remedecorating part 1

this is sort of like remedial decorating — or me-redecorating — or something.

for the past few months i have been working on my cosmetic fixer of a home.  well, it was advertised as a cosmetic fixer when I bought it 17 years ago.  since then,  in the entire 17 years, i have pretty much done nothing toward any fixing, cosmetic or otherwise, except paint a few walls and replace two rooms-worth of crawly-thing-and-dirt-haven carpet with laminate.

so now, a real estate ad for my home would probably describe it as cosmetic fixer of a house-corpse-in-full-rigor, laid out on the autopsy table badly in need of removal and/or rearrangement of its smelly and crawly insides.

i am determined to keep this house until I myself am beyond life as we know it.   so something must be done before i get so fed up with the beyond-shabby (and sans chic)  ambience that i will skip the house autopsy altogether and go straight to cremation.

part of the reason for not doing much with the house is that i am afraid of tools and hardware.  aka “not mechanically-inclined”.   or, more accurately, mechanically-a-danger-to-myself-and-any-nearby-misfortunates …

… so much so that it takes an Act of God for me to replace a burnt out lightbulb.   it takes a whole separate Act of God for me to buy new lightbulbs to replace the burnt-out ones.   which happens after yet another whole separate A of  G  – cowboying me to the grocery store.

these Acts must be way low on God’s priority list considering the state of my home’s present light bulb operational readiness.  which is Not.  which is OK.  because too much light hurts my eyes. and i have a miner’s headlamp when i need to see something.

i kid you not.  meet my favorite light source.

i console myself for this lack of mechanical/hardware skill by reminding myself of my nice penmanship, which requires knowledge and application of pens and inks.  which are sort of tools, and i am not afraid of them.

and i can use a sewing machine.  i am not afraid of fabric or thread.  as long as I just have to sew straight lines, like for quilts.  Quilts don’t scare me either, unless I am trying to finish one as a gift in a hurry, like two months after its birthday deadline.

Jan’s Waterfall – for my mommy

next up … part 2

The fast lane to instant gratification …

On my planet, effective procrastination is an art form.  Not only am I Queen, I am also the Head Lady Of Waiting.  Putting off things I should do now until later gives me the freedom to do now the things I want to do now.  Voila.  Instant gratification.

This is why I own a Honda, the most forgiving kind of car there is.  I can put off the servicing appointments until I find a few extra Saturday hours to wait in the dealership’s lobby and wonder if the stale popcorn in their popcorn machine is worth the guilt I will pack on for eating it.

Procrastination is one key reason why I keep extra weight around.    I wait to eat until I’ve skidded past the merely hungry state and slid headlong into the totally ravenous state, fully capable of eating like a hog.  Or just eating a hog.

It is why I don’t have a solid financial picture.  Why I buy instead of shop, and why I prefer on-line buying to driving to some brick-and-mortar place where you have to find a parking spot, then walk to a store, then walk some more to find what you want to buy and then mingle with people who like go shopping.  Who give me the heebie jeebies.

… Why finding clothes to wear to work is a daily trip to the  Twilight Zone.  Since I wait until I absolutely must get dressed to locate work-worthy clothing, which naturally could not be hanging up in the closet, already pressed and ready to wear.

… Why I have a great horse instead of a nice kitchen.   While I was thinking about how to avoid shopping for a way-past-due kitchen remodel, Mo the horse came up for sale.

… Why I have an enormous, gorgeous collection of cotton fabric for quilting, and only one enormous, gorgeous completed quilt.

… Why the sheriff deputy stopped me because of expired registration on my car.  When I had the current registration and tag buried in a pile of about two weeks of mail laying on the passenger side floor.  Which, incidentally, is why I now own two USPS tote baskets — the USPS guys give them to you as a prize for going all the way to the post office to pick up the pile of mail that gained too much weight to fit in your mail box.

I am not a doer by nature.  I am a thinker.  I think first, do later.  Preferably never.  This type of wiring means that first I must think about what needs to be done until I have thought it through fully and I have convinced myself that yes, it does need to be done.

Next, I write out a to-do list.   First a draft, and then a final version.   In calligraphy script.  This allows me some more time to think about what needs to be done, and I get the instant gratification of seeing my words in pretty lettering.

Next, I make a to-buy list of the items I need to buy to do what I need to do.  Since, naturally, I never have what I need on hand, since, naturally, I don’t buy more stuff just because I ran out of it.  I buy more stuff some weeks or months after the need initially presents itself and just before the need blows up into a screaming catastrophe.

I think about this now because I’m out feeding the ranch this morning and double-checking my to-do list of winter chores that still need to be done.   Thinking  I can wait until spring to do them.  Which means they might get done next fall.

Instantly gratified, I head out to ride Mo.