so long, farewell

I’m such a child about clearing out the old, making room for the new. It takes every ounce of strength, plus a bit of harassment by J.Lo, to defy my packrat/cling-to-everything-forever nature and just get.rid.of.it. I have basically had to delude my (true) self into thinking it’s good to own less. That I won’t need my 10th grade notebooks from Social Studies and Health class when I’m 82.

Those notebooks are long gone (I’m totally still pouting on the inside), but over the past few years, I feel that I have made true progress toward letting go of all things superfluous. The outgrown, outdated, worn-out, etc. Out it goes. The following, however, are the things I have to tell myself to make it through the weeding process:

Penelope’s Delusional Self-Talk:

By the time these clothes look right again, they will be out of style. (This could, actually, be true. But it doesn’t mean it’s any less difficult to part with some crappy graphic tee I wore in grad school.)

I’ve enjoyed this item, and now it is time for someone else to take it home and love it like the ratty-eared stuffed puppy it is.

Think of Charlie-in-the-Box. There is a home out there for every misfit toy. 

What was I thinking when purchasing this item? Total crap!

Contrary to instinct, it is not true that I will require use of this item 10 years down the line. And if I do, it will probably be cracked and yellowing.

I don’t want people to dread my death one day for the sole reason they’ll be stuck cleaning out my house.

And,

Really? I have a pile of receipts from Christmas Shopping 2003?! Really.

Please feel free to borrow any of these phrases for your own future adventures in cleaning up and clearing out. And remember, a homeless person will appreciate those socks you never wear much more than you do. (That, actually, is true.)

i love, i love

This house. I was looking through a back issue of Southern Living Magazine, and this “idea house” nearly made me weep. It’s in Whisper Mountain, just outside of Asheville, NC. It’s big (but not too!), the plans alone cost over two grand. But I’m just saying. It’s lovely and wonderful and I simply cannot imagine. The whole concept is farmhouse on the outside, modern/timeless on the inside… Cozy. And green. Take a lookie, and Universe, if you’re listening… I’ll take one of these, please. Do I really ask too much?

xoxo,

penelope

 

      

one more. of course!

Did you really think I was done with the resolutions/Big Plans for 2009? Of course not! My mind’s like a sieve, if I had done what I usually do and wrote it all down ahead of time, you wouldn’t be subjected to my piecemeal posts. Maybe a resolution for next year?

• Paint our bedroom! Gray. I have the exact shade in my mind, it’s on the light side, but not too light. Hopefully not Jailhouse Gray, which leads to an entirely different set of connotations. Right now it’s cream above the chair rail, sage green below, but that sage green is painted over the wallpaper. Martha Stewart would have a fit. It was a tacky fix that I settled on before we moved in, pressed for time, but unable to live with the blue swirly wallpaper of the former homeowner. So, chair rails will be refreshed with white, walls above and below will be gray. The room arrangement will stay the same, except the tall dresser will switch places with the hampers. And the hospital-like TV shelf will come down from the walls. It was useful, if odd, creation by the former homeowner… I appreciated it for a few years, but now it’s time to come down. TV will go on top of the dresser. K.Lo is already working on peeling that wallpaper. I kind of can’t wait to tackle this project, but will bide my time. Sometime this spring.

furthermore

I cannot stop with the resolutions! Maybe they’re not so much resolutions at this point, but more To-Do’s, or Would Like To Do’s, for 2009.

• Find a new picture/print/painting for the kitchen. Am sick of Starving Artists cafe pic with ill-proportioned people.
• Garden again, but better this year. Add another bed, amp up the soil, picks lots of good veggies. And water that thing!
• Also, and I would like to do this soon, start an indoor herb garden. Particularly basil. Maybe just an indoor basil garden.
• Cook more from scratch, which as you can see is on my sidebar, for the moment. I’ll perhaps post on this periodically, so you can mock my insanity. Like tonight I made enchiladas, with homemade sauce AND tortillas. That’s right. I will say on the tortillas, hope J.Lo enjoyed them, because that will never happen again. They were tasty. But difficult. And ultimately not worth the effort. On the other hand, the sauce was fantastic.

That is all, until the next one pops into my head.

um

My computer is currently experiencing random bouts of narcolepsy, falling asleep for no reason. I wake it up, use it for another ten minutes, and then the screen goes blank again. Also, there's an extremely disconcerting churning sound burbling from somewhere within. Clearly some kind of bad karma from yesterday's post. I don't know what's happening, but if I disappear for awhile, that's why.

Will not freak out. Will not. Damn resolution.

an anti-resolution

When thinking about my resolutions, I briefly considered and then promptly forgot a resolution to spend less time on the Internet. Not intending to shirk any of my duties or loves, of course, such as emailing, blogs, Lexulous, and Facebook. Just less time… “surfing?” The mindless quest for whatever. Something I’m shopping for or some idea I’m researching. Sometimes the quest, because it takes so "long,” feels a bit mindless. Wasteful. But, on the other hand, it feels sort of natural. Since the Internet really came to be in my world (1998 or so? is it the same for everyone else?), I’ve been a surfer, a peruser, a quester. Is this a bad thing? When I look at the habit as objectively as I possibly can, I wish that I could be more efficient in my dealings with the Internet: have idea/objective/goal, hop online, complete mission, log off. Walk away. But I can’t. I think about all the other supposedly productive things I could or should be doing instead, and then get irritated at my Internet-ing, labeling it a giant time-suck and/or useless void. But then again, I wonder. I’m a very introspective person… and in all this “mindless” activity, I feel like the value might actually be in its mindlessness. It’s mental downtime, my Searching for Whatever. And so while there’s always room to trim up, to make one’s daily activities more efficient, and generally to spend less time on the Intra-Web, I think ultimately I’m just not going to worry about it. Just let it be, and in that way, let me be.

january to-do

• Find a new haircut.
• Make dentist appointment with same old dentist, even though will still have $50 co-pay. Clearly dentist is worth keeping.
• Decide on b-day party for Bug. Yes, no? If yes, then what?
• Mail out pile of belated Christmas presents.
• Put away Christmas.
• Amass/donate another giant pile of *stuff.*
• Reconvene w/ writers group, get back to business.
• Acquire slipcover for ratty downstairs couch.

scary neti pot

J.Lo and I have both been pondering the neti pot for awhile now, and with this last cold, it seemed to be time. For him, not me. It totally freaks me out. Basically, you pour lukewarm saline water into one nostril (over the sink), and the water comes out the other nostril. Washes out your sinuses. I saw it on Oprah, back when I could tolerate Oprah (I’m telling you, TV makes me cranky anymore), and it’s bizarro. People swear by it, however, saying it all but solves their sinus/cold/allergy issues. And you know that uber-annoying feeling of having one nostril stuffed up, and no amount of tissue tricks will fix it? Neti pot. So they say.

So I say. I was drinking some wine the other night, and still with this lingering cold, all of a sudden I felt brave.  Had to try it. I could no longer abide by the one-nostriled squeak, and why not.

It totally works! Feels a tiny bit like you’ve inhaled water up your nose for a little while, but mostly you’re just all cleared out. You can breathe again. Freaky awesomeness. Now I know what Dwight K. Schrute was talking about.

 

eat THIS

I don’t watch the Today Show any more, because frankly, it annoys the shit out of me. However, I was briefly sucked in this morning before changing the channel to “Thomas and the Train,” as K.Lo calls it, and caught this genius snippet about food substitutions. In case you want to lose weight, you really should pay attention to this guy, the author of Eat This, Not That! No really, it’s brilliant. Some of his concepts make sense, like when he mentioned that the frozen pot pie has a 4-inch list of ingredients, and generally that’s not a good thing. And yes, making a few simple substitutions, in theory, will help a person lose weight. So long as the substitutions are smart. What really aggravated me was the comparison near the end of the clip of Quaker 100% Natural Granola to 8 fast-food chicken nuggets. Apparently they contain an equivalent amount of saturated fat, and are therefore nutritionally equal. Really? Really. He then says something flip along the lines of “100% Natural doesn’t really mean anything.”

I’ll be spending the rest of the morning scrubbing brain matter off the walls.

The main point of the segment was that, with so many options and advertisers competing for your money, it’s confusing to navigate the grocery store and make good nutritional choices. Agreed, absolutely. But common sense then goes out the window, as he proceeds to insinuate that calories and fat content are the only factors in a food’s nutritional value. Nothing is said about the actual ingredients to confirm that all-natural breakfast cereal is an infinitely better food choice than fast-food chicken nuggets, that their calories are not, in fact, equal.

Then again, maybe I’m just insulted because I have Quaker Natural Granola on my shelf, and think it’s a damn tasty and nutritious option for breakfast. But I do take some solace in knowing that whenever I run out, an 8-piece pack of nuggets will be a viable substitute. The Today Show told me so!

P.S. I do enjoy a good box of fast-food chicken nuggets now again, I do. But honestly.

 

Bad for you. Do not eat this stuff.

to:

• Buy new Socks.

• Eat more Fruits and Vegetables.

• Resume with this certain activity I was doing regularly before Christmas and this lovely cold happened… I think it was called “Exercise?” The details are fuzzy.

• Be the Bigger Person, be the bigger person, be the bigger person. Especially when it comes to the smaller people in my life. (Meaning those under 3 1/2 feet tall.)

• Walk Away for a little while, in the face of Vexing Technological Issues. Seriously.

• Continue quest for Debt Reduction, which is established and underway.

• Purchase with a Most Discriminating Eye.

• Remain ever wary of Indoctrination, in so many facets of our society. Never stop questioning, people!

• Enjoy It. (Meaning life!)

 

Cheers, everyone, to 2009!