A Family Drama

I observed a great drama in our family room tonight.  As a professional theater critic, I think I'd have to give it 5 stars.

The family room has 3 dog beds and two chairs for humans.  It worked out perfectly when Sheila was alive.  A soft spot for everyone.  But Polly's favorite place to be really is in my chair.  The second I get up to go to the kitchen or the bathroom, she's in that chair and has built a bed for herself out of the rug that I put across the seat to keep her from digging in the upholstery.  I have to smooth out the lump of bed she's created for herself so I can sit on it, and she'll jump off my chair.

Lizzie, on the other hand, when Walt goes upstairs and his chair is empty, usually goes to sleep in his chair.

Tonight I was in my office and then came out to watch Go Call Saul.  Lizzie was in my chair, so I sat in Walt's chair.  Polly stood there just staring at my chair for about five minutes.

She finally gave what is kind of a cross between a growl and a whine, but very softly.  Lizzie didn't even notice.

Then Polly went outside and stood on the patio and gave 2 soft barks, which is usually the signal for Lizzie to join her and for them to check for critters outside.  Lizzie immediately got out of my chair, walked outside, and Polly ran back inside and took possession of my chair.  Lizzie came in, looked at my chair, gave a big sigh, and went into the living room, where she sleeps all night long.

Polly won.  But it was just so funny to watch that little head figuring out how to get "her" chair back!

So how's it going with the clean-up project?  Well, if you were to come in here and look at my office, you'd swear that I hadn't done a thing, but you would be so wrong.

For one thing, I decided I probably didn't need to keep 40 years worth of bank statements, which have been stored in several places in this office.  They are all now neatly in a box awaiting the city's next "shred it" day.

There have been huge piles on my desk, to the right of my keyboard, and on the desk to my left, supposedly my "work space" which had at least 12" or more of "crap" piled on it.  Both piles were totally chaotic but I managed to gather all of the Compassion letters in one pile, all of the stickers into the sticker container, all of the SwapBot postcards into the drawer where I keep them and the blank cards people have sent me into the postcard boxes, and all of the photos I removed from photo albums upstairs to scan into a special drawer until I get around to taking them back upstairs again.

I even found a stash of memorial cards...'cause you can never throw them away, can you?  This one is for the priest who was the pastor of the Newman Center in Berkeley when all the folks in our Pinata group met and married.  The only reason he didn't marry Walt and me was because he had been transferred by the time we married.  We did, however, name Paul (Paul Joseph) after him.

There was even the program for my cousin Shirley's memorial in 2005.  What do you do with this stuff?  I guess I'll hang it on the cork board above my desk along with the memorial for my cousin Kathy and the memorial cards for my friend Sister Anne (who died in 1992), and for Char's husband, Mike.

I opened up big areas in my desk area, but still have tons more to go through in order to make it better.  Then I can get started on the rest of the office.  This is obviously going to take longer than the week I figured I could devote to it.  Next week isn't clear like this one is, but it's not full either.

In the meantime, Walt continues plugging away upstairs and makes nightly trips to the recycle place.  I'm going to have to get him to cart away several years worth of Photoshop magazines that I know I will never look at again, especially now that I only have "Photoshop Lite" instead of the full program.

If we both keep at this, we might actually get the house in a shape where we can consider moving.  It shouldn't take more than 20 years or so...