Taco Time

Yesterday Hubby and I were overwhelmed by the urge for fish tacos. Not just any fish taco. We specifically craved the Baja-style fish tacos from Tidal Taco Shack in Qualicum Bay. 

Qualicum Bay is about 50km to the south of our town, so a beautiful day that probably should have been devoted to the practicalities of home-ownership was spent meandering down-island in search of seafood. 

On the drive down we spotted a few other seafood lovers. 

Seagulls, and sealions and seals, oh my...

...and a mermaid to greet us at our destination. 

A few customers ahead of us meant that we had a short wait for our lunch, but our table had a great view, so we didn't mind.  

I suppose that this is where a practised blogger would insert a photo of their lunch. I didn't even consider taking a picture. Guess I need more practice! 

We spent some time exploring the seaside before we headed back home. I didn't realize that Hubby had snapped the picture below until later in the day. I quite like how it turned out, so I'm linking up with Patti over at Not Dead Yet Style for Visible Monday. Go check out the fun!

Cobwebs In My Closet

My enthusiasm for clutter clearing has waned. Not that I'm anywhere near clutter-clearing completion. Instead I keep finding other things to do. Things like napping, and eating pizza, and drinking beer with friends, and accidentally corrupting the youth of the Valley, and eating more pizza, and drinking more beer. You know. The important stuff. So much for keeping the agreement I made with myself to clear while others cleaned!

A couple of weeks ago I skipped out on my de-cluttering duties to attend a colleague's retirement tea. After the tea I wanted to run several errands before meeting Hubby for pizza and beer. 

I struggled to find an appropriate outfit for my afternoon plans. I wanted something that was comfortable for running errands, presentable for the retirement festivities, yet not too fancy-schmancy for the outdoor patio at the brewery. 

I stood in my bathrobe and flipped through the items in my closet. Nothing seemed quite right. Things that might have worked seemed too tight, too clingy or too confining. (Now that I review my pizza-and-beer-related activities, I think I can see why I was running into problems finding clothing that fit!) I became more and more irritated. Hangers were zinged across the rod with greater and greater force. That is until my zinging disturbed a big, hairy spider. It scurried across the item I was scowling at and disappeared into my clothing. 

Sadly, I was going through items so rapidly, and I was so stunned by the appearance of the spider, that my brain didn't register WHAT item it scurried across. I knew it was in there, but I didn't know where.  

My first impulse, once I stopped hyperventilating, was to set fire to the closet. Only the thought of our hot, dry summer prevented my going for the matches. I knew that any effort to torch the spider would likely result in the loss of the entire neighbourhood. 

Since I like to be a good neighbour, I promptly dismissed fire as a solution to my arachnid-contaminated wardrobe. The only reasonable solution was to replace all my clothes. Gingerly, so as not to provoke the spider into attack mode, I closed my closet door and started to plan my shopping spree. Except I was in my bathrobe. I couldn't go shopping for new clothes because I didn't have any clothes to wear shopping for new clothes. 

Darn.

In this case, it was fortunate that I'm a rather lazy housekeeper. (Hence the huge amounts of clutter and the need to pay someone else to clean.) I don't "find the time" to put away laundry. As a result, I was able to find a suitable outfit in a basket of clean clothing that hadn't yet made its way to the closet. It didn't solve the spider-in-my-wardrobe dilemma, but it allowed me to leave the house. 

Later, after some calmer reflection and a couple of beers, I realized that fire and shopping weren't the only solutions to my problem. The most reasonable, and the most scary, thing to do would be to clean out my closet. Maybe if there were fewer places to hide, spiders wouldn't be tempted to move in. I needed to clear out the cobwebs, so to speak.

It took a few days, and a lack of clean clothing, to work up the courage to begin the process. I took several deep breaths, opened the closet door, and gently plunged in. I hoped that the spider had moved on. It had not. For the record 20-plus-year-old broomstick skirts are the perfect hiding place for large, hairy spiders. The spider and the skirt were both disposed of, as were several other unused items in my closet. 

There's definitely more that could go, but I'm pleased with the start I've made. I didn't realize how many "shoulds" had been stored in my closet along with the clothes (and the spiders). It felt good to let go of items that I felt I should mend, or iron, lose 10 pounds in order to wear.  My closet feels lighter, more organized, and far less scary now.

Clutter Clearing Continues

Though it would be hard for anyone who doesn't live here to notice the difference, the clutter clearing continues.  

In fact, it may never end. It's much slower than I had anticipated. 

I've been concentrating on our office, and I've been paying particular attention to the contents of the file cabinet. You'd think shredding things like old bank statements, credit card statements and phone bills would be easy. You'd be wrong.

Want some insight into my madness? Let's consider credit card statements. A few years ago we had a break-in. The insurance company required proof that the items we were claiming actually existed. Among other things, it was handy to have credit card statements. With them I was able to show that items like my engagement ring "existed". Shredding more recent statements caused a few moments of anxiety as a result.  I worried that I might need them, and I feared that I should hang on to them as proof. Just in case. 

Bank statements were also problematic. It was sometimes difficult to consider what I spent money on in the past. Things I thought I couldn't live without then seem like foolish expenditures now. This was particularly true in cases where I could no longer remember what happened to the items in question.

Sifting through old phone bills brought a few sad moments. There were memories of talks with my sister in the days before MS changed her life so dramatically. And chats with my grandparents who have since passed away. And conversations with friends who I have since lost touch with. 

Still, it feels good to clear these things out, to have a moment of remembering, to learn what I can, and to let go. 

Even though you can't really see the difference the room is starting to feel lighter. And so am I.

This is but one of many, many bags of shredded paper that went to the road. 
It's normal to get up at stupid o'clock to take moodily-lit photos of your recycling, right? 

Figs!

I arrived home from work Tuesday evening to find treasure. Look!

Friends were harvesting figs from the tree in their yard. While I was at work they called Hubby and told him to come and get some. Yippee! 

Fresh figs are a recent discovery for me.  I'd had them dried before, but never had the chance to try fresh figs until a couple of years ago. Sooooo good.  As their season is short, and as they can be rather pricey out of season, they are a rare treat. Arriving home to find more than a dozen on our counter practically made me giddy. I've had more figs this week than I've had in a year. And there's still a few left. We're lucky and grateful to have such generous friends. So, if our figgy friends are reading this, thanks!

Boppity, Boppity, Bop!

Sharing because I love it! Thank you Mr. Breathed!

He's back!
He's back!
Great brains and beauty,
He's a hot patootie!
Boppity, boppity, bop!*

Yesterday my workday ended on a sour note. That sourness followed me all the way home. My inner, middle-aged curmudgeon wasn't so "inner" any more. 

I would have stomped around the house if my feet weren't so sore after being on them all day.

Then I found the above comic strip on Facebook. 

Oh happy day! And it looks like there are more happy days to come.

Suddenly I'm 21 again, and I'm doing my dance of joy.

Except only in my head. 'Cause, you know, middle-aged. Sore feet. But so glad to see the Bloom County crew again. Thank you Mr. Breathed! You've made my day!


*Paraphrasing from my memory of an old Bloom County comic strip. As such, it's probably nowhere near the original. Apologies to my readers, but mostly to the marvellous, wonderful and entertaining Mr. Berkeley Breathed. 

Magic Mike XXL - Random Thoughts from a Middle-Aged Woman

I didn't see the first Magic Mike movie. It wasn't a conscious choice. It just wasn't on my radar at the time. Still, when a friend invited me to see the second movie I was happy to go. I was pretty sure that my lack of familiarity with the franchise wouldn't interfere with my enjoyment of the movie. I wasn't wrong, but as you can see from my observations below, I'm pretty sure I wasn't entertained in the way the writers intended! 

• Nice moves!
• He's going to hurt himself dancing around the workshop like that.
• Where are his safety boots? Those sneakers may be good for dancing, but they're not going to help him if he drops an armoire on his foot. He should be wearing steel-toed boots.
• I can't look. He's going to slip and end up crotch-first on that bench grinder. Forget the steel-toed boots. This guy needs chain-mail underpants.
• Pool-side in a suit and tie. I bet they're going to push him in. Yep. They did. He probably only has the one suit. Bet it was dry-clean only. Poor guy. 
• What's with the bikini-clad woman in the helmet? Must be something from the first movie.
• Did he just say "bang her"? Maybe I didn't hear right. They are kind of mumbling. Isn't thinking that others are mumbling a sign of hearing loss? Maybe I need to make an appointment with an audiologist.
• Nope. I heard it again. Do guys really say that? 
• It's Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. In a Fro-Yo truck.
• They're throwing all those costumes out the window. What a waste!
• I wonder what the road clean-up crew thought when they found all that stuff? We never found anything fun like that when I worked on the road crew. We did find a sliced-up, inflatable sex-doll in a ditch once, but that was just creepy.
• I wonder if members of the film crew follow along and pick up all that stuff? 
• I wonder if they'd hire me to do that job? I have experience. See above.
• Hey! I think I had brunch at this place (Rome's club) in the 80's! I don't remember it being quite this exciting, though after-hours entertainment like this would explain the number of expensive sports-cars in the parking lot early in the day. What was that place called? Strawberry...something.
• Oh, wait. This is supposed to be Savannah, and the place I was at was in Florida. I guess all those old, Southern manor-houses look the same.
• The dancer just put that woman on a massage table, but he didn't give her a massage! That's just cruel! I thought this club was supposed to be all about knowing what women want! 
• Isn't that the guy from Community? Danny Glover? No wait. That's the guy from Lethal Weapon... Donald Glover! That's it.
• Good to see Andy McDowell in a movie. It's been a long time. She looks great. And she gets to have sex with the well-hung guy. What the heck was his name again? Anyway, good for her! Sex Lies and Videotape is the last movie I saw where she got laid. And I think her partner was the vacuum cleaner in that one.
• Elizabeth Banks is in the movie and the writers have the women going wild over a Twilight-inspired routine. Couldn't they have done a Hunger Games routine? That could have been funny. Too obvious? How about Zack and Miri Make a Porno? Seems appropriate.
• Imagine if the convention was in Canada? All those women would be trading in their bills for rolls of loonies at the door. A tsunami of Canadian dollars could do some serious damage.
• Fro-Yo guy just covered those women in whipped cream. Hope he's going to pay for their dry-cleaning.
• Who knew you could get all the materials for a sex-swing-chair-thing at your local hardware store?
• What is with all the face-to-crotch moves in these routines? Eww. It's July. In the South. It's hot. It's humid. Even with the best air conditioning things are going to be a bit...swampy. Not sexy.
• Well-hung guy is just going to leave that woman in the sex-swing-chair-thing and watch the rest of the show? He put her in there, he should at least help her out!
• I'm pretty sure Mike just kneed Zoe in the head. Also not sexy.
• That poor woman is still hanging in that swing. That guy is such a dick! Oh, that's his name. Big Dick!
• I'm surprised Mike didn't drop Zoe on her head. I wonder how many times they had to rehearse this? I bet she had to wear knee-pads. And a helmet.
• Nice moves!

Overall, Magic Mike XXL was a fun movie that generally didn't require a lot of thought, which gave me the opportunity for lots of random thoughts of my own!

Return of the Clutter-Buster

There was a brief flurry of activity here a couple of weeks ago, then nothing. No, I didn't get crushed by the mountain of clutter. Hubby and I travelled to Ontario to visit family. While there we attended my niece's high-school graduation. An entrance scholarship was earned. A bursary was awarded. We are very proud. 

Now we're back, and the de-cluttering has started again. But why the sudden interest in order and organization?

Actually, the interest has always been there, but I struggle with motivation. I get so overwhelmed by the perceived amount of work that I have trouble getting started. 

Just before we left for Ontario, I decided to hire someone to clean our house while we were away. That got me motivated! If I expected her to dust my desk, I needed to make it possible for her to find my desk. 

I was so grateful to come home to a clean house. There were clean towels in the bathroom and clean sheets on the bed. Our flight was sooooo early that there was no chance to take care of those things before we left. The house didn't have that musty, closed-up-for-weeks smell that often greets us after time away. Luxury.

I was even more grateful that I didn't have to do it myself. I usually clean before we go away, but I knew I'd be pressed for time before this trip. Hiring someone else to clean took a lot of pressure off, and I was much more relaxed about getting ready to go. Not necessarily relaxed. Just more relaxed than normal. 

The experience was so positive that I decided to hire the same person to clean on a regular basis. There is a catch though. While she cleans I have to take care of some of the other tasks that have been neglected. Like clearing the clutter from my desk. Or my file cabinet. Or my closet...

As you can see there's a lot to do. It's hard to decide where to start, but instead of feeling overwhelmed I'm feeling rather excited about the challenge. 

Expect more posts about the strange things I find while de-cluttering. It keeps me amused while I work, and it makes letting go of some of these items easier if know I can come back here to visit them from time to time.