a new collection?

so today . . . i cleaned out my closet. again.

i'm sure you are getting tired of hearing about my closet. i've blogged about it before. more than once. i really thought that when we moved, i had finally cleaned it out for the last time. i got rid of bags and bags of stuff. and then i unpacked into my new closet and realized that i still didn't have enough room for everything...

well, i had enough room for everything, but only if i squished the hangers together so tightly that i couldn't get anything out. and i use skinny velvet covered hangers, so it isn't like those hefty plastic hangers were hogging all the room. i had things stacked so high that i couldn't remove anything without fear of an avalanche. this is not the way i wanted to live! so i cleaned my closet out again. and then a couple of weeks later i did it again.

we have only lived in this house for two and a half months, and i've cleaned out my closet three times...

it seems like i spent my whole summer packing and moving and unpacking. which, mostly i did. but it still wasn't enough time to get completely settled. even though the majority of our stuff had found a place, there were still random boxes and piles of stuff here and there. and where did it bug me the most? in our bedroom! (ok, that's a lie. actually the garage bugs me the most, but there isn't a lot i can do about it right now. it's day is coming, but it isn't today...) so today i decided it was time to get it under control!

i'm sure it is not a coincidence that this happened today, because we are going to be out of town for a couple of days, and you know what that means... yep, clean all night! only this time i can't do that. because this time rollie and i are speaking at this retreat, which means i can't just skip the sessions and sleep. which is what i usually do :-) AND i'm going to need my brain, especially when it is my turn to speak. so i can't stay up all night. i just can't. so everything isn't going to get done to my satisfaction. but the closet is!

i started in on the closet earlier today, but you know my attention span... so i would work for a bit, eat a snack, watch some hgtv (which, btw, is giving me waaay too many ideas, now that i have a house!) rotate the laundry, check facebook (yeah, it's saturday. i can check it all day long. sadly, all my friends apparently have lives, so not much was happening online today...) move some furniture around, move it back, work in the closet some more, play with the dogs... you get the idea.

really, working in our bedroom was a bigger job than just the closet, because our bedroom is really big. so when we moved, i put all the easy stuff away and sort of stacked the rest in the empty half of the room. but then i needed stuff in those boxes full of stuff that i didn't know where to put, and so i would open a box, take something out, see something else and think, "oh, that's where that is," and take something else out, and then leave the box open, because i might need something else in there... i'm sure a picture is forming in your mind... it isn't pretty, is it...

so clearly i had to tackle that stuff too. which i did. but this complicated my closet project, because i kept finding more clothes. that i liked. that i didn't want to get rid of. that i didn't really have room for in my closet.

part of my problem is that i am trying to get by without buying a dresser. we have this big closet (at least it looked big when it was empty!) and so i am convinced that we should be able to get all our clothes in there. really! if we can't get all our clothes in there, then we have too many clothes!

apparently we have too many clothes. actually, apparently i have too many clothes, because i am hogging over half of the closet and still don't have enough room. rollie, on the other hand, seems to be fine. of course, all he has are shirts and pants. he doesn't have shirts and pants and dresses and skirts and vests and sweaters and jackets...

but i am determined. so i moved things around. i refolded stuff so that no space would be wasted. i put two pairs of boots in one box (i know, shocking isn't it!) and i finally got everything in, organized in such a way that i could also get stuff out too. i was feeling pretty happy!

and then, as i continued to put stuff away from the messy side of the room, i found a stack of jeans. five pairs of jeans, to be exact, neatly folded, hiding under some pillows. this was not good, not good at all... i went back into my closet to see what could be done. sadly, nothing could be done. i was out of space. i sorted through my jeans again to see if there were any that didn't fit or were too ratty to wear or that i just didn't like any more. but that didn't work either--they were all perfectly wearable. i should be glad! i had 34 pairs of jeans that i liked, that fit, that were already paid for. but the problem is, I HAVE 34 PAIRS OF JEANS!!!

sigh. when did i turn into my daughter?

because diandra is the queen of jeans. i do not even want to guess how many pairs of jeans that girl has. and when she goes shopping, what does she buy? more jeans.

maybe it is a reaction to her earlier jeans issues. because when she was a teenager, living at home, and i was buying her jeans, we had issues. she wanted jeans that sat below her waist, and i did not want her to have them. tops were shorter then, and my daughter was not going to run around with even the tiniest gap between her top and her jeans! we spent hours in dressing rooms! hours!! she would choose some jeans and try them on. i would say they were too low. she would say moo-oom! i would say you are not wearing those out of the house. she would say but i like them. i would say no. and eventually we would find a pair that we could both tolerate. and then we would go to another store, and it would start all over again. neither one of us would be happy, but at least she would be clothed.

and then she became an adult and started buying her own jeans. amazingly, she still took me along! "want to go to the mall?" she would say. "i need to get some jeans." inwardly i would groan, but since it would mean an afternoon with diandra, i would go. she didn't say moo-ooom anymore, but she still didn't always like my opinion. which didn't stop me from giving it, even though i no longer had the power to just say "no." which turned out ok, because instead of rolling her eyes at me, she started listening to me. and sometimes she even agreed with me. occasionally :-)

jeans shopping was always such an ordeal. and yet still we did it. diandra was always on the search for that perfect pair of jeans... which seemed to be just out of our grasp. we found lots of nearly perfect jeans, seemingly perfect jeans, or but the price is right jeans. but perfect jeans? highly elusive. and so, even though she always had a drawer full, or two, or three, she always seemed to need just one more pair...

i, on the other hand, only had five or six pair total--light blue, dark blue, black, short (to wear with flat shoes,) and longer (to wear with boots.) really. i thought six pair should be perfectly adequate. and it was.

until today. because today i couldn't fit all of my jeans into my closet. i had several stacks of jeans, sorted by style--skinny jeans, "jeggings" (which is the dumbest word ever. i hate to even write it, but it's what they are called,) boot cut, cargo, and capri. (don't worry, i only had one pair of capris.) i tried rearranging them. i tried folding them differently. i tried to get rid of just a few more pair. it didn't help. i still couldn't get them all in the closet. i finally had to put a few pair on top of some shoes...

when did this happen?!? where did all these jeans come from?!?! i hate to buy jeans. hate. it! and yet apparently i have bought them, because they didn't just materialize on their own, and i'm pretty sure denim hasn't figured out how to procreate. and i never purposely go shopping for jeans. if i happen across a pair, while shopping with diandra, i will get them, but i never say to myself, "i need a new pair of jeans. i think i will go to the mall." never. but i also apparently never get rid of a pair either, and so their numbers increase...

i don't know what i'm going to do. it seems ridiculous to get rid of perfectly good jeans that are already paid for that fit me. and i'm certainly not going to give up going to the mall with my daughter (which, let's face it, is really the issue here. because when i go with her, jeans just seem to follow me home...) so i guess there is only one thing to do...

... start planning my takeover strategy for rollie's side of the closet.

:-)

it's hot. it's cold. it must be spring!

so today . . . it was cold.

i knew it was going to get cold again, because i just put my winter clothes in the extra closet and moved my summer clothes back into my room. i did this because it was so hot last week. the week before that it rained. and rained and rained and rained. but last week was really nice. and it is april, so you would think the seasonal clothing migration would be safe. so i moved out the warm sweaters and everything with long sleeves, and replaced them with summer tops and lightweight jackets.

and so, of course, today it was cold.

usually my clothes don't migrate until easter weekend. easter weekend usually marks the start of spring for me, not the calendar. but last week was sooooo nice. and you know, sometimes easter is in march, and the cadbury eggs are already out at wal-mart, and there is a new movie out about the easter bunny... so i jumped the gun and switched out the clothes.

i felt like i had to do it, because on thursday it was so hot, i was worried about the kids being outside at recess. i don't know why, but our chinese parents tend to overdress their kids. and by overdress, i mean that on a day when the forecast says it will be over 80 degrees outside, those kids will come to school wearing a turtleneck long-sleeved t-shirt, another long-sleeved t-shirt over that, a short sleeved t-shirt over that, and a hoodie zipped up over them all!

ok. i tend to get cold. and so even when hot temperatures are forecast, i typically wear a lightweight cardigan over my short-sleeved shirt in the morning. but three shirts and a hoodie?!?! that seems just a bit excessive. so on thursday, as we were undressing kids (because we had to take off all those shirts so that they could just wear the t-shirt outside,) i was still worried about the heat. i was DYING, and i was standing in the shade!! but the kids seemed oblivious. they were running around and playing in that hot sun, beads of sweat forming on their foreheads, only stopping for an occasional drink. i kept expecting them to drop from heat exhaustion, but our playground seemed to be inhabited by energizer bunny clones...

so yesterday i gathered my warm weather wardrobe (ah, alliteration...) and prepared for spring. and then today proved it was spring, as the weather changed once again.

fortunately, i do have cardigan sweaters and lightweight jackets still in my closet.

fortunately, my "ugg" boots are still in my closet.

fortunately, i did not replace my long pants with shorts just yet.

and fortunately, diandra's winter clothes are still in her closet, which is just down the hall...

the mysterious disappearance of 2008

so today . . . i cannot blog. all my photos from 2008 seem to have disappeared, and i need one of them to blog...

why, you may wonder, do i need a photo from 2008 in order to write a blog, which is really more about the words than about the pictures? well, because, i just do.

yesterday a friend of mine was in town for a short vacation, and i got to go see her. it made me smile and i came right home and started to blog about it. i added a photo that was taken of us. i wrote some more. then i went looking for that 2008 photo...and the folder with my 2008 photos seems to have gone awol!

i suppose i could post the blog without the picture--you wouldn't even know the difference--but it would feel incomplete to me. i must have it!!!!!

i don't know what could have happened to those pictures. i have been organizing my picture files (yes, still!) and am hoping i have not accidentally deleted 2008! it was a good year, and i would hate to lose it...

hopefully i will find the missing year of pictures. and when i do, you will get to read the blog i wrote yesterday. it will say "so today..." but it won't be about the day that it is posted--it will be about yesterday. which might confuse some of you...

...but that's what keeps things interesting :)