Mending

Just so you know, this post has nothing to do with Memorial Day. I am beyond grateful for the service of our armed forces. That’s just not what I was thinking about when I wrote this blog post.

It’s been over two weeks (two weeks!) since I’ve blogged. That never happens! The sad thing is, I haven’t written anything but morning pages in that time. This morning I wrote a poem. No, I’m not going to share it. Are you kidding? My poems are like wine . . . they need to age before they can be enjoyed.

Here’s the thing, though. I’ve taken a hiatus with good reason. Perhaps I should have shared with my readers that I was taking a hiatus. I didn’t plan it, though. It just happened. Summer loomed in front of me, promising to be a very busy summer. And all of a sudden I knew I had to do my mending.

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron says when her students get stuck in their work, she asks them to “please go do their household mending. They usually balk, offended by such a mundane task, but sewing has a nice way of mending up plots.”

Now, I haven’t been sewing for two weeks straight. In fact, I detestsewing. That’s the reason I had a pile of literal mending to do. But once that was finished, I moved on to the figurative mending by doing the little (or big) things around the house that I’d been putting off.

Paperwork, for instance, which I also detest. Once upon a time I used to stay on top of the influx of paper. Then I had children. Sometimes the pile of mail gets to be eighteen inches high. I’m not exaggerating. Still, I would update our files every year in January and I was kind of organized about our budget. This year, I was four months behind. I would have been mortified if anyone had seen the piles of receipts and random papers in our study. Needless to say, my usual haven wasn’t very conducive to creativity. So I finally shut myself in there for a few days and took care of it. I started on Mother’s Day. And yes, this is what I wanted to do on Mother’s Day. I promise. (I never professed to be a normal person.) Boy did it feel good to toss a ton of paper and have an organized system once again.

After the paperwork was mostly taken care of, I ravaged the house like a crazy woman and had a yard sale. I’m never having another yard sale unless someday we live in an actual town. (Sigh.) We made some money. I’m not going to say how much. It’s an embarrassingly low number. Definitely not worth the hassle. But it was worth the hassle to get all that junk out of the house. What we didn’t sell, we’ll be taking to Good Will or selling on Craig’s List.

So that was my mending. Now it’s finished. Well, mostly. At least it won’t be a monkey on my back while I’m busy with more important tasks.

Such as . . . redecorating. I’ve been moving pictures around on the walls. It started when I bought a painting from my friend Susan Dietrich (I generally call her Suzie). 

  

Who do I think I am? The Nester? My house is far from magazine worthy, but being creative in other ways helps my writing. So I’ll continue writing and creating and redecorating and dealing with paperwork and other mending. Oh, and I’ll continue blogging, too. Don’t you worry!