Jaci Dawn

Not quite a “spree” as I move rather slowly these days, but-

I attacked the kitchen a week ago. We bought the house already remodeled: the cupboards came from our neighbor’s house. The windows had vinyl Venetian blinds. We have done nothing to change the kitchen in the 17 years we have lived here: it’s too small, there’s little storage space, it’s too dark. I’ve threatened to paint the wood-stained cupboards to lighten it up. I hate the Formica countertop even though it is a blue shade (my favorite color). There’s no tile back-splash behind the sink (and, indeed, there’s probably dry rot in the countertop wood). We won’t discuss how I felt about the Venetian blinds.

Those, at least, are gone. I climbed onto the countertop and took a flat-head screw driver to them. And I am amazed at how much light those windows let in!

I will have to buy hardware and install normal kitchen curtains before summer, but that is beside the point. I actually like the dark cupboards with the natural light!

Well, and a new countertop and stainless steel sink. That’s a project for down the road – once I start pulling out that sink, I may find there’s dry rot in there and that thought is scary. Our son-in-law the plumber declined to even look at the sink because he’s worried about dry rot. My husband is not “the handyman you think I am” (his words to me – except I already knew that. You don’t live with someone for nearly 40 years and still have very many fantasies about their superpowers left).

Some tips: rubbing alcohol removed dried on grease & dirt (we don’t have a range fan installed & the range is against an inside wall – venting would have to come through the floor of my studio. NOT.) I use Amway’s LOC to clean walls, a trick I learned ages ago as a young woman. You don’t need to use very much & it cleans cigarette residue as well. I mean years of cigarette residue. I do not sell Amway & this is the only product I purchase. I use very little of it.

And never, ever, install vinyl Venetian blinds in a kitchen. Please.

I struggle with words these days.

A season – no more.

Empty

of my words.

“Have you adjusted to retirement yet?”

If my husbands answers, he says something about my inability to sleep in/stay up late, but that seem to be enjoying my time “off”.

But if you were to ask me, I’d say that it’s going jolly well, although a bit slow. I’ve organized my studio.

Yes, it still looks cluttered, but it’s only 20×20′ (give or take) and I have a lot of artistic hobbies. If I can see the area rug in its entirety, I consider the room “clean” and “organized”. Each hobby has its own area. (That’s Godot, my first faerie creation,enjoying my wicker chair. Godot is several years old now.)

I have cleaned out my closet and dresser, and presently have four or five boxes of items to donate to a thrift shop, much of which is business attire. I am not a business attire sort of person. I’m a blue jeans and tee shirt sort of girl, maybe a hippie dress in the summer, and I’ve recently discovered how comfy yoga pants really are (especially for those of us with a bit of a muffin top).

Have you been watching that series on Netflix about decluttering? Well, I have not. I don’t think she can help me. Much of what we own (that clutters our lives) is vintage and antique, unusual, and definitely collectible. And there are the books, which, if you have followed me over the years, are currently in shelves approximating the Dewey Decimal system. The books are a pleasure to us. Apparently, Marie Kondo, hostess of the Netflix series, believes that one should own no more than 30 books.

No. Just – NO. The unread ones beckon, the vintage ones scintillate, the antique ones are bound in leather, and the resource ones have SO.MUCH.INFORMATION in them. What butterfly is that? What herb & what use? What mammal? What bird? What rock? There are a ton of books on our shelves that beg, “Re-read me” even though I’ve read them several times over.

OK, I do have some cheap paperback mystery/romance books to recycle at our local library’s used book store.

I have also been s-l-o-w-l-y cleaning the bathroom. I thought I’d be done by now with such a small room (6×9′ give or take a foot) but it hasn’t worked out that way. I damaged my right rotator cuff and I have to do the work with my left hand/arm. I’m ambidextrous, so that isn’t a problem, but I do tend to use the right arm more out of habit and the sheer strength of the arm. I’m scrubbing te lodged in dirt out of the baseboards, scrubbing the stained white linoleum, and scouring the porcelain. The shower stall has been the worst: soap scum & mildew. I an claim I am finished with that corner now, but the truth of the matter is this: nothing gets rid of the mildew. Today, I bleached. No go. We’ll have to pull the caulking out and clean, then re-caulk with mildew resistant caulking.  There’s no getting around it.

However, I have scrubbed the soap scum off the glass doors and you can see through them clearly now. It’s amazing! I’m trying to do this without using chemicals, but sometimes I have had to capitulate. It is slow going, but I am loving the results. I’d rather have tile in that room and a little more color than white. I have managed to not hurt my shoulder anymore, and that’s huge. I’m not sure how it will work when I try to clean underneath the full-sized cast iron claw foot bathtub..

Meanwhile, I am also working on some of those myriad hobbies, but that’s for later.

My answer to the question? I only retired from the 9-5 routine. I have so much more work to do, and time to do it now! I love it!

I have debated whether to write this morning and look back at the past year or to wait until tomorrow and start all over. 2018 was nothing short of a disaster for my personal goals, and – yet – it heralded a positive lifestyle change in the very last moments.

There were days when I felt I was in a black eddy, sucked into a whirlpool of mediocrity where all creativity, imagination, and desire was sucked out of me. I got up in the mornings, went through my paces, drank my coffee. The highlight of my weekdays was my ten o’clock and 3 o’clock breaks at work, when I’d wander down to a nearby duck pond and visit the semi-tame puddle ducks there. Occasionally, something interesting would happen on my walks (I did rescue some ducklings caught in a drain). More often than nought, those walks were times of prayer, meditation, and questioning.

The job was losing its luster. Good changes came in waves, but I felt no enthusiasm for them nor for the bright and shiny new tech tools that were dropped in front of our collective noses like carrots before the proverbial horse on a treadmill. I nibbled, but the taste seemed bland. The company offered carrots and I wanted apples and molasses-sweetened oats.

There were high points to the year, of course: my garden, the birds that fill our little 10,000 square feet haven of pesticide- and herbicide- free patch, the trip to South Dakota and home,  our exploration of the local brew pub culture. and our grandchildren and their parents coming for a long visit. The presence of our grandchildren pushed me toward being creative again: they begged to see and play with my little canvases of animals.

The ale caused me to gain weight.

The lowest point of the year was the loss of my father-in-law, a man so red-neck and boisterous that his loss sucked a hole in our universe. It’s hard to describe Sonny without describing all his shortcomings, but it was those very things that endeared him to us. Sonny’s life was construction, hunting, fishing, hunting, and fishing. Did I mention he loved to hunt and fish? One cannot think of Sonny without thinking of rifles, camo gear and fishing rods.

Emotionally, psychologically – the year was a cess-pool. I stepped carefully around my own illness, uninspired, tired, drained – it was as though I looked at my creative self and murmured, “Someday, I’ll rescue you, but for now, you stay locked in this tower room. I can’t help you, and you can’t help me.” I don’t even have the long hair to lower to a prince in disguise (nor did I sense there was a prince to come to my rescue).

I made the decision to jump out of the frying pan into ice cold water sometime before the fourth quarter of the year: I would retire at the end of 2018, putting to rest the anxiety of getting up every morning and doing work that didn’t benefit me in any other way except to put money in the coffers. It was a freeing decision. I applied for Social Security early and began counting down the days and hours. 2019 would be the first time in my life that I would have a little income coming in and a whole lot of time to myself (no small children) in which I could pursue my dreams. It wouldn’t be lot of money, but enough to help cover the bills and feed us.

The change came a tad bit earlier than I expected: my employer sent me home at 10AM on Friday with my last paycheck. I was retired.

So – what now? I’ve dinked around all weekend, itching to start my projects. My mind is aflutter with ideas. I’ve filled my Pinterest Boards with DIY projects. I’ve begun to reorganize the house (at least in my mind). I’m trying to take a four-day weekend before I jump in, but it’s very hard. That artist stuck in a tower seems to have discovered the secret entrance and a whole world is outside, beckoning that imprisoned creator into the open.

My next post will be the definition of the “what next?” – the hopes, dreams, and resolutions of a bird whose soul has been set free. I hope to start soaring.