Sunday, January 03, 2016

Resolution-Free Post

This is what my week felt like, only less cheerful looking.
The last week of December turned into Hell Week, what with having to get the house ready for our annual neighborhood party on New Year's Day. I cleaned up all the junk that accumulated in the corners of our dining room and on the dining room hutch. I wiped down baseboards, picture frames, and switchplates. I kept tossing things into my bedroom for storage, until I had to climb over storage bins just to get to my bed. And THEN I tackled the family room in the basement.

Now, the basement (where all the toys, books, etc., are) had been neglected for months. I mean, it was so overwhelming, I just gave up. There was an extra file cabinet in the way, and Larry's rowing machine (which I had moved out of the guest room down there) and TOO MANY BOOKS. Also, an electronic piano no one uses because it is shoved behind the extra file cabinet and a TV area covered in loose DVDs and remotes for I know not what.

I remember when we owned one VCR tape. ONE. And we were HAPPY.

Anyway, I borrowed a working vacuum cleaner (don't ask) from my neighbor, plus some extra book boxes (how convenient is it that she owns a bookstore, huh?), and got to work. While Susie gathered up loose game pieces and put them away, I purged the main bookshelves (mostly kids' books) and emptied the extra bookshelf (also floating around the basement) that held the grown-up books that I never read because I can't find them and they get too full of dust there anyway.

I think I was half crying from exhaustion by this point. Larry came down to help get rid of dead crickets because I just cannot bear those things. He started pawing through the boxes of giveaway books even though NONE OF THEM WERE HIS, and we would have had an epic argument if we hadn't both been so goldarned tired and rushed.  As it was, he put all the boxes in the back of his car with plans to go through them later. Heaven forbid I give away that tattered old copy of Charlotte's Web with the pages falling out.  

This was how we spent New Year's Eve, people. We're festive like that.

Larry helped me pull the big couch away from the wall so I could vacuum behind and under it, and we checked to make sure the carpet pad wasn't wet and the old mold stains near the baseboards hadn't spread. Because homeowning is fun, right? Then we shoved the extra filing cabinet and the extra bookshelf sort of out of the way and Larry moved the rowing machine back into the guest room, which wasn't very fair to David, who happens to be living in there this month, but that's the way things are around here. 

Lo and behold, the basement actually looked good. Susie started happily arranging the toys, which made it clear that she hadn't played down there in 4 months because it felt so awful to be surrounded by that mess. Guilt - don't celebrate New Year's Eve without it!

So I dragged myself back upstairs, swearing I would keep the basement clean and tidy this year, all the while knowing that I am a big fat liar. And then I lay on the couch until midnight, because who goes to bed early on New Year's Eve?

Susie made this for our party. I love her.

The party the next day was a success, although I ordered way too much food and we've been eating Cafe Rio leftovers for 3 days now. We usually don't have food catered for this event, because expensive, but we were also celebrating Larry's and my 25th wedding anniversary, so I decided to go all out. We didn't have a wedding reception and we never even had a honeymoon, so I figured we were allowed this one extravagance. I told the kids that they were on the hook for planning the 50th, since their father and I probably wouldn't be speaking to each other by that time and would therefore be unable to coordinate anything.

No one argued with that. 

Saturday and Sunday? I goofed off.  Because I could. How's 2016 treating you so far?

15 comments:

  1. Wow. That is the true test of a marriage. I'm glad your party was a success!

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  2. It's so nice to *have cleaned*. The actual doing of it, not so much.

    And I have no idea what 2016 is like. Ask me when I've recovered from the 4 day New Year's house party. (Fun, but exhausting.)

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  3. Happy Anniversary! And the LEGO thing is awesome. Also, you didn't warn me about the crickets before I moved down here. I HATE THEM. They're not normal crickets. Within a week of living here my daughter had christened them spider frogs because they are so leggy and so jumpy. Doing laundry at night is literally a horror. They *fling* themselves at me.

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  4. LOVE your predictions for your 50th! Congratulations on your 25th!
    And I noticed you didn't use the current way to say "Larry's and my" which is "Larry's and I's." No joke. I've heard it over and over.
    Happy New Year in your clean house!

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  5. LMAO on the not talking to each other by that point! I feel ya!

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  6. I love the Lego "2016" construction!

    All during 2015 I swore I was just about to clean off my desk, and it never happened. I have been cleaning it for the past 2 days, and made significant progress. But it still isn't done. Oh, sigh.

    My husband wanted to have people over on New Year's Day, but I told him I was too tired to talk to people. We watched movies.

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  7. :raises hand: I go to bed early on New Year's Eve. This year was a world record for even me - I was out by 9:30!

    And we must be twins...we are about to celebrate our 25th as well. Also never had a honeymoon (why no, I'm not bitter about it at all...well, maybe a little). And yes, by the 50th, if we make it that far we probably won't be talking either.

    Happy Anniversary and New Year!

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  8. Congrats on your anniversary! Love the Lego 2016. A party and a clean house sounds like a great way to spend New Year's Day.

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  9. Great Lego design! Most of my household was in bed by 10:30pm, because we are boring.
    Does it count as a honeymoon if you spent one night at a B&B? Congratulations on 25 years, and I'm nodding my head about the 50th -- my in-laws wanted an ice cream social, so that's what they got (although other food was involved).
    I think we went out for dinner for our 25th, which is better than most years when we actually forget to do anything.

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  10. Congratulations and happy (late) anniversary! And we celebrated our 35th this past summer only because we did not tackle cleaning the garage.

    I borrowed a vacuum cleaner exactly once. Used it in the master bedroom, set it still a few hours, came back...to find carpet beetles crawling out from underneath its beater bar. Yes its owner had wool wall-to-wall. No she didn't know what carpet beetles look like. She thought they were ladybugs telling off-color jokes.

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    Replies
    1. Heading out to buy my own vacuum cleaner RIGHT NOW...

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  11. My basement is where old books and exercise equipment go to die, too. If she ever saw it, Marie Kondo's head would explode in tiny, exquisitely-clean shards. Which would spark a hell of a lot of joy in me, because I'm tired of dealing with everyone else's belongings, and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up can bite me.

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  12. Happy Anniversary! Good for you to go all out and have your party catered. What a treat!
    I am torn about whether to fix up our basement or not. It's mostly empty, our old living room set and a TV on carpet remnants is what we have so far. I feel like if we make it nice, we'll end up filling it with stuff and it will become more to take care of.

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  13. I remember when we had 1 VHS tape that the 2 year old would allow in the VCR - and she was happy.

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