Working today

click to see the mess enlarged

I decided that the time was right to get back to work on #2 of my new series, Matchstick Moons. I had been avoiding it in favor of playing around with other ideas, but now is the hour of paying attention to 'important work'.

How can I tell that this is important? Because it takes a lot more time and requires concentration and ten million tiny decisions.

I have to use tweezers to get all the teeny pieces to lie down exactly where they must be.

(I look just like my grandma in this shot, when she was alive I mean)

The brain turns to mush during this process and is heavily dependent on good books on tape or pleasant chatter on NPR, my radio of choice. I could also switch to music cds but that would be overkill as Dave is playing everything we own on cd in the other room, within earshot of my studio.

Yesterday the aforementioned Dave surprised me with the question,

"Do you wanna go to IKEA?"

Yipes! Outside of yarn stores this is my favorite store to visit. I said YES trying to behave like an adult.

He wanted to get some shelves, and I assumed they were for something to do with his recent stereo obsession. But I was wrong, and when we got to the store he informed me that the shelves were for our walk-in closet, for me to put my shoes on! Wha???

I don't have a need for a stinkin' whole six foot high shelf to put away my shoes! hrumphf.

But since we were there we did look at the banged-up and dented dept. and found some lovely shelves reduced by almost half... but this would be overkill for my measely two dozen shoes.

Upstairs in the closet stuff area, I found a great shoe storage thing that would hold 10 pairs for only $6.99 so we put that in our cart, along with a 99 cent shoe horn, in Frieda Green. Then we noticed a light fixture that would be perfect in our downstairs dining room and got that, and finally I decided to give in on the banged-up and dented shelves and figured they would be a great replacement for our pantry for our summer kitchen.

Here they are, the Billy's in birch, only $160 for the set. And to Dave's satisfaction, NO ASSEMBLY REQUIRED. We have a big truck so they were easy to take right home and put in place after I removed all the junk that was on the old shelves.

How does this stuff accumulate so easily?

So did we get rid of the old shelves? Not on your life! They just got moved to the other side of the room and will hold all the junk in the picture above, minus what I was able to toss.

You can't see the dye stains and the stuck on gunk from barbecue sauce or teriaki or whatever...ugh

Here is the shoe solution. I know this will eventually empty out onto the floor. I mean, let's get real!

To solve this minor marital discord we ended up spending over $200. Not bad...