Potential Hoarder or Proactive Hostess?

My Sunday started off in  usual ADD fashion.  I went to the gym, came home, took a shower and while in the bathroom noticed I was low on toilet paper.  This happens on a regular basis now that my firstborn is home visiting (by the way, visiting turned into squatting about a week ago, but I still love  him like I get a deduction for him).  Well the need for toilet paper was good news.  Since I had no social plans for Sunday (it was a theme I started Saturday and just kinda ran with) that would be great excuse to make a trip to the big city and maybe indulge in a bigass Double Quarter Pounder with cheese, thereby offsetting any benefit of the aforementioned visit to the gym.  While I am a career Attention Deficit gal, I try to be a functional one, so I figured I should take stock of my kitchen cupboards and the fridge to see what else I should pick up at the market.  Which triggered cleaning the fridge.   I have a couple of rules - if I can't remember when I brought it home, or if it's all fuzzy and/or smelly, it has to go. You'd be amazed at how often and in how many different situations I can apply these rules.  Cleaning the fridge led to rooting through the cupboards, which developed into rummaging through drawers and making a sweep of the fabulously appointed bungalow to see what could go to Goodwill.

About 2:30, I proudly surveyed the 2 solidly full (as in Test-the-Flex-limits full) Febreeze-scented trash bags, the big green bag of retirement fund ready for the CLYNX bin, a box of things to drop at Goodwill and then screech off before they see what crap it really is, and a stack of stuff for which  I had not yet decided on a new home.   I  realized that lunchtime grocery  trip to Ellsworth was not gonna happen. I also realized I am about 2 molecules away from being a hoarder.

Once I cleaned out cupboards, shelves and drawers and started reloading them  with some semblance of order, I had amassed 27 boxes of Jell-O (in assorted shot-worthy flavors), about 500 regulation-sized Jell-o shot cups, 8 packs of birthday candles,  a dozen or so packages of cocktail napkins with hilarious cartoons mostly involving elderly women, hotflashes and wine,  a bag of feathers (??) a Ziplock bags full of cocktail umbrellas and frilly toothpicks, mounds of colored bead necklaces, a couple hundred Solo (mostly red, some blue) cups,and a three-pack of condoms that was inexplicably tucked into the gift-wrap drawer.   

As I surveyed the rather festive pile of stuff that I really didn't have a designated home for  my thoughts turned away from me (just for a second) to the news coverage of the recent storm damage down the seaboard, and then my thoughts turned  right back to me. 

What if a big storm slams into the island, and renders the fabulously appointed bungalow not so fabulous?  And what if the damage is extensive enough to warrant news coverage? What are people going to think when they see this pile of stuff  on the nightly news?  Are they going to think I'm some sort of Jell-o addicted, plastic cup jonesing, boob-flashing, cartoon napkin wielding, yet still fertile, freak with a tickle fetish? 

I'll tell you what they are going to think.   They are going to think this is a freaking awesome party place to while away the hours while they sing 'Like A Good Neighbor' and wait for the claims adjusters to appear.  And they will flock here in droves, or whatever vehicle they drive.

I just  hope they bring their own toilet paper.

Random sampling
 

Oh wait, condoms in the gift wrap drawer.  Now it makes sense. 

SOME ASSEMBLY MY ASS...EMBLY

When it comes to assembling things, I am special – not tiara-wearing special, more like window licking special.  I can assemble tasty things – cakes, cookies, a seafood casserole with lemon crumb topping that is so good, I would marry me.  But solid, furniture-y things?  Not so much.  Many is the time I have looked hopelessly through tears of frustration at a pile of shelves, pegs, table legs, bolts, mystery bits and resolved to just be happy living on the floor surrounded by a protective bunker of pieces and parts.

Being a moderately intelligent and totally single woman, I decided it’s time I get over this panic that grips me when I read the phrase Some Assembly Required.  And what better time to tackle that demon than when faced with a long cardboard box containing a metal bed frame.  Oh yeah, no $49 Marden’s bed frame was gonna get the best of me.   

The first step was to disassemble the current bed.  This bed frame is a lovely antique cast-iron model (and I believe the first contribution to the Little Debbie Disaster Relief Fund) which, while solid, comes apart easily and on a couple of boisterous occasions, unexpectedly.  But that is a story to be told around a chilled cocktail when the kiddies aren’t in the room.  Once that was in the guest room/future episode of Hoarders, I faced my long cardboard nemesis.  I sliced the tape (and a bit of my thumb) with a box cutter (I know, even I was surprised, and a little disturbed that I own one), bandaged the thumb, and picked the box up to move it to the center of the room. All the metal piecy parts slid out the bottom of the box onto my right foot.  Random swear words spewed forth, for which I apologize to the neighbors and one unfortunate text message recipient.   I surveyed the pile of parts, they didn’t look that intimidating.  A few long thingies, a little bag with metal screwy  thingies and a piece of paper which I assumed was the directions, and suddenly I was not afraid.  I bravely announced to no one in particular (the neighbors were giving my bungalow a wide berth since the recent spewing forth of swear words incident)  ‘I don’t need no stinking instructions’ as I ripped open the little plastic bag and tossed the paper aside.  Twenty minutes later I had something that sort of looked like it might support a mattress, but I had this big bar that didn’t seem to have a logical home.  I retrieved the instructions that  I had so cavalierly tossed aside earlier.  Upon closer inspection, the 'instructions'  was a crude sketch of what the finished product should look like – a square with a line through it.  Thank you whichever kindergarten kid provided that.  There were no other hints. I tried repositioning the known pieces, I tried brute force, I tried crying, guilting and begging the mystery part to show me where it belonged.  I tried a quick run into the village for a martini assembled by professionals. 

When I returned, I tried this Internet fad all the youngsters are raving about. I turned on my computation device and typed in ‘Bed Frame Assembly’.  Wouldn’t you know it, stuff came up.   I clicked on one of the links and was presented with instructions that actually began with the suggestion that I vacuum the floor under where the bed will be placed because it will be harder to vacuum it after the heavy bed is in place.  Hey, I have already decided I don’t care about that.  That puts me ahead of the game.  Moving on to the instructions on how to open the cardboard box.  Those would have been handy an hour, one sliced thumb and one busted toe ago.  Next, a nice explanation of how to remove the materials from the box – that was a moot point having not received the box-opening instructions in a timely manner.  Oh yeah, these instructions were tailor made for an assembly-impaired gal like me.  Now the good stuff, assembling the actual frame.  The entire detailed instructions were ‘assemble the frame.’

I studied the scrap heap one more time, and just when I was coming to terms with sleeping on the floor until such time as my boys put me in that nursing home in Dover-Foxcroft so they can visit me during hunting season, it all clicked.  Hey, I have a son with a brain and a bottomless pit of a stomach.  I have a fridge full of food.  I sent up the ‘Free Meal’ signal, he came screeching into my driveway.  While I assembled dinner, he assembled the bedframe.  And I had a new, comfy queen-sized bed to sleep in.  Of course I have no food in the house, but I got a bed.  I knew I didn’t need no stinking instructions.