Everybody says it's just like Robin Hood

I got fed up with things last night and threw a sheet over the TV set so I won't revert to watching DVDs while trying to do other things.  Not that I'm not watching other things (hello YouTube) or overusing the computer in general, but I did manage to avoid the brain fog that overtook me since Sunday.  It seems that everyone I know is feeling it so I don't think it's all me, we are blaming on the weekend time change now.  I did get almost everything on my to-do list completed today.

I am using the ruse of gifting to move some things out of this house.  My brother in law is a musician with a big CD collection, so I am sending him and my sister a nice big box of CDs that I think they will like.  I am sending a friend a package of books as a late birthday present.  Hooray media mail rates!

I am also starting to sell on eBay again, so I put a few things up this evening.  I want to raise some money and make some room.

Yesterday was Donation Tuesday, that is, I gave away a lot of stuff without even planning to do it in a day.  I gave that weird wire rack to my friend Virginia for some extra storage of her own, and made a pit stop dropoff at SCRAP, where I also found cheap and plentiful contact paper.  I had nearly bought some new at Fred Meyer a couple days ago, but it the cheapest was $5.99 a roll!  No!!  I need it to cover some shelves in my linen closet, because I think they got a little oily with some of the medicines and things sitting on them for years.  I don't want clean sheets touching that!  I rounded off yesterday with a stop at Goodwill to get rid of the stuff I had left over.  The day began auspiciously with a call from Volunteers of America, asking if I had any household goods to have picked up.  They don't take furniture, alas.

I had a call from a guy yesterday about a job interview, who told me he was going to call me today to set up the appointment.  He never called, but I wasn't surprised.  If someone calls you to tell you they're going to call you, they have a problem.

    

Free Will vs. SAD

Thanks everybody who has been reading my silly blog, I really appreciate it.  Thanks also to my new followers.  I hope I'll have more soon, but then I forget to be an official follower of my friends' blogs so I don't really deserve it.

As much as I am loathe to I decided to dive into cataloging all the books I'm donating, I made a nice spreadsheet and it's going faster than I thought it would.  I've got to take pictures of all of them too, can you believe it?  I hope the tax man doesn't want photos someday of all the crap I gave to Goodwill this year, because I sure have a lot of receipts for it.  I am asserting my willpower over my urge to put off the book stuff, because after getting back from California last week I became acutely aware that my good spirits wouldn't last while I am procrastinating.  We've had driving rain for days, whereas when I left for the Bay Area and during my trip there'd been nothing but sunshine.  I'm trying to head off any feelings of depression this season.  I have some problems every winter, but this year I'm going to be aware of them before they happen and use some focus to work through them.  I really want to get my living room ready again to have friends over and it's hardly in that state now.

Here is a piece from a really good DVD zine from some creative folks in Canada, it's called the Winking Circle.  I found it at random at the library!

Watching stuff like this makes me feel a lot better about the world. 

In other news, two of my friends had to follow me down into the basement today so we could get to my garage & drive away.  They could see for themselves that I've been working hard! 

The Psychopath Test

I managed to make it to Goodwill and sell some books at the Hawthorne branch of Powells today.  The guy buying my books took so long that the other buyer met with at least three other individuals before I was done.  I have a lot of books left over - I plan to save them up and give a pile to Title Wave, the bookstore that raises money for the Multnomah County library system.  A lot of them might end up in the Friends of the Library booksale, which is where they started out before they ended up in my store.  The circle of life for a book.  

I've been reading a book by Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test.  I'm finding that I've already heard a few of his anecodotes from the book on This American Life, but there's a lot more to it.  Mainly it's about what personality traits make a true psychopath and where one can find them in society.  Not too surprisingly, psychiatrists who have made this their focus of study believe that some of the top corporate leaders and politicians are bona fide Patrick Batemans.  Not in the homicidal sense, but they approach work as though they were preying on weaker animals.  I can think of a couple people I've met that might fit this description, but don't worry, if you are reading this you are not one of them.  Probably.

Instead of another boring pic of my basement, I'm putting here a little collage I made of stuff that I sold on eBay earlier this year.  This should brighten up your day:

Helpful hints from Mama Ingrid, et al

Isabella Rossellini wrote a memoir called Some of Me, in which she shared her mother's (Ingrid Bergman, that is) own methods for cleaning up after a party at the Rossellini household.  That advice was, never leave the room empty handed.  That's something I'm taking to heart these days, but I'm taking it a step further.  I never leave the house without something in my hand, or my car, that I won't be bringing back to take up space in my house again!  For example, I take stuff to Goodwill, or to Far West Fibers, which is the massive recycling center off SE Holgate in Portland.  You can take shoes, appliances, and white styrofoam there!

One of my friends told me about a cleanup he did at his own house, where he decided that nothing he didn't want was going back into his bedroom.  So now I'm looking at things more critically to determine if I really want the things I'm keeping around. 

Today I didn't do a whole lot, though I tried.  I put a few things in the car to take over to Village Merchants, one of my favorite thrift stores in town, on SE Division.  When I got there I remembered that they don't take items on Sundays.  So, those things are still in my car.

I shifted a few things around in the basement and took a few things upstairs to sort, so there is a nearly detectable improvement.  At least there are no more falling boxes.

So in the photo above, we have the same view on two different nights.  The one on the left is from tonight, so that is the "after" shot.  I'm getting somewhere but am I just putting the crap in my living space upstairs?  Am I just kidding myself?

PS: I just finished Dangerous Angels, the collected novels of the Weetzie Bat series by Francesca Lia Block.  It was so good, I had borrowed it from the library but I want to get my own copy to keep.  It's a perfect manual for finding love and beauty in a fucked up and dangerous world, and not losing hope.  It's just what I needed to read right at this time in my life.