I Get the Blues When it Rains
Sunday, September 24th, 2006The title here is the title of a flapper-era song I sing with Brian. The song is about lost love, but for me the title is about fall. We have had more cloudcover lately than in a long time (sometimes the entire sky is white, not a hint of where the sun might be in the sky).
And as much as I do love wool, I am sad it is time to get out the sweaters. I guess having to go up into the space I call my closet and dig around to find the wool instead of my wonderful African summer dresses… well, that made me both get clear about the season change and also about how much “stuff” I have brought into my life. The stuff which now clutters my space, my house, my world, even my mind at times.
Throw-Away-Five-Things Day
The good thing was that today after I got home from teaching knitting, Brian had already started a sort of “fall cleaning” process and I joined him. I have SO many things in my house that are intended for other people/organizations! All week I’ve been telling myself “Sunday is Throw-Away-Five-Things Day.” I don’t know why, it just sort of kept coming back into my mind.
So today I did in fact throw away more than five things. And I put more into boxes for giving to charity.
Chauffeur to “Stuff”
I also realize that I still have at least two boxes of yarn next to my door, that was sent or given to me, intended for the CityKidz Knit! program. That is, waiting for me to be inspired to put them in my car and drive them over to Foster Center where the program happens. (Starting in 9 days, whoopee!!!) Except it seems that I only remember I need to do that on days I do not work at Foster Center.
I really would love a day where I could just load up the car, drive things to wherever, drop them off, go home, load up again, drive and drop off, etc. However, it takes a lot more time to sort and cull and box than it does to drop off. So I need lots of time in my house, much more than driving around. In my “spare time,” right?
But today was, in fact, a day when I threw away five (or more) things. The kitchen is much improved, for example. And this is a good thing, because it looks like we may have company on Monday night, and then definitely a different guest for three more days later this week. In a small house that does not have a guest room.
Changing Gears for a While
My yarn biz sort of takes a halt when we have guests, for the most part (I do that work in the kitchen and living room, other than the actual dyeing which is a basement task). We are not very fancy. Guests stay on an air mattress in the living room (which does have a privacy door from our own sleeping space upstairs) so I’m working to get my work things in the living room boxed up and down in the basement until the fun/guest-time is over.
Let’s face it, the people we love are the most important thing we have in our lives. Brian and I have these friends from out of state, both people we met in the Ukulele Circuit, and we love seeing them. It will be great to have them here. But for an inefficient workaholic like me, it’s hard to just stop a while and enjoy my friends. Once they are here, I’ll do just that. Thank goodness it will be clear when I see them in person.
Advice?
So is anyone else fighting the blues right now? Does anything besides music and chocolate help you? I’m staying away from chocolate right now but doing comfort-tea anyway! And I think cleaning will help my mood as well.
Thank goodness we know lots of smile-producing ukulele performers. We can listen to their music right now, and start the smiles. Because as another song says: “If you want the rainbow, you must have the rain…”