CLOSED FOR REMODEL
Cindy Maddera
Not really, but I feel like it.
As I am pondering some current feelings on remodels, I just realized that it is almost July. I generally lean towards feelings of deconstruction and rebuilding in the summer months. I don’t know what it is about the middle of summer and my need to tear down everything and start over. Right now, my feelings of ‘burn it all to the ground’ are exacerbated by my feelings on the current state of a country where I feel like me and my friends are no longer safe and/or welcome. Some have talked to me about seriously moving to Canada. Some of us are just too tired for the fight. I’m leaning towards being too tired. In middle school, I became an activist for the planet, denouncing pollution and handing out free seedlings. In high school, my activism turned to the AIDS crisis and sex education. In college and beyond, my activism turned to voter representation and getting people to the polls.
Today, my activism is in throwing money at Planned Parenthood and AbortionFunds.org.
One of the most valuable and most difficult lessons I learned when Chris got sick was that eventually, I must accept that there comes a time when there is nothing that I can do to fix things.
Do what you can, with what you got, where you are. -Squire Bill Widener
The consequences of accepting that there is nothing I can do to fix this current problem is to turn the fixing to the self. Saturday, I rewarded myself for no reason with a trip to the Container Store where I purchased things to reorganize the linen closet. The linen/medicine closet is now perfectly organized and I can tell you exactly how many COVID home testing kits we have. It’s six. We have six COVID at home tests. I also installed LED lights so we can now see all of the COVID home testing kits. When I felt like I’d done enough with that closet, I moved to the food closet (yes I know it’s normally called a pantry, but a brain fart years ago changed the naming the system). I threw out old snacks and cake mixes and reorganized all of the pasta. I’m not stopping there. I purchased a Bagster dumpster not too long ago that’s begging to be filled up with garage trash. I will most likely tear down this blog and rebuild it with new pictures and ways to purchase pictures and I might start walking around the house punching hand weights into the air (it’s exercise).
This is what I do.
When I can’t fix the big thing, I find other things to ‘fix’. Once, I almost rented a drain snake to cart down to my basement until someone convinced me that I could not physically lift a 200lb drain snake down the basement steps alone. That’s not true. I know how gravity works and still believe I could have gotten that 200lb drain snake down the basement stairs.
It’s the up that’s the problem.