THE END OF SUMMER

Hiding places

8 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Hiding places"

It has long been a custom to link the end of summer with the first day of the school year. I've been hearing for two weeks the lament from Michael about how summer is almost over. Then on Thursday, his first day back to school, he declared the official end to summer. It is the end to his summer vacation, but it is not the end of summer. Or at least, I don't feel like it is the end to my summer. The weather here is hot and humid. Missouri is currently under drought conditions which is not normal. The backyard is a combination of tall prairie grasses and and dry barren patches. My sunflower continues to grow strong, but there is still not a bloom in sight. The evenings hum with the buzz of cicadas and crickets. The mosquitoes are vicious and the chickens are no longer laying six or seven eggs a week. We're lucky if we get four eggs a week now.  

August is a hard and brittle month. 

I spent all day Sunday decluttering the places we tend to dump things. The closed cabinet section of the china hutch has become a home to a random array of tools and leftover screws, several selections of dog and cat treats, pipe cleaners, Halloween spider webbing and a box of old markers. My desk drawers had become a dumping ground for the flotsam and jetsam that accumulates for no other reason than it feels inappropriate to throw them away. I threw away fabric remnants that I no longer needed and dried up bottles of glue. I set my side table and three decorative pillows out on the curb. Then I shifted the couch over to the west. That side of the room looks a little exposed now that there's no longer a piece of furniture lining every section of the wall. That's my design style it seems, lining the walls with furniture. In the clean out, I unearthed five small notebooks of lists and Chris's USAO and military IDs and a stack of old pictures. I will be unearthing notebooks containing two to three pages of writing for the rest of my life. And I will keep each one. 

August is difficult.

This time last year I was thinking about how nice it would be to jump out of the car while it was moving through heavy traffic. I don't feel that way this year. I don't necessarily feel like doing cartwheels, but at least I don't feel like jumping into traffic. I've got my distractions. I've gotten more focused on food, our meal plans and cooking something new once in a while. I'm reading more. I'm organizing my work and thinking about new business cards. Michael and I are adapting to a new schedule and getting back into a routine as he starts the school year. We find ourselves occupying the same spaces at the same time in the mornings, dancing around each other in the bathroom and the kitchen. It is more fluid then one would expect. I'll start cooking our breakfast while he gets the scooters out of the garage. We both sit at the dining room table and eat breakfast together. It's nice. So, I'm keeping busy, but not so busy that I don't forget to just sit still every now and then.

One evening recently, I sat on the back stoop watching Josephine as she did her patrol of the back yard. I noticed one lone firefly blinking across the back yard. At first, it is a lonely sight, without the others blinking back in response to this one's blinks. Did you know that the average lifespan of a firefly is about two months? This guy was either born late or he's found a way to extend his lifespan. Either way, he's soaking up as much of the summer as he can. I want to be that firefly. 

GARBAGE

How I spent my Saturday morning.

7 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "How I spent my Saturday morning."

Saturday morning, I returned from grocery shopping and went straight to work in the basement. I organized the totes that had been pulled from the shelves and riffled through. Michael, when he's on the hunt for something, will open up totes and rummage through them and then just walk away. For ever. I put totes back together, organized old camp gear into one spot, took loads and loads of just plain garbage and placed them in my Bagster bag. When I'd done as much as I could in the basement, I moved to the garage, systematically moving from shelf to shelf and tossing things into a garbage bag. I organized gardening stuff like seeds and bags of potting mix. The animals at one time had nocked over a bag of grass seed and a bag of pebbles. I swept all of this up. Michael showed up just in time to help me haul out the garage garbage pile I had built near the door and to clean off a shelf containing random tools. 

There were two contractor bags full of stuff from our last basement clean out. One of them had stayed down there for so long because it was too heavy for our trash dumpster. It sat there for over a year. Every time I walked down to the basement, my eyes landed right on that bag. It was hard to miss since it was right at the bottom of the stairs. That was the first thing I hauled up the stairs. When I say 'hauled', I really mean hauled because that bag was HEAVY. There was a lot of me talking out loud to myself, counting steps, grunting and sweating, but I got that bag out of the basement and into the dumpster bag. After that, the rest was easy. Suddenly, getting rid of trash, didn't seem so overwhelming. It didn't take long for me to fill up my Bagster bag. The garage is now neatly organized and things are easier to get to without stepping on the wrong end of a shovel or falling into a pile of chicken feed bags. I also have a legitimate laundry space in the basement, where I can walk through with a basket of clothes without bumping into a stack of boxes and trash. The basement floor is clean, so when I drop an article of clothing while moving it from the washer to the dryer, I don't have to re-wash it or throw it away or burn it. The basement floor does not have a five second rule for anything. Now, at least in the area where the washer and dryer are, the floor is clean.

There's still things I need to get rid of, but they are all things that I don't want to throw away. They are things that need to be sold or donated or gifted away. My goal for the weekend was to get rid of the garbage and that is exactly what I did. My goal for the rest of this year and the following year is to remove unwanted and unused things from the house, clean out catch all drawers and never let any of those things make it to the basement. Because if it ends up in the basement, it will be there for the rest of my life. Someday, someone's going to have to come clean out my house when I die or get too old to live there on my own. I want to make things easy for that person. I think of the stuff that accumulated in just the attic of my childhood home. Boxes of papers from our school days, old clothing patterns, wrapping paper, things that had sat up there for so many years that it was now warped from heat and unrecognizable. So much of it was unsalvageable. At the very least I'd like to leave behind a good estate sale and not boxes of useless old mail with mouse chewed edges or carpenter bags of garbage.

At the end of the day, all that will be left to be dealt with will be the furniture, a small closet of clothes, small kitchen appliances, some art work and some nicknacks. All of this makes it sound like I'm planning for my death. I guess, in a way, I am, but really I'm planning for living. I am always thinking about the dirty garage or the gross basement. These things take up brain space whenever I am out doing fun things or sitting still on the couch. I am always thinking "I really should do something about the trash in the basement." Then I let myself get overwhelmed by the amount of work that is going to be involved and I do nothing. So now the filth and grossness has just become a guilt loop that plays always in the back of my mind. Instead of fully just being present in something, I am eighty something percent present and the rest percent thinking about the mess and being overwhelmed by the mess. 

I am stronger than that! I am a doer! When did I forget that? I do not shy from hard work. I tackle. Cleaning out the garbage is just one step towards reclaiming bits of myself that I've hidden away for some reason. It's like I've been in hiding and I don't even know why. Now I'm thinking about the next project that I've been putting off because it seems overwhelming and I'm totally ready to take it on. Look out hedges and over grown vegetation. I'm coming for you next.