New Year’s Closet Cleanup!

Five days (four days and a wake-up) to go before the Big Double-Deboobification Caper, I decide that as long as I’m stocking up and organizing things for friends who have kindly volunteered to help out, nothing will do but what I need to shovel out the long-neglected hall closet, which holds everything from perfume and hair conditioner to candles to the dog and the human first-aid kits.

Tidying cabinetry is not my favorite activity. Wouldn’t go so far as to say I hate it, as in hate grading freshman comp papers. But it is a pain.

Threw out an entire, large basket full of debris, stale bottles of pills, lifetime supplies of junk that should’ve been bought at Walgreen’s in human quantities, not at Costco in elephantine quantities.

Discovered a number of valuable precious commodities, gew-gaws, and gadgets that have been “lost” for some months or years. Glad to get those back.

Found a bunch of batteries. Moved them into the battery drawer in the other room.

Scrounged up a bunch of boxes from the garage, the office closet, underneath and on top and inside of places… Used these to organize the potpourri of junk, pill bottles, shampoo bottles, Bandaid containers, and whatnot. Even put labels on them, so as to remind myself to put stuff back where it belongs.

The result is not bad: certainly much more usable and less annoying than it was! The shelves are crowded but not jammed, and everything is within reach. The dog meds are organized; the first-aid  kit is organized; and next time I get a cold, I can pull out the humidifier without bringing half-a-dozen Ikea pillar candles down on my head.

Very nice.

Ate one of the four lamb shanks I cooked up yesterday in anticipation of the medical chivaree. Should have  left it in the freezer, but it’s SO cold today and I was hungry and didn’t want to go fiddle with the barbecue.

Continued fiddling with the pool’s acid level. Wonder how on earth I’m going to persuade someone to add a couple of cups of acid to that thing three or four times a day. Realize I’m not. Disgusted.

When you drain and refill a plaster pool, the water is basic: pH of 8.2 or higher. You want to get it way down in to the range of 7.6. This entails adding muriatic acid in amounts of no more than about three cups at a time until you get it down into the “ideal” range, and continuing to add acid until the pH stabilizes at that level. It takes a LONG time. A couple of weeks of fooling with it every day, several times a day.

I’d hoped it would be OK by the time I have to go in for the next round of surgery, but pretty clearly, it’s not gonna happen. I won’t be able to pick up a bucketful of water with acid mixed in and slosh it into the deep end of the pool. So somehow I’m going to have to persuade someone to do it for me. Hm.

Created a guide for our journal authors explaining key differences between Chicago author-date and APA style. Most of them are sociologists or cultural historians and so are used to APA style. The differences are subtle but significant. That took half the day. Shipped it off to our client editors and my associate editor for review and critique.

Many, many more things to do in the miles before I rest, etherized upon a table…

Tomorrow must make a Costco run: out of stuff for breakfast. Out of a lot of other things, too. Then off to AJ’s and Fry’s, in search of the half-dozen rolls of dog food needed to last the hounds through until I’ll be well enough to buy and cut up new rolls of food. That’ll occupy most of the day.

When, for crying out loud, am I going to get any work done between now and the 6th? Besides three client projects, I still have to do the course prep for the magazine writing course! Holy sh*t.