Just Shake It Out

Holy moly, I just had the most productive weekend ever!  About a year and a half ago now, my people downsized.  Our house is cozy.  Intimate.  Small.  At times stifling, even.  Since we moved in, our plan has been to finish the basement and to make the back room into less of a storage room and more of a library. 

Believe me when I say downsizing is not for sissies.  You have to make some hard choices about what stays and what goes, and when you're going smaller, the what goes column has to be bigger.  Needless to say, I'm still all full of clutter, but I've moved out of pre-Hoarder stage and back into somewhat normal levels.  This weekend, I finally made some headway on the back room, and now it is ORANGE.  I still can't find my Blackberry cord, but I'll take a real picture and post tomorrow.

Hopefully it's a little more on the Butternut Squash side than Creamsicle side, but still.  Now that it's done, I've come to the realization that I'm going to have to paint all the trim white.  Because who doesn't love detail painting?  WHO?

But now I love this room.  Current Husband and I have sat in this room with a drink for a bit the last two nights, and it is lovely and peaceful and warm and inviting.  It's a great feeling to use 48 hours to take something that was unused and drab and turn it into something special - it's that whole cliched New Year's/get organized malarkey.  So, I couldn't just let it be a nice freshly painted room, I had to go and turn it into a metaphor for my life.  Let's DO this.

The past year and a half has been pretty damn strange.  There has been some sadness in moving, having to go back to work full time, someone close to me was diagnosed with a chronic illness, divorces, friends you don't see anymore. But some really wonderful things have happened as well, like finding I love my new little house, that I enjoy being a hooker, that things change but not necessarily for the worse, and meeting new people.  My kids are growing up and doing really fun, wonderful things in their lives right now (I'm going to have a braggy moment here and say The Son is getting a big award at school today that he doesn't know about yet), and I'm loving the people they are turning into.  And CH?  As I've said before, even though there are times I want to hold the pillow over his face until he stops kicking, he's a good egg, and he *gets* me.  That's right...

You complete me.

Now please start taking out the

garbage before I have to tell you.

But what have I focused on in the past 18 months?  The negative.  Because I'm a frigging whiner from hell.  And it's so EASY to let self-doubt creep in.  It brings liquor and comfort food, so I always make room on my couch for it.  But I finally listened to the new Florence + The Machine CD, and there is a song on it that is my anthem for 2012.  It is hard to dance with the devil on your back, so self-doubt and stress?  Take a hike.  If the Mayans are right and this is the end of time, I'm going to live this year with joy.  And if it isn't, then this is the beginning of Seizing the Day.  Self-doubt, you can just F right off.  This is MY year. And I'm going to paint my whole life orange.

Here it is, Flo singing "Shake It Out" for your listening pleasure: