Playing Musical Places

 

The Bed Alcove
showing the back wall cleared for the shelves and the table moved in for the build

The last ten days has been a hectic blur of shifting stuff from one place to another.  At one point as I was moving things from one shelf to another for the fifth or sixth time for those items, I said to myself, 'This reminds me of musical chairs.  Without the music.'  So I started thinking of it as 'musical shelves' but soon I realized it wasn't just shelves, it was every conceivably nameable place: wall, corner, cupboard, counter, box, bag, floor, table, chair, tramp, tub, sink...

All that shifting of stuff wasn't random but always part of a preplanned project with a goal that was, I hoped, possible to reach before time for the next event that required me to have the area(s) affected returned from chaos to functional.  Events like time for meal prep and eating, time to prepare for the arrival of my caretaker to help with mundane chores and errand running, time to stop making noise that could disturb my neighbor, time to lay out my mattress or  even just time to stop and take stock of my surroundings to confirm that I'd left a clear path between wherever I was standing and both doors and the bathroom.  That latter is an important self-care habit that I try to remember to do as frequently as every twenty minutes because my vision impairment puts me at risk of nasty jarring incidents if not outright falls.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The projects that required all this shifting of stuff were of several categories.  There was the unpacking of boxes and bags, the unboxing of amazon orders, the building of shelf units, the experimenting with the placement of furniture sized items and the sorting, purging and organizing of a category of items.  The projects must likely to take longer than anticipated and thus have negative ripple effects on the functionality of the places and myself were the shelf building.  They required having enough floor space to spin the unit in place with room for me to walk around at least one end of it.  In other words I needed an approximately six foot diameter space.  The only way to get that was to shift a lot of stuff to the front wall of the living room.

Three Happy Places Smooshed into One
making room for the shelf build in the bed alcove

All of this shifting around played havoc with my happy places.  Those areas of calm and functionality I established in the first days.  I kept having to compromise one or more in minor or major ways.  For the three days it took me to build the 5x6 cube unit for the back wall of the bed alcove, I had to smoosh three happy places into the 6x4 foot space in front of the front room window so that I could move half the huge bags of crafts into the front room and move the table in there to build the first two layers.

The three happy places smooshed into a space equivalent to a queen sized mattress were the tramp, my desk for reading/writing/viewing and my bed.  When the mattress was on the floor I had to walk across it to get to the tramp or the desk, when the mattress was folded it had to be on the tramp.  I had to live with this set up for two full days and the first night I had worked long past the cut off for potentially noisy activities trying to make sure I could have my bed in the bed alcove.  By the time I gave up the sky was already pale and by the time I had my bed made the three windows viewable from my pillows were bright and there was no way to turn my back on all three at the same time.  Between the light and the pain in my back and feet and the fretting over needing to be awake in four hours to prepare for the arrival of my caretaker (the 7th new girl in under 5 months) I could not sleep.

Tho I didn't sleep I made myself stay put with my eyes closed until my alarm went off at 9 and then got up to prepare for the arrival of my caregiver at 12:30 by making a list of the things I needed her help with while I drank my coffee, making sure the floors were clear in the kitchen and living room for sweeping and mopping, gathering all the cardboard boxes needing to be broke down and stuffed in the bins, placing all the dirty dishes in the sink, and getting a shower.  I was going to do up all the dishes except the crock pot which I'd dropped three times when I washed it after pulling it out of the box from the 2013 move from the Rogue Valley. But I ran out of time.

But then it didn't matter after all as the caregiver did not show up.  It turned out she got lost trying to find my place and because I was so busy watching for her at the window I did not think to check my Google Voice mail for messages from her boss until 45 minutes after she was due and by then it was too late.  I was so tempted to put my bed back down and sleep away the heat of the day but the issue of the window light and the neighbor noise made that unappealing.  So I returned to work on the shelf.

Not sure that was wise tho as I made so many mistakes I am sure I doubled the effort with half the return.  I kept having to undo and redo things.  Things put in backwards or upside down.  Things put in off center.  Things put in before realizing that the thing below it was not secure so it had to come back out in order to get at the loose piece and secure it.

So it was unsurprising that I was unable to finish the shelf in time for bedtime Tuesday night which came as soon as the window light was minimal enough--around 8:30.  In spite of the pain in my back and feet being worse than the night before, I slept hard Tuesday night right through until the light from the kitchen window filled the front rooms around 7.

The Portable Yarn Closet Returned to Its Place After Spending Three Days Cat-a-Corner

I finally got the shelf unit finished Wednesday late afternoon in plenty of time to experiment with its placement and the placement of other large items.  In preparing the space for building the shelves I'd concluded that the portable closet I'd set up beside the hall door which held all the never-been-on-the-hook yarn and thread was not going to fit with the shelves so I'd moved it to the opposite corner of the alcove by the window.  But that was before I'd decided to combine the pieces of three kits for units three cubes wide into one unit 4 cubes wide by 6 cubes tall.  Now the closet would fit and that was where I preferred it so that meant pulling at least a dozen 11 gallon and 22 gallon bags out, piling them in the living room, moving the closet and putting them all back.  The reverse of what I'd done Monday afternoon to prep for the project.

The Yarn Closet and the New Shelf Unit In Place

Once I was happy with the placement of the closet and the shelves and the bags of craft stuff destined for those shelves, I could put the rest of the alcove together according to the plan I'd had for over a week.  I moved the tramp in under the window and then spread the fleece rug in front of it to mark the space for my bed and stood the folded mattress up against the shelves.

The Bed Alcove With Tramp and Bed Space In Place

Now I was free to recreate my read/write/view happy place in the location I'd been envisioning as it's long-term home ever since I first toured the unit over a month ago: The front wall with my desk placed so I could look out the window while I wrote.  I would be putting it together with boards across cardboard boxes, a bit flimsy and far from the ideal I have pictured but functional enough and a right proper reward for the last three days of chaos, pain and fatigue.

My Read/Write/View Happy Place Re-Created Now In Its Home Space

After I got that set up I fixed a salad and ate while watching MASH and Gomer Pyle.  That was the first time in a week that I'd been able to stay awake for the final scene of a sitcom tho I'd made watching one part of my bedtime ritual.  Maybe it was only because I was sitting in my office chair with food in my hands instead of reclining with the DVD player on my belly.  But it was at least partly pure exhilaration. 

It was while enjoying my replaced happy places Wednesday night, that I conceived the plan to spend as much time there over the next three days as I'd spent on my feet over the previous four of five days.  In light of the anticipated heat wave with temps expected to hit triple digits it seemed a wise plan and not just self-indulgent.  Add in the fact that incipient blisters on the soles and toes of both feet were making standing and walking excruciating and it seemed insane to expect myself to continue the work at the same pace.

My new caregiver agreed with me Thursday afternoon and suggested I needed to stay off my feet as much as possible for at least three days to allow those hot spots on my feet to heal before they became real blisters and thus at risk for infection.  She also coached me on the protocols for surviving an exceptionally hot day without air-conditioning: hydration, closing windows and blinds before the air warms up in the mornings and keeping them closed until the air outside is cooler than the air inside, frozen wet towels, minimize exertion..  Most of which I was well versed in after living for decades in the Rogue Valley where triple digit days were common in July through September.

The thermostat on my fan read in the high 80s by mid afternoon Friday and flickered between 89 and 90 several times before 10:30 that night when, just out of curiosity I opened the front door to see how warm the air was outside only to discover that it was much cooler with a nice breeze already.  That seemed to indicate the heat dome had moved on or broken up.  It was a nice marine air flow and I opened up all the windows.

The Front Room
I Can't Wait to See My Books Fill Up Those Top Two Levels

Nothing is the same as It was Wednesday evening or even Thursday evening when a few of these pics were taken as I continue playing musical places.  For example, my sister brought the blue six cube shelf unit I had at Mom's since 2016 over on Friday and Saturday I discovered it's parts were the same as the 9 cube unit I had yet to assemble and I decided I'd combine them into one larger unit 3 cubes wide.  I finished that Saturday evening and today, Sunday, I unpacked four large bags and two large boxes of the craft stuff that had been on shelves or in drawers or bags at Mom's.  Now both of the shelf units I built in the last week are loaded up.  But I'm going to have to unload the blue one tomorrow to fix several spots on one level where I put pieces in upside down and one pipe that came loose from its slot.   I'll probably move it all over to the top two levels of the two load-bearing bookshelves on the opposite wall which I just got cleared off in anticipation of bringing my books over from Mom's.

And so I continue to play musical places