Why Nothing Gets Done

Mornings are not my friend. They do not wake me kindly with a massage to the tight muscles in my back and shoulders. They don’t bring me a cup of tea and leave the blinds closed until I’m ready to open my eyes. They slam in, like a pissed-off mother of a teenager, pull the windows open and start yelling. Saturday mornings are sometimes worse than workdays, because I FEEL like I should be able to wake slowly, later, without any noise or stress, but there’s this thing called soccer and another thing called a teenager, plus an extra dog is visiting (and this doesn’t even count the 1:42 AM wakeup when the girlchild’s cat threw up in her room and she turned all the lights on and started screaming “GET OUT!” and sobbing…ah yes…who needs nightmares?). Waking up, morning slapped me across the face and screamed “What the FUCK?!!!” I think the adrenaline rush has finally stopped. Girlchild made it out in time for her soccer game. It will be tough for her in college, waking up on time. Her roommate might have to take over my job of opening the door and saying, “Um…shouldn’t you be getting UP?”

Anyway. I’m up now. And not caffeinated enough. I don’t think it’s possible for me to be caffeinated enough.

So when I went to leave the house yesterday morning, the front door handle, which has been cranky for over a year, but we’ve cleaned it and oiled it and talked nicely to it (and sometimes not-so-nicely), and it’s held itself together….well, it finally broke…

Yes, the door is dirty. Amazingly so. I cleaned it. And I tried shoving the handle back in, but it won’t stay and it’s obviously got issues and it was on my list of Things I Should Fix But Will Probably Wait Until They Break Irreversibly, so at 6 PM (after being screamed at for about 45 minutes by the girlchild), I went to Home Debit. It was already on my list for school reasons, so although I hadn’t eaten dinner and I had to stop at the library to drop off two books that were a week late, but I READ them dammit, and I was still weeping from being yelled at again by unreasonable teen, I walked into Home Debit with a purpose. Unfortunately for me, the one handle set I wanted was set way back on a shelf that was over 6 feet off the ground and because it is Home Debit late at night on a Friday, there are no staff. I thought about it for a while, then crawled up the shelves monkey-style. Twice. Because there are two doors and two handles and presumably they should match. Well, I don’t really believe that, but I do know that (1) I will eventually move out of this house and will need to sell it and buyers like matchy matchy and (2) these things are bloody expensive and I don’t want to have to buy them again. So I climbed the shelves twice, clinging on, while some 30-year-old guy watched in some level of amazement (god forbid he offer to help, he who is over 6 feet tall and could probably use his monkey arms to reach just fine…I miss having the boychild around).

Of course, I still had to come home and make dinner, and by then, girlchild was somewhat remorseful. It’s hard to explain to her why what I said is not what she thinks I said, and she says I don’t mean it when I say I’m sorry, and I guess on some level that’s true, because I didn’t say what she thinks I said so I can’t possibly be sorry for it, and you can’t just say, “I’m sorry you thought I said that…” I swear, sometimes my home life is just like my life at school. I need a break from all this. I really do.

So after dinner and cleanup, I headed into the dark entryway and dark outside to try to fix the damn door. Which I was fairly successful at. Except for a couple things…like that hole.

Fuck. Sigh. I’m not going back. I remember what was there, for sale, and I didn’t like the ones that would cover that hole (my mom says, but Kathryn, they would cover that hole). Fuck. I can cut a piece of wood to semi-fit the hole, glue it in, wood-fill the sides, sand it down, and repaint the whole door, which needs it anyways. BECAUSE I HAVE TIME FOR THAT. For now? It stays like that. Oh yeah, the other issue is that the instructions are very vague (they are pictures, no words) about how to make the bottom stay in place. But it was after 9 PM at that point and the light was bad and I was tired and frustrated. Did I do the other side?

Fuck no. Not yet. There better not be another hole (there’s probably another hole). And now I need to copy keys as well for all the people who keep coming to my house to get stuff and leave stuff. And the door isn’t really staying shut, but I’m hoping that’s because I haven’t put the other side IN yet, but who knows, because really, I’m not a repairperson…I’m an artist. Sigh. I’m really not good at this stuff. I can follow instructions and I can wing it enough to make a lock fit in a hole that it doesn’t quite fit into and I can do things like patch and paint and tile and wallpaper and fill and sand and spackle. But the fussier stuff is not my forte, never has been. And yes, to repaint the door, I’m going to have to take it all off again. Whatever. I know family members whose names will NOT be mentioned who would do all of that in the weekend, strip the doors, repaint, install new hardware correctly, and it would all work. I’m lucky to get a door that opens and stays closed. Mostly.

So I was really hoping to start picking fabrics last night, but I didn’t know all that was going to be on my plate. So after all that AND meditating (sorely needed after all that), I started sorting Wonder Under…

I sort them by 100s…makes it easier to find what I need. I try to number logically so that ironing them is also a logical process, but sometimes ironing will require me to work out of multiple bins at the same time.

It took about an hour. And I was tired. So it was hard.

Not really. It was just difficult. Because of the tired.

I have 50 minutes before I have to leave for soccer, so I’m going to try to straighten up my fabric-choosing space. I have this thing underfoot at all times…

This is my parents’ newish (fat) dog, Katie. She actually looks kinda svelte in that photo. She likes to be right near me. Anyway, hopefully when I get back from soccer, I can do some fabric stuff. Although I need to go to the gym and grade papers too (not at the same time). Sigh. I thought about two or three things I could do tonight that would be artistic or semi-fun or interesting, but I really can’t afford the time (or money…the bursar bill for Cornell came for the boychild’s health insurance, required, and I’m running a bit tight at the moment), so I’m persuading myself that it’s OK to go all weekend without talking to anyone but furry beasts. And the television. And myself. Yes, that’s depressing.

This is why nothing gets done. I have a to-do list that I keep adding things to, but I’m adding at a higher rate than I’m crossing things off, and if I keep doing that, then you will be able to cremate me with my to-do list and maybe I will get it done in the next life, because all my lists are now electronic, so my reincarnated self can easily pick up where I flailed and left off.