Insanely Productive Day

Or just insane. I swear, I had no idea adding ginseng to my vitamin routine would do this, but I am so energized, and in a good way, not a twitchy, over-caffeinated, I can feel my heart beating in the roots of my hair way.

I moved and repackaged my entire stash today. It's neatly stored and reasonably organized. It is not quite as horrific as I remember it, but it is large. It's not well-balanced, though. It is screaming for handpainted yarn and DK and sport weight things. I have all the sensible solid worsted I need for the foreseeable future, but I lack the exotic and colorful and sensual. So that is what I will be seeking in MD.

I LABELED the magazine holders and sorted the knitting mags. I dragged the wire racks that sub for more bookcases from room to room. I Made Room for the Girlchild.

In the middle of moving my stash I ventured into the garage and began cleaning and rearranging it. This is not as psychotic as it sounds, I needed to retrieve some plastic storage containers from the garage, and realized that tomorrow Boy will come over and help me drag out the old dishwasher, which has been languishing there since, uh, June of last year. I found a charity to take it, which is nicer than sending its loyal and still functional self to the dump. So while I'm sorting and making a path through the mess (the garage has not been really cleaned since my husband was healthy, so, say, at least 5+ years) I realized that I could move two old particleboard bookcases out of the corner, redistribute their meager contents on the other shelves, and put those out for the charity pick-up too. They are in really decent shape and perfect for a kid's room. That freed space to store the entire Christmas Ornament Collection in the back corner of the garage, next to the Garage Fridge. Very productive side trip there. Two more sessions like that and the garage will be clean enough to park a car. What a freakin' concept!

In that long-neglected back corner of the garage I found a tube containing a bunch of old posters/pictures to be framed. They have been forgotten out there for YEARS. I picked up the tube very gingerly, fearful of spiders. I shook it carefully. When I did, I put my hand on the end of the tube - right on a big furry spider nestled there. I screamed, and I think the spider did too - I had visions of black widows and brown recluses, both common here, but I think this was a generic hairy spider, it scuttled away in a panic and didn't bite me. I'm suddenly less interested in exploring the contents of that tube, but I know I will (outside, and maybe with fire tongs) before I either preserve and frame or dispose of it.

I went to Costco and bought a survival tool for Hurricane Season '05 - a big Coleman 5 day cooler. I was caught short last year when I drove home IN Frances and found no power in my neighborhood and a fridge full of stink, and all I had was one of those cheezy little styrofoam coolers that keep stuff not-really-cold for an afternoon. I dumped so much ice over those days, everything was sticky, it was just disgusting. Never again. Between this cooler, the small cooler, and the FOUR battery lanterns bought on sale at Le Target, I am set, baby. I have a charcoal grill and we celebrate the passing of any power-killing storm with cold beer and medium-rare steaks.

And wait! There's MORE!!! I went to Target and bought herbs and pots for a standing rack I already had and wanted to put on my patio. I don't have a sprinkler system yet, so an herb garden is not a great idea right now, I know it'll die. I can spritz pots on the patio with the hose and probably keep them alive. Cilantro, Sweet Basil, Oregano and Spearmint. Yes, I know mint is invasive and needs room to roam, but if I can keep a good-sized pot of it alive on the patio, I hope to have a sprinkler in by June and then it can go roam in a corner of the fence or something.

Now it's 5:30, I am drinking a beer and my dinner is in the oven, and I'm so tired I may not be able to stand up later. But damn, this was a highly productive day. I am going to curl up with an armload of long-forgotten Vogue Knittings. I bought them faithfully, even while my husband was sick and I was mindlessly thumbing through them in the Florida Hospital cafeteria (where the amazingly good pizza put ten pounds on me in two years). I don't remember a damn thing about the contents of most of those issues. I need to revisit the summer Vogues of the past three years to see what I am missing.