In Place/Out of Place

The Microwave and Toaster Oven are Now In Place

Thanks to my caregiver yesterday afternoon we unboxed and set up the toaster oven and microwave.  This afternoon I got Ed's knives placed in their rack.  That's about the extent of new placements that are intended to stay put since...I don't know...Sunday?  The rest has been a swirl of chaos including bringing in two more van loads of stuff and a grocery shop.

The Corner Connecter and Figure 3 Brackets

I spent most of Monday afternoon and evening getting those figure 3 brackets mounted on the shelf unit I built Sunday.  I learned that it would have been much easier to mount them during the build process. Not least because I had to pull everything off the shelves that I'd placed there Sunday. 

It took me over six hours to do it the hard way often pulling another 'cube' or shelf out of the corner connecters while wrestling the brackets onto another one.  By the end of the second hour my thumb and first two fingers on my right had felt the same as they once did after pushing a needlepoint needle for eight hours.  They still feel bruised five days later.

I learned another important lesson about those shelves: Measure the item you are trying to place on them and don't force if there is resistance.

A Displaced Shelf

When I tried to put a box of notebooks on this shelf Thursday morning it was a smidge too wide and it popped off the corner connecter on the left and dumped the box to the floor spilling out the notebooks.  But it didn't happen immediately but a good half an hour after I finished placing as many items as I could from the boxes we brought from Mom's Tuesday, trying to clear the table to make room for the anticipated haul that afternoon.  One of the items I place on top of the box of notebooks was a tray full of my desk toys or as they are known among the autism community--fidget toys.

Desk Toys aka Fidget Toys

When this box fell the items in it scattered from the breakfast bar to the edge of the tramp, under the table and all the way to the edge of the area rug in the bed alcove and nearly to the front door.  It took me a really long time to pick them up and be sure I had them all.  This also meant that This morning, instead of breaking out the box with the second shelf unit and starting to build it, I had to fix the first one beginning by pulling every thing off the shelves which was an extra challenge in light of the new load brought in yesterday afternoon.

Then as if that wasn't enough, either while pulling it off the shelf or putting it back on, I unplugged the wifi box and took myself off the Internet which I did not discover until after I had the shelf fixed and everything back on the shelves including the wifi box.  To plug it back in I had to pull the unit away from the wall at least two inches to get access to the cord and the back of the box.  I took a big chance doing that without unloading the shelves first as I could have popped one or more of the corner connecters off if I put too much strain on them.

Jumbled Ribbons

Yet another chaos ambush happened at Mom's Thursday afternoon while pulling drawers of craft supplies out of one of my three rolling carts and packing them in a box.  I bumped a large box of well organized ribbons over and ended up with what you see in the pic after chasing them all down.  That is going to take me hours to untangle and reroll.

Sewing Kit Chaos

While packing those rolling cart drawers tho I re-discovered a similar jumble from when one of those drawers got pulled out too far and spilled.  I didn't have time at that moment to reorganize it so I put everything back in willy nilly.  The items in this drawer were some of the most frequently used while working fiber art projects so I expected I would deal with it soon but then Ed died and I stopped crocheting.  Since most of the items in this drawer were part of the traveling kit I took with me to Ed's every Sunday, it was very nearly a grief grenade to encounter it suddenly like that.  But I did not have time to indulge in feelings.

I'm not yet done with the chaotic displacement theme for the week.

Soon after my caregiver left on Thursday, I discovered that I'd lost yet another pair of reading glasses sometime since leaving the house.  My habit is to hang them off my collar or stick them atop my head but they always fall off when I bend over too far.  So who knows which time I bent over that afternoon was the time they fell.  But they were the second pair I'd misplaced that way this week.  The other pair is definitely here at my place somewhere but I did my best to trace my tracks that day and did not find them.  I can't put anymore time or energy into it.  So I was glad that I'd grabbed a third pair from my note taking station at Mom's.  Glad that is until I discovered that they were one of the extra strong ones and I have to have my nose nearly touching the item I'm looking at to get it in focus.

My only other option was to tear into the pile of craft bags on the window wall of the bed alcove looking for the bag where I packed my collection of dollar store reading glasses in multiple strengths.  I really did not want to take that pile down again until it was time to unpack onto the shelves.  But after realizing what a hassle it was to read, write and thus blog with my nose an inch from the screen, I gave in shortly after I finished reloading the shelves in the living room.

Not done yet.

Earlier while I was writing the first sentences of this post, the tower of boxes by my left elbow that comprise the charging station for my electronic devices collapsed forward almost spilling everything out atop my Windows tablet directly below.  I prevented that disaster by throwing my left arm in front of the tipping tower and pushed my desk away with my feet so I could stand and deal with it.  That took an hour take apart and put back together smaller and sturdier.

Charging Station Tower Before the Fall

The weak link was the brown Amazon box.  I should have known better.

Visible directly atop the crate of books is the box of notebooks that I broke the shelf unit with Thursday.

The top one holds my DVD player. The second one down holds my Library of Congress Talking Book device.

The two 7 inch Nexus tables are now charging on the top under the lamp until I make my bed when I'll move them down to the bench where I can reach them without getting up. That was working just fine before I add the extra box yesterday.  I live with it.  This 'happy place' set up is temporary.  I can get fussy about minor details when I put together my long term writing and sleeping and recreation areas.

One last out of place thing for this post.  

The Table Shoved Away From Its Center Place

It is really bugging me but can't be helped.  I had to move the table from its place in the center of the room towards the far corner while putting the brackets on the shelves Monday and then Tuesday crammed more boxes under it, unpacked a few of them but added more Thursday.  I'm leaving it as is until I get the second shelf unit built but then I'll have to shift everything except the boxes up against the front wall  towards the front door to put the second shelf unit in place.  At that point I can unload most of the boxes onto the shelves and put the table under the light again.

At least I've managed to keep my tramp in place and free of clutter and continue to use it multiple times per day.  It helps calm the chaos in my mind.  I've also noticed far less issues with backache at the end of the day since I started taking rebounding breaks.