Overbooked and Underpaid: Notes from a Yes-aholic

The Great Attic Migration

For much of the last 10 years, my basement has, in fact, looked much like this. Hence, this comic strip, which I wrote about a year and a half ago. I don't talk much about writing for Edison because I don't do it all that often (although today's strip is another one of mine). Mostly my contributions to the strip are along the lines of editing, working on publicity, and planting little seeds of ideas into John's head and then running out of the room before he can rope me into more work.

Unfortunately, the above strip is completely true to life. I wrote about it on my other blog here.

But now the time has come to do something about my basement. If you have ever checked the "goals" tab up at the top of the blog (go ahead and check it now - I'll wait)

you will notice that one of my goals over the summer was to migrate a bunch of stuff from the basement to the attic. (Then of course, we'll have "The Attic of Dorian Gray", but I digress)

So I've been puttering my way toward this goal for about 12 weeks - buying a load of lumber for the attic floor here and there, prodding my sons to install said floor here and there, but not doing much in the way of prep work or organizing on the actual junk to be moved. Which, as anyone who has ever moved from one house to another will tell you, is a bad idea.

Successful moving has everything to do with what kind of boxes you put your stuff in, how you organize these boxes, and what order they get moved in. I have a friend who moved recently - she was working when the boxes got unloaded into the garage of the new house and then discovered that all the kitchen stuff was in the very back of the garage where no one could get to it.  They had to eat "take out" for a week.

So the chaos that is my basement needs to get organized before it can be boxed - you know the sort of thing, you see it on HGTV all the time - "pitch", "donate", "attic", "keep in the basement because it needs to be handy". Which is bad enough when it's just your stuff but becomes ever so much worse when it includes 3 kids worth of stuff. Every item winds up being brooded over.

As I said, I've been puttering along at this slowly since July.

Until Saturday.

That was the day the washer started to make "the noise".

A word about my washer and dryer. I love them. They are great. I got them almost 20 years ago this month when I was expecting my first child and envisioned a time when I would not enjoy trips to the laundromat. My mother and grandmother swore by front loading machines, especially White Westinghouse. So I went out and found what was, at that time, one of the only front loading washing machines available in the entire country. Better yet, it was made by White Westinghouse. Bonus - they also made the only stacking washer and dryer you could get at that time. Which was hugely important to us because of the space we had available in our first house for laundry.

It tickles me pink to now see these stackable front loaders taking over the country. I love when my grandmother is right.

But the washer's time has come. For the past 2 years it has been bumping and thumping its way through the spin cycle - occasionally ripping itself loose from the hose like that scene in "Mr. Mom" (OMG - go rent that movie if you've never seen it).

Because it was made back in the day when there were no computer chips in such appliances, John has actually been able to work on it and put it back into balance a couple of times. But Saturday it started making this banshee like whine that, I'm pretty sure means the bearings are shot. Or something worse.

So we went shopping. 

And bought (with play money that hasn't been printed yet - gotta love "no money down, no interest for 12 months) a lovely new stackable front loading washer and dryer.

Which will be delivered tomorrow.

Yes, as in tomorrow, as in less than 24 hours. 

Which is why I gave up my whole weekend to go wading through the mess. Which is how my basement wound up exploding into the rest of my house. (Because organizing always looks a whole lot worse before it looks better) Which I now have to buckle down to and get under control before the movers come and see my basement (and now house) of shame.

Which is why you may not hear from me for a while.

Send the dogs down if I don't surface by Thursday. 

I may be trapped under a pile of dirty laundry and several boxes of jigsaw puzzles.

"Is There Nothing You Cannot Do?" In A Word, Plenty!

If you're reading this you probably already know a little bit about my life. If you don't, here's a summation:

I make chocolate truffles, color my husband's comic strip, write a humor column, write humorous poetry, teach harp, compose and perform music, work in multiple types of art media, write for numerous blogs, manage my husband's graphics business, edit books for comic creators, have a one-woman-show featuring harp and storytelling, knit, garden, bake - the list goes on, but I imagine you're getting the picture.

Recently my husband and I attended a conference for professional cartoonists that included staying up until 2:00 am each night in the bar shooting the breeze and drinking too much.

Whenever we attend a gathering like this I make chocolate truffles and take them along to feed to anyone lucky enough to be in the bar at the time.

On this particular weekend, as Richard Thompson (of Cul de Sac fame) reached for a truffle he said, "Anne - is there nothing you cannot do?"

I didn't have a good response at the time.

I do now.

Richard - here are some things I cannot do:

I cannot find time to read anything longer than a cereal box.

I cannot tell you where my phone charger is.

I cannot find my wallet.

Or my keys.

I cannot seem to remember to call my sister on her birthday (yesterday).

I cannot cook any supper that takes longer than 20 minutes.

I have not yet unpacked my suitcase.

I haven't the brain space to write up the CV that is due for accreditation at one of my teaching jobs - I think I have one prepared in a file somewhere on my computer, but I don't know how to find it.

I cannot seem to remember to pay my phone bill on time (aren't they supposed to wait at least 30 days beyond the due date before they threaten to disconnect you?)

Again - I could go on, but I think you can tell where this is going.

Hello.

My name is Anne.

And I'm a yes-aholic.

I'm not asking for your pity.

When I was trying to think of a name for this blog, I flirted with "Overworked and Underpaid" but I settled on "Overbooked and Underpaid for a very important reason.

Overworked someone does to you.

Overbooked you do to yourself.

I could probably cut out most of the things I do. Especially since easily 60% of them are for no pay. 

So why don't I?

Why do I try to do all these things and make myself crazy?

Well, partly because I am bursting with ideas - so many that I always have at least 5 knitting projects going at a time. This is not unusual for creative types - most artists have more unfinished work than finished - it's a curse where you get the idea for the next project when you're only 22% done with the current one.

And partly because I have no idea what I'm really supposed to be doing with my life.

So I keep throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping that whatever sticks is the thing I'm meant to be doing.

And you lucky readers, and Richard,  just happen to be between me and the wall.

 

I Hate Halloween

(This is not my dog BTW)

 

I hate Halloween.

Well, maybe hate is too strong a word. But it's definitely not my favorite holiday.

When I was a kid it ranked right up there. Probably coming in third behind Christmas and Easter. Added to those two, Halloween completed the trifecta of candy holidays. As in "You, the child, will receive copious amounts of sugary treats on these three days of the year. The other 362 it's back to unsweetened cereals and whole grain bread." 

I should state for the record that I grew up in a "healthy" household that was free of Twinkies, Moon Pies, Wonder Bread, Froot Loops or anything else you could put in the "fun junk food for lunch" category. Needless to say - no one ever wanted to trade with me for anything at lunch.

But I digress.

When did things change? When did my aversion to Halloween begin? 

1995.

The year I met the other Moms.

The ones who sew.

Moms who would never be caught dead buying their kid a prefabricated Halloween costume. Who equated parental love with a willingness to drive oneself crazy making a perfect homemade Trick or Treating outfit extraordinaire.

I have many accomplishments - sewing is not one of them. The only sewing I do involves rectangles. Pillows, tote bags, valances that sort of thing. In a pinch I can produce some semblance of slipcovers for cushions. (You have to promise not to look at the back of those cushions - much of their fit is owed to the wonders of duct tape.)

Sewing things that actually have to fit on curves and around ankles - well, you can't duct tape the kid into the Halloween costume. I think someone calls the Department of Child Welfare on you.

Not only did these women make perfect costumes for their kids, they also made them for themselves. For about ten years we were part of a playgroup that had a big Halloween party where everyone had to wear a costume. And this brings me to the other reason I hate Halloween.

I hate dressing up in costumes of any kind. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

I gave it a good shot at first and made everyone bird outfits. (Though, coloring bedsheets with spray paint - not a good idea. Massive toxic fumes. Fortunately only on our costumes - the kids were in non toxic, modified yellow jammies.)

I may even have come up with a passable attempt the following year - perhaps something resembling a cat. But then something snapped. The party became, for me, a sort of game where I would see how little trouble I could take to dress up.

Non-costumes I can recall:

The Artist - I threw on a grubby "painter's" shirt and carried around a palette and paint brush.

The Farmer's Wife - possibly the same jeans, shirt and shoes from the previous year minus the painter's accessories. I put my hair in braids. I may have also carried a bucket.

The Poet - all black clothes, dark, dark lipstick, flat ironed hair. Accessory: about 20 fortune cookie-esque poems to be handed out upon request. (Or forced upon people - as it turned out.)

The Princess - one of my old Bridesmaid dresses. Remember when they tell you "of course you'll be able to wear this again" ? Well, I guess they were right after all.

The Harpist - really a cop out - I just wore what I usually wear to a gig.

And my personal favorite:

The Failure Of The Women's Movement - this costume also included my then five year old daughter. She went as a your standard princess while I put my hair in a ridiculous 50's updo, donned bright red lipstick, one of my mother's old June Cleaver dresses and a strand of fake pearls. (I was ahead of my time - "Mad Men" wasn't on the air yet.)

The idea for this theme presented itself a few days earlier at a Halloween/Birthday party whose guests were a gaggle of kindergarteners. I kid you not - EVERY girl was a fairy or a princess and EVERY boy was The Hulk or Spiderman. 

How far we've come.

So - in closing, I'll try to wish you a Happy Halloween. I'll even go buy $50 worth of candy and pass it out to the neighborhood children, and you too, if you stop by.

Just don't ask me to dress up.

 

"The Dog Ate My Floor" or "How I Got A New Kitchen"

In July of 2004 we got a puppy. A beautiful puppy.

Isn't she adorable?

 

Most expensive dog I've ever owned.

 We got her when I thought our Terrier was on his way out (my mother always did this, it made the loss of the first dog easier to bear) a plan which failed stunningly as he lived 6 more years.

Nevertheless, she was adorable and we were delighted to have her. Well, delighted when we weren't fuming over the latest sacrifice to puppy teething. Quite a bit of my house still has little nibbled-on places if you look hard enough.

Fast forward 7 months to one of the only real family vacations we have taken since 1990. 

We were right on the edge of getting picked up by King Features (after 14 years of trying) and grabbed our last chance to take a 10 day trip over spring break. Our plan was to spend two days in Chattanooga TN (where John had his first graphics job after college) and then the rest of the time in a rented condo in Florida with my brother in law and his wife.

I really should have known that the vacation was doomed from the moment when, on the night before we were scheduled to leave, John called from his office to ask if I was sitting down. You see, he and his brother had planned the whole condo thing and he called my sister in law for directions and info on where the key would be if we got there first and sundry details like that.

They had a lovely conversation which ended with the words, "See you next week, then!"

These words were uttered by my sister in law.

There was a moment of silence.

John's response, "What do you mean, next week? We're leaving tomorrow!"

It turns out that when you plan a vacation using only the words "spring break" and don't actually throw any dates out there, there is quite a large possibility that the two of you are not discussing the same time frame.

After confirming that I was, indeed, sitting down, John dropped his little "it turns out we don't have a place to stay in Florida" bomb on me. Followed by the words "Don't worry, I'll fix it. I'll go on the internet and make reservations in a hotel. It will all be fine."

So - finding a hotel in Florida with any availability at all on the eve of spring break? Not so easy. He did eventually find something, but it took quite a while and, I suspect, involved a fair amount of swearing.

After that little bit of excitement, we managed to get ourselves down to Tennessee in one piece the following day and get settled in at our hotel. (That, at least, had not been a problem - although, thank goodness he went for the new hotel and not the one he remembered fondly from 15 years earlier - it turned out that hotel had become the sort of place where one rents rooms by the hour. What a lovely education for the kids that would have been.)

One of the places John most wanted to show the kids was Look Out Mountain. We drove up the mountain and parked in the tourist lot. At which point we discovered something exciting about our brand spanking new Honda Odyssey van. 

It had a security system. 

Which, apparently, activates if everyone except one person gets out of the van and one person hits the auto lock button on the key ring and then that last person in the van opens the door from inside.

At which point the horn starts honking. And a red light (which is not pictured on the dashboard schematic in the owner's manual) starts flashing. 

As we didn't even know we had a security system, (the salesman, great at pointing out all the cup holders - the alarm, not so much) we were pretty confused. I think I remember one of the kids asking if the car was going to explode. Even more confusing was the fact that it turns out that the system is on a timer. So, when everything stops honking and flashing after five minutes and you think you're safe - five minutes after that, it all starts up again. 

In a parking lot full of tourists.

Who are staring at you.

And who are pretty sure that you are a certifiable idiot as you are whipping through the manual desperately trying to figure out how to shut this thing down and your husband has the hood open to see if there's anything helpful in there and your kids are running around in circles screaming "We're all going to die!"

So this has all been the prelude to the big moment 30 minutes later when (car alarm finally silenced) we find ourselves on Look Out Mountain standing in line to ride the Incline. And my cell phone rings.

I should probably mention here that my cell phone number is virtually unlisted. And, at the time in question, only two people in the world had it. The woman watching our house (and dogs) and the man standing next to me. As he didn't have a phone in his hand at the time, I was pretty sure it was the house sitter. And I had a fairly good idea it wasn't going to be good news.

I was not disappointed.

"Anne, I swear - I had no idea one dog could do that much damage in an hour!"

Let me back up and outline my cunning plan for dealing with the then 7 month old Border Collie/Lab puppy. Riddled with guilt for leaving such a young, energetic dog alone for 10 days confined for hours at a time in a crate, I had devised a schedule that involved a professional pet sitter and two dear friends. Between the three of them, someone was scheduled to go to the house roughly every 1-2 hours to let the puppy out of her cage for some exercise and companionship. Because she had a penchant for chewing anything wood, we had confined her to the kitchen and moved all the wooden furniture out of it. 

Another of my brilliant ideas was to rotate "crate" time with "free" time. If you entered the house and she was out of her crate, you put her into it when you left and vice versa. This way she would never spend more than 2 hours at a time in the crate.

"Linda" (not her real name) had taken the first watch that Friday and had let the puppy roam free for about an hour before she came back to check on her.

"Anne, I swear - I had no idea this would happen!"

"Linda, calm down, get a hold of yourself. What happened - what are you talking about?!"

"Well, your kitchen floor....."

"Yes - what about the kitchen floor?"

"Well, it's kind of....."

"Yes......?"

"Well it's kind of gone."

"Gone?"

"Well, chewed up. Peeled up, chewed up, thrown all over the place."

Pause.

"Come again?"

"It looks as though she dug at all the corners and peeled everything up and spun around like a tornado."

Deep breath.

"Look, Linda - don't worry about it. It wasn't your fault, I'm the one who wanted to let her run free unsupervised. You couldn't have known. We'll deal with it when we get home. Just keep her in her crate from now on when no one's there and make sure the other sitters know what's going on. Thanks for calling and letting me know."

At which point I turned to my husband, "You know that kitchen floor you hate?"

I'll spare you the details of his reaction as well as the rest of our vacation which was, unfortunately, still to be laced with various other small disasters.

We returned home to an amazing scene. Linda's description hadn't really done it justice. Not only had the dog dug up every corner of the floor she could get her paws on (and there are a lot of corners in my kitchen - the house was built in 1928 and the kitchen area once had 8 different doorways) she had also ripped all the cove base off the walls and chewed that up as well. Talk about separation anxiety. 

Here is a small sample of her handiwork after I cleaned up the scraps and tidied up the edges. The green you see is the original 1928 linoleum. Doesn't she look pleased with herself?

Over the course of the next year, I would scrape off the rest of the vinyl floor to reveal the original linoleum in hopes that the earlier floor could be salvaged. This was a bad idea which I don't recommend to anyone. I am fairly certain that I poisoned myself with something toxic between the two floors.

So how did I wind up with a whole new kitchen, you ask?

Well the floor was just the first of many dominoes. 

Another was the harvest gold sink with the damaged finish. And the laminate countertop that split at the mitered corner, heaving up about a half an inch on one side. And the dying refrigerator that was walled in on three sides in an alcove that would never hold a new fridge of the sizes they sell nowadays. And said laminate countertop rotting away to the point that any time you opened the dishwasher door, you had to hold onto it for dear life to keep the whole dishwasher from falling out on to the floor. And the eventual death of the aforementioned dishwasher.

They were all variations of a theme. A kitchen in a state of disaster. 

The floor was just the visible ambassador of the destruction.

So, I suppose I should thank the dog, after all, because I eventually got a very nice kitchen out of the whole thing.

But somehow - I don't think so.

 

 

 

The Incredible Transforming Sandwich

It was summer.

And, as usual, it was an overbooked summer.

Which meant a softball schedule, a baseball schedule, a drama schedule, and our usual overbooked work schedules.

I thought we were handling everything pretty well. We got everyone where they needed to be when they needed to be there, between the two of us a parent was at every game, and I didn't forget to show up for any gigs.

Yep, the summer was going well.

Then the smell started.

It was subtle at first. We weren't even sure where it was coming from. It might have been the baseball cleats. Or the compost pile in the backyard.

But, by day three we settled on the minivan. It was definitely coming from the minivan.

There was a chance it was coming from the air ducts. Which was a problem because it would mean that something had died somewhere inside the engine or other nasty hidden car places. Which would mean paying someone expensive to find it and fix it.

We resisted taking the van to the dealership. We drove with the windows open. We bought air fresheners. And we looked and looked and looked to track this odor down.

As the noxiousness grew ever stronger rather than weaker, our suspicions that something had died intensified.

We were right. Something had died. But it wasn't an animal.

As I approached the baseball diamond one evening my husband asked me, "What night was it that we bought Alex that sub sandwich?"

"Oh man, that was like, two weeks ago. Maybe even three. Why do you ask?"

In answer, he led me over to a nearby garbage can. The smell hit me from easily 20 feet away.

And there, in a plastic bag, was the worst smelling glob of liquid I think I've ever encountered.

Which, apparently, is what a half eaten Italian sub sandwich turns into after two or three weeks in the door pocket of a hot van in the summertime.

It was like a Magic Schoolbus episode.

No one went near the garbage can for the rest of the night. 

I pity the poor garbage men that eventually had to deal with the results of our overbooked, "we'll just grab something quick to eat as we go to drama practice and then not have enough time to finish it so we can stuff it out of sight someplace later and ruin an expensive minivan" lifestyle.

It took two months for the smell to fully leave the van.

And I swear on hot days I can still smell the ghost of that sandwich.

The ghost of overbooked summers past.

How To Throw Your Back Out

We interrupt today's scheduled organizing tips to bring you this public service announcement:

 

How to throw your back out; in 8 easy steps:

Step 1) put on dress with zipper in the back

Step 2) forget that dress also has hook and eye at the top of it

Step 3) put on fishnetty type pullover and catch it on said hook

Step 4) wriggle around your upstairs trying to get the hook out of the pullover desperately wishing there was someone else in the house to help you.

Step 5) swear and twist around trying to get the whole mess off so you can deal with it later.

Step 6) swear some more as you feel your back go out.

Step 7) while writhing in pain, throw on a different, easier to get on, outfit.

Step 8) blog about it, thus making yourself late to teach your class.

I'm A Hacker

No, not that kind - you NSA types can go back to tracking down cyberterrorists and such.

What I mean is that I hack things. Like plant type things.

As in, I am a pruning idiot.

It's not as though I haven't tried. I own several books on gardening and have, indeed, opened all of them. I've even read a fair number of them. I've actually gone so far as to read up on the proper way to prune trees and shrubs.

It makes no sense to me!

I should mention here that, along with the "Hats I Wear" tab up there, I should also have one that says "Hats I Don't Wear" or even "Hat's I Can't Wear Because I'm A Stone Cold Idiot". Whenever one of my friends starts gushing at me over all the talents I have and all the things I can do, I politely remind them of the enormous laundry list of all the things I am completely inept at. (I suspect this is the German/Scots "don't blow your own horn" part of my upbringing.)

The thing is, when I'm bad at something, I tend simply not to do it. Or at least not to do it in public. This gives the impression that I am Pulled Together. Which is why I'm lucky almost no one in my local circle of friends reads this blog - my carefully crafted, I Know What I'm Doing cover would be completely blown.

Anyway, one of those things I stink at is learning anything manual out of a book. I can follow a knitting pattern if it is composed of stitches I already know, but I can only learn a new stitch if someone sits down next to me and demonstrates it step by step.

Maybe, if I could find some landscaping professional type person to spend an afternoon showing me what to cut and what not to, I would finally understand the basic rules of pruning. As it is, when the book says things like "Make additional corrective prunings to eliminate weak or narrow crotches and remove the less desirable central leader where double leaders occur."

What are they talking about?!!!!!

Besides sounding vaguely obscene, the above sentence is complete Greek to me.

So I'm stuck with hacking.

Another problem. Remember that little paint chipping OCD I told you about earlier? It tends to apply to shearing things as well.

I generally head out with the shears, intending to take a few minutes to trim some stuff back - a clip here and there - and the next thing you know I'm hacking off everything in sight. And, unless someone intervenes and takes those cross cut pruning shears (see, at least I know what to call them) away from my hacking little hands, my shrubbery will all be reduced to small clumps of sticks. 

Unfortunately, unlike a bad haircut, it won't all grow back in 3 weeks.

Here's the handiwork for today:

 

 

Background: unhacked bush, Foreground: hacked bush

All my little "non-stump" bushes with the pile of clippings that came off of them. 

 

Parking Lot Ballet

I just witnessed 4 different cars backing out of parking spaces without looking. In something vaguely resembling a water ballet, they all managed to miss each other by inches.

Gotta love living in a society that no longer requires regular "on the road" tests to renew your driver's license.

The Day's Exciting Moment

There is nothing quite so lovely as the feeling of encountering a rotten peach with bare feet. Yiicch!

Paper Training

My dining room table generally looks like this:

 

 
 

After facing the many natural consequences that come from losing important papers - like electric bills (can you imagine, you forget to pay something a couple of times and they threaten to shut you off!) - something had to change.

Leading to the devising of a new system for attempting to control paper chaos. Which I share now with all my overbooked, under-organized brothers and sisters:

Tip #1

Keep it vertical instead of horizontal.

And that does NOT mean in a pile.

There is no surer black hole for important papers than THE STACK.

 

Once a paper gets set upon the stack, it morphs into a faceless edge when the next paper get placed upon it. 

So I try to keep papers that must be either "handy for consultation" or "signed and returned to an official type person" standing up vertically where I can just thumb through them and quickly find the one I want. Since I don't have a house full of filing cabinets, I use other methods. For years I have used magazine holders. The clear kind works best because you can truly see all bits of the page for useful information.

 

 

But, I'm a little wacky, so this year I'm switching to this great record album holder I found for $10 at a little collectible shop near my house. 

 

 

 

I can really see what I have quite easily. And I can also paper clip things together by school.

I got this idea from another rack I've been using for years. When my husband and I got married, someone gave us an English toast rack.

 

 

 

Which is lovely. Except, unlike the English, I don't like my toast cold and dry. As it tends to get when you put it into a rack and leave it there for a while. 

So I think we have used it for toast approximately once. The rest of the time I use it to store greeting cards.

    
 

Which is a very handy thing. Whenever we get a birthday card or holiday card, I just wedge it into the toast rack. Then, about once a year, I sit down and go through them. Some are very sentimental and worth keeping in the shoebox in my closet. The rest get recycled.

Tip #2

Look for wasted space. One trick I use is to turn the inside of my cabinets into a sort of bulletin board. This is where I keep things like museum newsletters, touristy maps, info from the zoo, take out menus for local restaurants, etc. By assigning different categories to different doors, I can easily find that map of the public museum I'll need later today.

 

 
 

Tip #3

Try to have a separate dedicated space like a desk or a cubby that is just for bills and not for any other type of papers.

I'm terribly lucky to have a sweet little desk that a friend gave me when she redid a room. But a kitchen cabinet or other space with a door will work too.

 

 
 
  

Lastly the dreaded junk mail. If you are lucky enough to have a paper recycling program in your city all you need is a place to store all that crap until pick-up week. Inexpensive baskets you can get at Target (or a thrift shop) are a good place for temporary storage before the once a month "throw it in a paper bag for pick up" session.

I hope these suggestions help you in some way when it comes to wading through the sea of papers we all seem to struggle with. 

I know they've helped me. 

When I manage to actually do them.

Here's to a more organized year!

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