my favorite packing job so far, thanks to assistance and direction from jane. you may remember this chair from an earlier post. the blue stuff is this very handy mover’s stretch plastic wrap.

i brought together all the pottery i’ve collected over the last two years so i could bubble wrap and pack it. a number of came from my office, one a ben owen piece that i got as a gift from my co-workers after earning my masters degree. another was a neat pitcher i saw at an antique store in austin that my mom got for me. the majority were canisters and teapots made by apprentices of mark hewitt. i have one largish pitcher made my mark himself.

they just looked so nice all together. functional. earthy. strong.

sometimes stuff isn’t all bad. like art. on some level, it really should be ok to love things. to cherish objects. even a small painted metal rooster from pier one. why feel guilty about surrounding myself with things that are beautiful or make me happy?

after trying unsuccessfully to find a comfortable position on the couch with my laptop last night, i decided i needed a desk.

of course i have a desk. but it’s boring, and hails from a time when i had a desktop computer, and i had to glue myself to said desk in order to get my school work done. getting a laptop freed me from the desk, and when i moved into this apartment i vowed never to put it together.

and so it came to pass, on the day after thanksgiving, that i went out in search of a desk. but after storehouse, staples, target, ecko, pier one, linens n’ things, world market, and organized living, i found no desk. only shelving. lots and lots of it.

black wire shelving for my bedroom closet. heavy duty plastic shelving for my ‘utility’ closet. two cherry fold-down shelves for the books on the floor in the room that would be my home office. and i still need more! like shelving for my coat closet. and some shelving for my bedroom, cause–it turns out–i just can’t get enough.

i moved into my present apartment at the end of june, with much help from dad. at the same time my landlord was trying to back out on my lease. having moved everything over, we immediately drove to washington dc for three days, and then back, after which my dad left, leaving me a big apartment i might shortly be moving out of, crappy hardwood floors, and no furniture.

in mid-july the couch and chair arrived that i had ordered in february. then i flew to tanzania for two weeks. came back from tanzania, hardwood floors miraculously refinished, everything covered in a layer of sawdust, luggage lost for 4 days, two weeks pass, then school starts.

somewhere in all that i forgot to move in.

i felt exhausted tonight with no motivation to do anything after discovering that i had nothing due tomorrow. i walked home, which is itself cathartic, and decided it was about freaking time to clean up my bedroom.

i swept and vacuumed. i wet swiffered and dry swiffered. i put together some shelves i’d bought from target weeks ago. i sorted clothes for the thrift shop. i moved the random miscellaneous crap to the other bedroom. and i finally put things away in my closet.

as of now, there are no longer any piles of anything on the floor of my room. and i am quite happy about that.