I'm having such a hard time waking up right now. Hopefully tea will work, though I hate relying on caffeine at this time of the day.

Played Clean Sweep on a friend's house today. It's a lot more fun when it isn't your house.

How often does MDC have to go down for moves? I'm not exactly the most active member, but it seems they're down for a move every other time I try to visit.

Leif is out of the house for at least the next three hours, regardless of whether I get called in for the doula thing or not.

I can:

A. Clean
B. Take a load to the consignment store
C. Go to Borders, get a drink, sit in a comfy chair and read a book ALL BY MYSELF!

If I knew I had the next three hours free, I'd do A and B first, but I could be called in at any time. I should be good, but it's soooo tempting. This feels like a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I think minor cleaning and then Borders is going to win.

Somehow my obsessive-compulsive switch got turned on tonight.

We're at my dad's, heading home tomorrow, and I would have felt really bad if I'd gone another trip without doing serious work on my room. See, most of the stuff from our move from VA that isn't on the boat is now stored here, plus all the stuff left over from childhood, plus a bunch of my brother's stuff and other random household goods (there is a cheese head hat and a microwave in my closet. Don't ask me why).

I threw out (or prepared for donation/garage sale) the vast majority of my childhood junk because it was just that - junk. Old magazines, worn out soccer cleats, 10 year old shampoo samples, all that great stuff. I kept a small bag of toys for Leif, as well as the stuff that had true sentimental value, tossed the rest, and organized the stuff that remained. I'll have to do another sweep through one of these days, probably after my brother heads back to Santa Cruz, gets his stuff out of here, and we move some more down from my mom's. There are a lot of books I don't plan on ever reading again left, and I missed a section of the closet. But it's SOOOO much better than it was - when we first got here, it was difficult to walk in the room. Now there's lots of free space, yay!

Moving so 7+ times in 5 years into progressively smaller locations is seriously helping me cut down on my pack rat tendencies.

Now I'm obsessively downloading every single book I can think of that I want to read, which is a little silly, seeing as I already have more than enough to last me until my next trip to somewhere with bandwidth, and it's after midnight.

So tired. This is almost entirely my fault. I started the Left Behind series a week or so ago. I was right at the end of book 6 last night, and stayed up too till 1:00 AM finishing it. This is bad when you have a baby who is generally awake by 7:30.

I've always had a fascination with Revelations, which presumably is related to my fascination with disaster/apocalypse literature in general. Perhaps it's even the source of this fascination. Either way, I spent a lot of time in church as a kid reading Revelations, and not because I went to a particularly end-times centered church. I just found it more interesting than any of the other available distractions.

In any case, when the books first came out, I decided that I was going to wait until they were all released before giving it a shot. Now they've all been released (Not counting the spin-offs, which will presumably continue to be released until the Rapture really does occur and all of Tyndale Press is taken away to heaven), so I did.

They're not great literature, but absorbing and fun. Quick reads - I've gotten through 6.5 of them in a week or so, and I don't have all that much time to spend reading. It usually takes me ages to finish a book these days.

They do provide a view of Christianity that, for all that I grew up immersed in various forms of Christianity, I was never really exposed to. I find the idea that a non-Christian would convert to Christianity through reading these books kind of implausible - the books focus on God providing proof that he exists through events that have not happened in real life. I can, however, understand someone from a more mainstream denomination becoming evangelical after reading them.

One of the news magazines currently has an article about the books. I thought it was Newsweek, but can't see anything about it on the website. Anyone know which one it is?

I have a box of old notebooks full of freewriting from high school/college, combined with random schoolwork that I'm throwing away.

I used to have three file boxes full of this stuff. I got rid of all but one box when we moved last year, primarily by weeding out the majority of the non-literary schoolwork.

I decided today that I'm never actually going to use any of this stuff for anything except reminiscing. I'm not sure it's worth shipping it back and forth across the country an indeterminate number of times just for that.

A lot of it I can't read. It's too painful. Interpret "painful" whatever way you want, and you'll be right.

The random snippets of fiction are interesting, though. In many ways, I feel like I was a better writer back then than I am now. I found one bit that I don't remember writing at all - a feud between a six year old boy and his female cousin who suddenly decide they can't play together due to cooties. The boy is named Allen.

The next page is a letter to an internet friend, also named Allen. Obviously not a coincidence, but I don't remember having any particular feelings for this person beyond friendship. Was it just a convenient boy's name, or am I not remembering something?

I'm afraid I'll regret throwing them away. Who says that in 15 years I won't want to remember exactly how it felt to be in high school? I already see the past with glasses that are, if not rose, at least slightly pink.

On the other hand, I really don't want anyone else ever reading my angstbunny writing. I sound completely bugnuts in most of it.

Perhaps I'll go through and sort out some of the less embarrasing stuff. I am keeping the notebooks I wrote in when I was actively journaling (as opposed to freewriting to pass time in class) during middle school - they're small and generally more sane. The Aristocat stuff too, though I can't find it with a quick glance through the box, which worries me a little, since it isn't exactly a big box.

Leif has figured out how to open the screen door on his own. He just ("just" meaning two hours ago, when I actually wrote this post...) crawled outside and is now sitting on the porch. He's fenced in by the pouring rain, at least (not that he's unsupervised, but it makes it easier when he doesn't actually want to leave the porch).

He just fell over backwards into a puddle of water on the grass. He was a little shocked to suddenly be soaking, but wouldn't let me bring him back inside.

Do you ever find yourself doing something you never imagined you would do?

I just posted to usenet offering a free unopened jar of kim chee (among other things).

I have to say - if you asked me five years ago what I'd be doing today, giving away kim chee online would not have been it.

Of course, there's a whole lot else in my life that I could say that about.

Today and tomorrow I am going to attempt to make food for the whole week, to use up the food we still have left, and to avoid spending money on fast food. I could do this over the course of the week, except that all the kitchen stuff will be packed up after Tuesday. I plan to keep out one small pot for heating stuff up, but that isn't really enough to do actual cooking.

I'm currently making a bunch of pasta, and tomorrow (once the meat is thawed) I'll make the sauce. And a whole bunch of smoothies.

This is, of course, distracting from my main goal, which is semi-mercilously sorting through my stuff. I'm an awful packrat.

Some of it is sentimental. I have every single letter my family has sent me since I left for college. My grandmother writes to me once a week. I also have just about every notebook I used during high school. I didn't keep an actual journal during that time, but spent most of the day during class writing random stream of consciousness stuff. Some of it is potentially good source material. Some of it is downright psychotic, and I live with the constant fear in the back of my mind that someday I'll die, and someone will read these notebooks and have my dead body committed to the insane asylum.

Then there's my journal from when I was 7, in which I rave about how cute Wesley Crusher on Star Trek is. If I ever get a chance to meet Wil Wheaton, I'm going to ask him to sign it.

Anyways, none of this stuff takes up all that much room - two file boxes total for the notebooks and the letters. It's the principle of things. How much do I really need/want to keep?

And then there's all the stuff that I feel guilty about getting rid of, because it's perfectly useful, and I'll need it someday. Like partially used boxes of stationery that I bought in 6th grade. Or my sparring gear which, as it is made of foam, is probably nearing the end of it's lifespan.

The stationery is being tossed. I'm sick of carting it around. The sparring gear... Blanche, do you have any use for it? I don't know if any of it would fit. If not, I think it's either going to be thrown away or donated. If I get to the point where I'm taking classes again, and get far enough along that I need sparring gear, chances are that I'll be able to afford it one way or another.

We have a really large number of books. This is partially because we have vague plans to open an used bookstore one day, and partially because we're just packrats. All of them are being moved. I had three (out of god only knows how many) that I was going to take to Bogey's to sell back (they pay up to half price for recent science fiction and mysteries), but I don't suspect I'll manage to make it down there during book buying hours, so I'll just keep them.

koyote is a packrat, too. Mostly of books, computers, and calculators. He has authorized me to get rid of any non-book, computer, or calculator clutter, but I don't feel quite comfortable doing so, as you can never tell what random thing has immense personal value.

This really isn't the ideal move for mercilous de-packratting. It's corporate. It would be easier to just let the movers take care of it all and worry about de-packratting next time around. But next time around I'll have kid clutter to deal with, so I may as well get my personal clutter at least somewhat straightened out now.

I'm a little curious as to where the packrat disease from. Is it a survival trait gone awry? Or simply a symptom of our commercial society? Or a symptom of the mis-teaching about the inherent value of gifts?

I'm inclined to believe the one of the latter two when I find myself having a hard time getting rid of stuff that truly is junk. Like the orange hand. Two years or so ago, my co-worker gave it to me for Christmas or something. It's this frosted orange plastic hand-shaped coaster. Kinda neat looking, but there is no real reason for it to exist. I put it in my box of stuff to take home from work, which consists primarily of a bunch of other neat but not really deserving of existance items which decorated my desk.

My two main thought processes about it: "This is mine. I can't get rid of it." and "Someone gave this to me, and therefor it would be rude to get rid of it".

Looking at it that way, it's obvious the silly thing needs to go. So I'll stick it in the donation box.

But donating is really just another facet of this drive to hold on to things. Even if, like the orange hand, it is of no conceivable use to anyone, it makes me feel better to think that someone else has the option to claim it as a treasured possesion. It never did anything to deserve being sent to the dump, even if it doesn't deserve to exist in the first place.

But really, it's still assigning value to something that is basically valueless. Which is exactly the same thing that Target does (it looks like the type of room-decoration thing that comes from Target...I have a hard time imagining it came from anywhere else).

So I think I will have to a garbage-y grave, along with all the other junky clutter. I will stop worrying about who gave them to me, or their visual/audio/tactile coolness, and just toss them.

At least I can justify keeping my Beanie Baby collection from high school. I imagine they'll make good baby toys.

It struck me recently that it would be a good idea to start sorting out unneeded things (aka. reducing clutter) and packing wanted but not strictly necessary for day-to-day life things (aka. clutter) now, while I'm still able to move around with relative comfort/ease. Waiting until we actually have to move would probably be a bad idea, given the circumstances.

I'm glad I managed to think of this now instead of...oh...August.

I have a bunch of junk I've been carting around with me everywhere for the past several years which I never actually use. Time to get rid of that. The stuff without serious sentimental value, at least. I also have quite a bit of clothing that I'm realistically rather unlikely to ever wear again, given that I haven't worn it within the past four years or so.

I wish I knew where we were moving. We're probably going to buy land in the Mojave area (in Southern California) regardless of where we end up. At the very least, it's an investment, and we can sell it if we eventually decide not to move there. I'm looking at listings online and just have no clue how to interpret them. I suppose we should contact a real estate agent, have them figure it out for us, and then check out what they reccomend when we're next down there (possibly March).

Oh wow. It is significantly after 5. I can leave.