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?