The work continues at the house. A carpet crew was coming to finish the playroom — a room that was originally going to be carpeted a month ago, but due to some under-measuring, and thus under-ordering, was not. They were to come between 9 and 10, but somehow wound up at the wrong house, and did not arrive until 11 or so. I had been looking out the window every 10 minutes trying to find them, since the doorbell isn’t working. Then in the afternoon, some furniture was supposed to be delivered between 1:30 and 3:30. To make sure I found that crew, I was also looking out the window every 10 minutes, hopping up to make sure they would get to the right door. They never came. They claimed to have knocked on my door for 20 minutes, but it wasn’t my house, because out of morbid curiosity I reviewed the outside security camera footage and, nope. Dispatch confirmed the address, so I have no idea what happened.

Anyway, all this was pretty frustrating, as my entire day was taken up with these waiting windows, and at the end of the day, I still didn’t have the furniture.

On the other hand, in the few minutes in between checking for trucks, I at least knocked a bunch of smaller tasks off my list. I managed to write/edit all my weekly Before Breakfast scripts. I worked on podcast notes for Best of Both Worlds. I answered a few time log emails (I am now approximately halfway through the emails I received on January 17th, so I guess that’s progress?) I edited and turned in a book review. I worked with my TBT statistician on updating some numbers. My expectation was that I was going to get nothing done, so with that as the baseline, I kept thinking well, let’s see if I can do a little something. Several somethings add up to a bigger something. Not a full workday, but something.

And then to try to cheer myself up, I put a few little treats into the day. My teenager is taking finals, and only had one yesterday, which was done by 9:30. So we ordered lunch together from a local Asian fusion place (chicken dumplings and rice for him, sushi for me). I watched the sunset from my bedroom window. I took a short soak in my tub. I read in front of the fireplace at night (so nice to be able to turn on a fireplace with a remote control!)

And now today is another day. We have a wallpaper crew here, but they arrived exactly when they said they would, and there are no furniture delivery windows. Some day this house will be done. The kitchen is almost box free at this point! It helped the process when I declared something a “drawer for stuff that has no other home.” Maybe every room needs one of those…

Photo: A clock. I know I have used this before but I’m trying to get this posted before a call and so I am re-using art. 

While I know from The Happiness Project that this is supposed to improve my mood, I didn’t undertake this particular chore for that reason. Rather, our landlord (our next door neighbor) seems to have assumed that we planned to move in July when our lease was up. We somehow didn’t get around to that, which means that his plans to combine our apartment with his were put off for another year. As part of the trade off for extending the lease, given that we are basically living in what he thought would be his home right now, he plans to start the renovation while we are still here… by taking the closet from the master bedroom (and having it open into his apartment).

He bought us four large new wardrobes to house our stuff. Unfortunately, this doesn’t come out anywhere close on a square footage basis. It was a nice closet! We actually used it as the baby’s bedroom for the first 4 months of his life. So I have been getting rid of massive quantities of shoes, clothes, coats, etc.

Most of it I have been glad to see go. I am astounded at my ability to accumulate cheap clothes that are really nothing special. A shirt was on sale, so I bought it. Repeat that process two dozen, three dozen times and you have my wardrobe. I own a white blouse that I very clearly remember buying at a discount store four years ago, thinking it was a good deal. I have never worn it. I still can’t bring myself to get rid of it, I guess because I keep thinking a white blouse is useful. It probably is, but not taking up space in my closet. Socks and workout clothes are a particular beast because, well, you always need socks. Why would I get rid of a pair of perfectly good socks? Never mind that my husband stays so on top of the laundry that I really only need 8 pairs. I think I have three times that. Then there are the T-shirts I have kept for sentimental reasons — a souvenir of a sailing trip in Australia from college, or a tie-dyed one from high school. All of this takes up space, and I probably wouldn’t try to save it in a fire.

Well, so it goes. I’ve winnowed down a lot, and created an “A” wardrobe and a “B” wardrobe. The A one contains a nicely edited selection of clothes that I think best reflects how I’d like to appear. The B one contains everything else that I can’t quite part with yet. With any luck, I’ll just never open the B wardrobe door, and be able to donate most of the B stuff to charity when we move next July. Now that will be a good way to save time.