(If this is the first Keep or Purge :: Trash or Treasure post that you have stumbled upon, you might want to check out my explanation of it here. Basically, I am sharing my real life struggles with deciding what to do with the STUFF in my life.)
Greeting cards. Cards for birthdays, holidays, wedding showers, baby showers….
I have a hard time throwing away something that someone else gave to me. Often these are bought and given without much thought, sometimes they have heartfelt, handwritten messages inside. Occasionally they will be handmade, like the one on top of the stack.
What do you do with them?
Kevin James has a bit about greeting cards:
I have to say my opinion of them is mostly like his “man’s” view of greeting cards as opposed to the “woman’s” view. I dunno. But I still find it hard to throw them away. I mean what is the proper length of time to keep one before you throw it away?
Once I saw a beautiful silver card rack on a blog. It was from Pottery Barn or something, but I couldn’t find any when I Googled it. There are specialty ones for Christmas, such as wire trees, wreaths, and curly wall displays. This blog has a post about displaying, recycling, and keeping a select few. Do you display them and then toss them?
Where have I been? At the Telluride Bluegrass Festival! Here are some highlights from our weekend:
In these first photos we are watching Bela Fleck in Elks Park.
Mostly I spent the weekend tending to the baby while my friends drank and had a blast. A lot of time was spent by me and my husband, cupping our hands over Sebastian’s ears. We wish we had looked into ear-plug-muffs before we left.
The last night was in the 40s with freezing rain. We sat under our canopy chairs in the rain for Mumford & Sons.
Here is a 20 second clip of the rain:
And for the last Mumford & Sons song we were huddled in our chairs and I was cupping Sebby’s ears, but the energy of everyone in the crowd, ah, it still puts tears in my eyes. My husband and I were both kicking ourselves for not filming it, but this person did:
When the clouds broke, we looked behind us and there was new snow dumped on the mountains.
We stuck it out and were rewarded by an awesome performance by Robert Plant.
Led Zeppelin is possibly my all time favorite band.
We returned Monday afternoon, and now my husband’s parents are in town for the week. I know I missed the Keep or Purge :: Trash or Treasure last week. I hope to resume it this Thursday or Friday.
(If this is the first Keep or Purge :: Trash or Treasure post that you have stumbled upon, you might want to check out my explanation of it here. Basically, I am sharing my real life struggles with deciding what to do with the STUFF in my life.)
And now, the counterpart to last weeks vintage rocking horse.
This was my rocking elephant. My mother can’t remember who made it, but somebody did. It’s missing one of it’s rocking legs. I’ve been moving it from house to house with the leg, but I don’t know what happened to it in the last move.
It turns out that our neighbors like to refinish furniture and have a store, so I might ask them to fix it up for me. What do you think? Should I keep it? Should I get rid of it? Is it garbage? Should it go to Goodwill?
Ever since I took physics in high school, I’ve joked that my intertia is at rest. I’ve never been a “doer.” I’m more of a … sitter. And, I suppose, a thinker. Nevertheless, I’m quite prone to do-nothingism.
(A surprising amount of people Google do-nothingism, I’ve discovered. One of my most popular posts is Battle Do-Nothingism With a Stew and Feel Better, in which I was feeling pretty depressed, forced myself to cook, and felt better in the end.)
The idea is that when you are not in a mood to enjoy or do anything, if you do something, anything, you will feel somewhat better.
But what do you do when your stike against do-nothingism fails?
Last week, I had finally motivated myself to cook something again, something more exciting than whole wheat mac and cheese, and I made a very fancy quinoa salad. Though I wasn’t feeling particularly good that day, I took the little one shopping, almost gave up when the first store didn’t even have zucchini, forged ahead, even when Sebastian tried to thwart my efforts, and produced a finished quinoa salad, with currants, dill, zucchini, and lemon …
… that sucked.
I felt bad, I pushed myself to do something, and I still felt bad.
Almost worse. There was an angry moment of failure where I wanted to cry. Just for a moment. So I lashed out at my husband (sorry, Tim).Then I went to bed.
During my many night-time awakenings, I kept envisioning drying the soggy quinoa in the oven somehow. And maybe it would have been enough to spread it on a cookie sheet and dry it that way, I don’t know. But I still needed to “do” something.
So, as I’ve already chronicled, I got up the next day and turned my soggy quinoa into muffins (which honestly, were, meh – still a little soggy in the middle, and not my favorite flavors).
And, that day, I was flying high with my “doing!” I thought,
“This is it! This really is the solution to all my mood problems! I need to “do!” And the more I do the better I’ll feel. I’ll cook all the time. I’ll spend all day in the kitchen! And because I’m in here all the time, I’ll keep it clean. I’ll have more energy, I’ll exercise more, I’ll throw in a load of laundry here and there, clean the bathrooms, and every day I’ll just get better and better at this thing called life!”
I was all excited about posting about my new epiphany and my raised energy levels.
And then yesterday – I felt like CRAP again.
I’m not giving up on this “do something, anything” idea, though. I do think it’s essential in fighting depression. So, yesterday, I strapped Sebastian into the mei tai baby carrier and I cleaned as much as I could of this messy house, even though I was feeling terribly overwhelmed. I put some clutter away, I washed a few pots and pans, I did a load of laundry, I broke down several boxes, and put most of the tower of recyling in the garage. And I felt alright come bedtime.
And I feel somewhat better today.
I guess I’m proud of myself for not letting my cooking failure get the best of me. I kicked do-nothingism in the butt, and it did make me feel better for awhile.
It’s just that there isn’t a an accomplishment in the world that will make me feel good all the time.
My days are a series of exaggerated highs and lows in a sea of lethargy.
I mean, I know that’s pretty normal. Most “mommy bloggers” admit to being quite a moody bunch. But, then, there are also a lot of people who have a ton of energy, and aren’t overwhelmed by every little thing that must be done to keep a house clean and food on the table.
I dunno. Maybe I just need to cut out caffeine, or sugar, or gluten.
