Feeling Rudderless and Looking Ahead
I'm working on climbing out of my funk. Ernie helped by taking me out for a Valentine's drink yesterday evening. Then we went back home and had bowls of gumbo and watched American Pickers with the guys. Good Lord it's getting worse than ever. William Shatner was on it. Why do I keep watching it? Geesh. Then I climbed into bed with my kindle and read the Gary Valentine book, New York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation with Blondie, Iggy Pop and Others 1974-1981--which I'm quite enjoying as it turns out.
I think some of my out-of-sortness is just normal mid-winter funk and some of it is feeling rather rudderless. For the last couple of years it seemed I always had some major worry leading the way for me. Now that things are a little easier sometimes I feel as though I'm drifting...I got so used to that rudder of worry. So I need to try to organize my mind, make some lists and take pleasure in being a tiny bit rudderless.
Projects and Questions in varying degrees of importance:
1. We need to figure out what we're doing with our downstairs bathroom. It needs new everything (and I'm not being facetious---this is the 1st floor bathroom where the light switch is in the basement and is missing ceiling tiles, etc.). How much do we do? How much do we spend?
2. We need to figure out whether we want to keep doing antique shows. They're way down for us in the last year or two. How much of that is our focus on other things going on in our lives and how much is the market? Yesterday I poked around looking for some shows and I was....well, I was GOBSMACKED, to use Steve Lindstrom's word, to see how few shows there are these days. Just ten years ago it was a TOTALLY different playing field. Something to think about.
3. We need to reconfigure out media room/music stuff. Our turntable/cd player etc. is in the media room but with the boys being older and spending more time in there when we aren't...the logistics of playing music get too difficult and the upside is that we're not listening to music as much unless we're in the kitchen. This is bad, bad, bad for us. So we need to refigure things. Also---do most of you hook your ipod into your existing music system or use something standalone that works well?
4. Work harder at expecting more from the boys. Our boys are absolutely fantastic loving little oddballs but sometimes I think we don't expect as much as we should from them in terms of work around the house. It's good for them and good for us (wheee!) when we do. Just the other day I pointed out to Ernie that he shouldn't have to go out back to get the firewood anymore. We have small children to do that kind of thing. He was dumbstruck.
5. Clean out our basement. Our basement is a DISASTER. Between floods and accumulated stuff from emptying three households....you can barely get down there. The last year or so has been relatively dry however and we want to set up some tables for.......Lego (are you surprised?) down there. I'm really tired of not having a dining room table except for when I demolish Lego City but I understand the issue as the boys' rooms are too small to spread out much.
6. Work on our house.....coming up: paint the media room a brighter color (white anyone?), paint the living room a pale grey and our bedroom a darker grey. Next up will be the kitchen but that's farther down the list.
7. Get hotel rooms for our summer drive to Maine.
8. Figure out what food to serve at our meet and greet for Don Gerard (details to follow--it looks like Friday, March 4th though---put it on your calendar!).
9. Try to get plenty of people for Pat DiNizio on Sunday, March 6.
10. Order the skirt I want online before the 20% coupon expires.
11. Finish switching over our billpay to new checking account....and not forget to switch my direct deposit as well.
12. FINALLY have my mother's date of death put on her tombstone (denial anbody?)
13. Return contract for Phil Lee and David Olney shows.
14. Think about taxes. Do we pay somebody or do it ourselves one more year?
I think that's enough for now, don't you?
Onward, onward, onward.....