - she was 2.5 months old and went as Piglet. I had practiced the stitching I used to make the stripes on this scrap. I'm not sure if I kept it because I liked it or as a scrap or rag. Probably for sentimental reasons.

*Rereads list*
*Looks down*
*Scuffs toe of shoe on floor*

Okay. There might be a few housekeeping items I could address without even getting out of my chair.