Good Enough

Last Friday evening after another three hour sort project, I declared the room 'good enough'. It isn't perfect by far. But it is good enough to start using it for its intended purposes. And there are many ways that starting to use it that way will help in the fine tuning.

Merlin was the inspiration for the declaration. He had been taking every opportunity to jump in the middle of what I was doing all day. Especially in the middle of whatever box I had just emptied or set up for filling. Every time I left an empty or mostly empty box unattended he was into it. Once, I'd not turned my back a full minute and when I turned back he was not only in the boot box I'd just emptied of books but curled up in the snooze position with head tucked under. He lifted his head when I turned the camera on and the lens motor buzzed as it protruded.

Earlier he had been pouncing on every thing, grabbing, biting, batting. He found everything in those boxes more interesting than his own toys, from paper clips to rubber bands, from string to pencils, from loose paper to scissors, from plastic bags to cardboard anything. And Styrofoam bits. Is Merlin the only cat who thinks Styrofoam is better than a live mouse?

It amazed me how easily he switched modes too. That is something that has never come easy to me. I envied his ability to jump in a box and fall asleep in a minute or less. I envied his ability to feel relaxed.

During the sorting I had been handling all the little pieces of my 'toys' too and wishing I felt free to get out the projects they belonged to. From needlework to reading to fiction and poetry writing, from research to drawing to surfing the net. And the more I thought about it the more I realized it really was time. For one thing, I haven't touched my story files since the Sven challenge ended two weeks ago! It is time. And past time.

I relaxed then and enjoyed the weekend with Ed. We went out for breakfast and then shopping on Saturday morning. We both got new shoes and hair cuts. And he got me a flash drive. I encouraged him to use the computer all afternoon while I read. Sunday we did three loads of laundry and then took a walk in the falling snow to deliver a DVD and a couple of books to the library drop box. I got a couple dozen pictures of the snow and planned to post about it Sunday night but we didn't get the pictures off the camera before Ed went to bed. We got about nine inches of snow on Sunday.

I was so looking forward to Monday and having the room to myself for some hours while Ed was at work. Then I woke up with the headache that escalated into a migraine. I was useless for over twelve hours and slept for the following twelve.

I learned one thing though. The room is a much more pleasant place to be sick in than it ever has been before.

I woke up feeling fine about nine-thirty this morning only to discover that Ed was off today. So again I didn't get to have the room to myself to set up a project that needs spreading out. But I discovered that sharing the room is much easier now than it was. I spent a couple hours this afternoon reading a novel while Ed surfed and played games on the laptop held on his lap. We were both sitting up at the head of the bed and it seemed to be working. If you've seen the pictures I've been posting about the room project, you know there is only the bed for sitting on.

Speaking of pictures. Ed finally walked me through the process of getting the pictures off the camera onto the laptop. Shortly after that, I finally found the camera manual. It was in the last unsorted place. The dreaded junk drawer. The drawer from which things pop out like biscuit dough from those cardboard tubes whenever I open it. The drawer which I continued to stuff various odds and ends I could not readily identify a proper home for all through this project.

Ed suspects he will be off again tomorrow. There is more snow expected tonight and that affects the incoming and outgoing trucks so shipping will be light. If he is home tomorrow I am going to enlist his help in getting the after pictures taken so I can finally post them in my TT.