Tear it apart to put it together
.... or the craft room is too small for all my supplies.

It's that hunting and gathering instinct again. I have tons and tons of supplies and can't figure out where to put all of them.

I have spent the entire day hanging shelves on the walls and sorting craft things and trying to find places to put them without killing myself tripping over all that I've thrown (or has avalanched) onto the floor.

Sadly I don't feel as if I've made anywhere near enough progress - even though I've done a lot.

I have this feeling so often, don't I?

I think the deal with the craft stuff is that there is so much that is small - stamp pads, stamps, embossing powders, paints and inks, and tons of paper and ephemera - it's hard to figure out the best places to store everything and the best use of space.

I know one of the problems is that the room is very small and has funky angles, so nothing seems to fit as well as I would like. I'm actually going to end up blocking one of the windows so I can put stuff in front of it. But that's OK, because the screen is in need of repair and I'm afraid that bugs will get in or a cat will fall out. So keeping it closed and blocked will eliminate that problem.

I'll keep working at this for the rest of the weekend to see if I can find the light at the end of the tunnel.

As bedtime approaches
Well it didn't all get done. None of the shelves were put on the walls, and the books and stuffed animals are still in boxes. The things on the coffee table continue to be precariously perched, wating to slide into a heap on the floor.

But the laundry is put away, I ironed something to wear tomorrow, and I wrote the article for the newspaper.

So the day wasn't a total lost cause.

I also went outside to water my plants, which appear to be surviving quite nicely. I wasn't sure that they'd make it when I planted them last week, but they seem to be taking root and I even noticed blooms.

Now I need to go to bed and make sure that I have the alarm set correctly.

I have parent meetings every morning this week at 7:45.

Blech.

midday progress
.... is minimal.

I've done the laundry, but haven't put it away (and that means that I need to make the bed now).

I've cleaned the kitchen - even though that wasn't on the list - and that includes cleaning the refridgerator, taking out the trash and cutting melon.

I've black gessoed and overpainted the book pages in turquoise and bronze.

And I've wandered from room to room, while switching the television channel back and forth between the Red Sox (who won) and the Patriots (who are ahead, but playing lousy).

So I guess I'm slightly productive.

Too busy
Sometimes life gets to be just too busy and as a result not a thing manages to get done. I am faced with lists of projects for inside, outside, crafting,chorus, school... so I sit on the couch and watch television. Or take a nap.

Actually the nap is probably one of the more productive things because I am so tired when I come home that I need to recharge. I'm not sure that I'm tired because of the work at school or because I have to get up so early in the morning.

I've actually overslept three times already. This is really weird because generally I never oversleep. I've still gotten to work on time, but I hate the feeling of frenzy that oversleeping causes me.

Around the house only bits and pieces seem to get done. I still have boxes in the foyer and don't feel inspired to get them out of the way. The bedroom is still in disarray, and the craft room is hopeless. I have great plans of getting some of the foyer and bedroom dealt with today.

I also have a book sitting here that needs to get altered so I can mail it. I thought I'd love doing this book because the theme is "Egypt", but it turns out that the book itself is already about Egypt and full of pictures, so I'm not insipired. I'm thinking that one of the spreads I do will be about the godess Bast so I can paint the two pages black and turquoise. I never thought about how a book that's already full of visuals would be that much more difficult to change.

I took a class yesterday to learn how to make a piano hinge book. I can't believe how easy it was once I saw how it was put together. It seemed far more difficult when I looked in magazines and instruction books. So now I want to make a bunch of them. Don't ask me what I'd do with them, I just want to make them.

Let's see if I manage to get anything on the list for today done:
- laundry
- hang curio cabinet in the hall
- put black gesso on the book pages
- clean off the coffee table
- pay bills
- write article for the newspaper about chorus membership drive
- write letters to businesses asking them to sponsor ads in the chorus book
- put laundry away
- put stuffed animals on shelves in bedroom
- put books in cubes in bedroom
- hang shelf in bedroom
- figure out where to hang new wicker shelf

I went to a consignment shop yesterday and got a new wicker shelf and a small wooden curio cabinet that has glass doors. I only paid a total of $40, but I don't know where to put the wicker shelf. But I liked it and always need more shelves. I am the queen of mismatch though.

Off to try to accomplish something now.

Antsy
I am having one of those days when I can't settle into doing anything at all. Everything bores me, or irritates me and I just don't seem to be able to find something that would make me happy. Or even interested. I've done some cleaning, but I lose interest in that, I should unpack more boxes or organize, and I can't get into it.

I look around and see tons to do, but I just can't get it going.

I have done the laundry, and put up a new shower curtain, so I'm not totally useless, but pretty close.

It's another one of those jump out of my skin days. I'm feeling as if all the nerve endings are exposed and that I just want to rip off my skin.

Art doesn't interest me, reading doesn't interest me, television doesn't interest me, videos, computer.... nothing.

I hate days when I feel like this. Thank goodness they don't come too often.

The old grind

So I had the summer "off" (if you can call moving and trying to set up a new home "off"!) and school is now back in session.

Where did the time go?

I say it every year, the summer flies by and then it feels as if we'd never left. It's true again this year. The paperwork has begun, the kids are running around, the teachers are trying to get routines established, the parents are calling.... it's like a huge rerun. Or that movie Grounhog Day. It happens over and over.

We had a short week this week and we were all talking about how tired we were. It should be interesting when we put in a five day week this week.

I feel as if I'm fairly well prepared. I have the lessons ready to go - even in Math - which I hate to teach. I'd rather do reading and writing all day long. I'm starting out with a fun book that I haven't taught before Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. The kids should love that one.

At home I'm still doing bits of unpacking but I'm so tired that I just want to collapse when I get home. I slept until 9 o'clock this morning and it was wonderful. That's the one thing that I really hate about going to work - getting up at 5:30. It's still dark out then.

I did manage to take some time to get some artwork done for an altered book that I needed to get into the mail (actually I was a week early in mailing it). It was a harder theme for me to figure out something to do with - Healing Herbs - but I liked the pages in the long run. One spread was called "Rosemary" and the other was "Sage".

This weekend is going to have to be about doing household things like grocery shopping and the like. The boring stuff. I also have school work and chorus stuff that I could thing about doing as well, but none of that is pressing.

Guess I need to bite the bullet and head to the grocery store - ick.

It's a small world
The song won't stop in my head. And why is that? Because I rode the ride twice at Disney World last week.

I am only just home and am recovering from the flight and all those miles of walking, but it is a magical world.

How'd I get LOST?!?
I had to go to work yesterday to try to get scheduling done. We didn't finish, and my head is spinning. I'm not sure how I'm going to cover all the spots that I need to cover.

The building was a mess. The rocket scientist maintenence staff had somehow managed to cut off every hallway in the building, leaving a very small area to move in. We ended up using the principal's office because it had air conditioning and he wasn't in. But they were stripping the floors and the chemical smell was overpowering.

But we pulgged along for four hours, and made a dent in what we needed to do. The rest will have to wait until school starts, seeing they won't pay us anymore money to work summer hours (we got cut back because of budget issues - the asshole governor of Massachusetts - "we want the schools to excell - but we are slashing all your budgets".

Now this was the first day of going to work from my new condo. I got there just fine and dandy, not a wrong turn and even time for the drive through at Dunkin Donuts for coffee.

Apparently on the way home I got a bit overconfident. Actually I tried a different route, and got to where I thought I should be, but then something went terribly wrong.

Well, that might be a bit of a dramatic overstatement, but I did somehow end up several miles from where I thought I was going to come out. I knew I was in trouble when I was suddenly at the women's prison. That wasn't where I was headed. Fortunately I have a good sense of direction and have a good idea of where different side streets lead, so I was able to get on my main route and get home.

I just have no idea how I got to the prison in the first place, and what turn I missed. I think I'm going to have to do a dry run or two before school gets started.

Laughing at ketchup
I went to the grocery store today - about the only really productive thing I did - and found myself howling at the ketchup display.

As I rounded the corner there was an endcap stacked with Heinz Ketchup. I have no idea why I even stopped to look, or if a label caught my eye, but not ONE actually says Heinz Ketchup on it. The bottles are the same shape as always, and the label has that same shape that reminds me of a shield, so at first glance you wouldn't notice anything. But if you stand and start reading you see labels that say any one of the following:

Better looking than Relish
Comforts Burnt Hot-dogs
Easier to spell than Worcestershire (my favorite)
For the Burger than has everything
French Fries not Included
Meatloaf Enhancer
Seeking Employment in your Kitchen
Warning: Slow Moving Condiment (my other favorite)

I practically had tears running down my face when I saw them, and I got out a notebook to copy them down. I think I may have to go back and buy some (even though I don't need any ketchup) just so I can save the labels.

It's not often that a trip to the grocery store produces such levity!

The cats are high
I went out tonight and picked up a few things at Walmart, among them a new scratching toy for the cats. It's covered in catnip. They are sort of sprawled on the floor and looking quite content. I thought they were going to rip the box open themselves when I put the bag it was in on the floor. Must be a potent catnip.

But they're happy.

I think I might finally have the bathrooms organized and have found a place for all the "stuff" that should be in a medicine cabinet or linen closet. I feel pretty accomplished getting that done. It also empties out a couple more rubbermaid containers and frees up more floor space. I think I might be able to move the bedroom furniture around tomorrow.

The CDs are all put away and alphabetized and categorized, so that's another big thing that's been dealt with.

Of course all this means that I haven't taken a thing out of the garage since Saturday. This isn't good, I need to go through and empty out more of it.

And I also need to start thinking about getting ready to go to Disney, seeing it's only about a week away.