Dec. 18 Try: Cleaning House #reverb 10

Dec. 18  Try. What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn't go for it?   -Kaileen Elise

This is a mundane answer on one level, but a more serious one on another.  I want to try to organize my house.   This year, it was a real struggle for me, especially because I was off my feet for 4 months.  Right before my foot surgery, I had had a hypo manic episode, and one of the characteristic behaviors of hypo mania is frenzied cleaning.  This is not universal, but is so common as to be considered a warning sign to see your doctor.  It is also a source of jokes among those of us who find cleaning very difficult, except for these outbursts.

I was never really taught how to clean.  My mother had a cleaning lady for as long as I can remember, and she felt that teaching us housework was sexist.   Of course what was sexist was that they weren't expecting boys to do housework, not that girls had to do it.  But at any rate, it means the few cleaning skills I have are self-taught.

In addition, because bipolar illness causes brain damage to certain parts of the brain, I suffer cognitive defects in my Executive Function, which is sort of the overarching cognitive meta-structure that allows one to live an orderly and organized day to day life.  I flat out can't do this.  I also have bad impulse control.  It is connected to damage done to the frontal lobe, Phineas Gage via neurotransmitters.  Well okay, not as bad as Phineas Gage.

Anyway, I went into my foot surgery with the house cleaner than it had been in some time.  Which meant it was clean, but crammed with "stuff."  And things have deteriorated from that point.

So I have made a couple of decisions about how to approach this in the coming year:  I am going to throw being Green to the winds for a little bit, and use all the "magic sponges" and "swiffers," and wasteful but convenient things:  The easier the better.  And then, we are going to invest in some storage.  I am already measuring spaces for shelves and storage units.  We are buying shoe racks, and hangers.  We are going to make a real go of it this year.  We kind of landed in this duplex in June of 2006, when DH lost his license due to a seizure:  Where he was working at the time was a mile from this house.  Now he actually commutes to an office two blocks away from where we lived before we landed here.  But we never sat down and "organized" the place, the furniture is pretty much where we dumped it upon arrival.  And while this is technically not the smallest place we have ever lived, the smaller place was designed to maximize use of space.  And we owned less 11 years ago, of course.

So we have never really pulled this place together.  We are always soooo proud of ourselves when we do even the tiniest amount of decorating.  For instance, At Goodwill last week  I found a matching trio of colorful but muted cushions that look great against our beige-y sectional.  Oh yes, I am still "thrifting"; I am taking a break from the daily photographs of outfits while I work on this #reverb10 challenge.  

Anyway, not my most riveting entry, but I needed to start catching up!  Part of the reason I am behind is this has been a very challenging week, for all the reasons I have been discussing this month, and I now need to sleep.  So this is a bit rough, sorry for any garbled sentences.

Make: Terror Wears Diapers #reverb10

Prompt # 5:  Make.  What was the last thing you made?  What materials did you use?  Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?  -Gretchen Rubin

I am not a crafty person.  I do not knit.  I do not paint.  I do not decoupage, or felt, or sew.  Not being able to walk for a third of the year even put a real damper on my not that fabulous, but somewhat adventurous cooking.  Now it seems as if I am out of practice, and my cooking is even worse than usual.  Today's dinner, baked potatoes, hardly counts as cooking.

I am very interested in politics, and have been active in civil rights activism in the past, although not in 2010.  I could have made some clever feint saying my political activism in the medical marijuana and decriminalization movements "makes" change, but I found that kind of trick a little too precious.

Finally I remembered something I had at least designed.  I kind of have a thing for bumper stickers, but I only like the magnetic kind: I want to be able to stay "current."  If the bumper sticker is glued to the trunk, it ain't coming off, and I can't change it.  

Plus, I have to have what I consider an original slogan.  I was very tickled to see a great bumper sticker in Sunnyvale, "My Tibetan Terrier Is Smarter Than Your Pitbull with Lipstick."  At the same time, I was SO annoyed I hadn't thought of it myself.  So I really began to look around for something to sloganeer about.

This year, I was very disturbed at what I consider racist attacks against immigrants.  I find the whole "anchor baby" scare particularly ludicrous.  Then one day, US Representative Gohmert, (R), TX, appeared on the Sunday political news shows to warn about what he considered an imminent threat:  Muslims having "anchor babies" in the US, moving back to their sordid little Muslim countries, and then raising tiny jihadists, since all Muslims are terrorists. [I am speaking from his perspective here, I hope I am clear about that; I do not agree with him one tiny bit]  BUT!  Then we have terrorist Muslim toddlers with US citizenship!  S/he can enter and leave the country just like a real person! Horrors. Scream. Faint.  

That Sunday, I made up the above bumper sticker slogan.  I had it printed on a magnetized strip, in the same colors as the silly "Baby On Board" signs.  I still have it on my Prius today.

It is probably time to think about a new slogan.

One thing I do enjoy doing with my hands is restoring furniture.  But so far, I have only restored two pieces.  I have had a piece disassembled and ready to strip for two years.   I am hoping that 2011 is the Year of Refinishing the Small Mission Stand.