Sunday afternoon random

* I forgot, also - yesterday at the lunch, the minister was late getting there (he has a long commute in and there was an accident between him and us). The family was ready to eat, no one to bless the food. So, of course: call on the Head Elder. (There were two other elders present as well, but they were also both women....sometimes.....sometimes people from other denominations get a little...weird...about women doing that kind of thing).

I wanted to demur - for one thing, I've only ever done "graces" for HAPPY occasions (potluck lunches, Christmas parties, receptions to honor someone) and was unsure what tone to hit.

Well, I didn't have a choice (though I think one of the sons, I later heard, was an ordained minister? But he didn't step forward, though). So I did it. I guess I did an okay job. But so many things in this life I wind up doing are things I don't feel quite equal to. (I said something about being thankful for the blessing of happy memories, but didn't otherwise reference that it was a memorial service we were feeding people before).

* It's also kind of cute how some of the older women tease/fuss over the youngish minister.  Yesterday one of them was trying to straighten his hair in the back (she said it was messed up) and I think another one was messing with his tie (Yes, he is married, but like a lot of more-modern marriages, there isn't that much "fussing over," apparently. And anyway, I don't remember my mom ever fussing that much at my dad - but then, he was pretty good at getting his own ties straight and stuff). It's cute when a 70-something woman does it but I know as I'm a mere 9 years older than him, it's not something I could do....too close in age.

Though I suspect some people don't like being fussed over like that. I never minded it when one of my older female colleagues (who is now a friend of mine in bell choir) would catch me in the hall first thing in the morning and go "Here, your collar is messed up in back, let me get it" or quietly tell me I needed to hike my slip up because it was showing in the back. (She's since retired and I don't really have anyone who does that - all the people on my end of the hall now are men and there's sort of a boundary there, and anyway, one of them is pretty oblivious to that sort of thing. Another one did worry at me a bit when I got stung by a wasp, but then he's an MD who may have seen bad reactions to stings, whereas I, a field biologist, have much more of a "slap some mud on it and walk it off" mentality)

* Today in church, at greeting time, my friend Mike came up to me on his way back to choir, and did that side-hug thing, and whispered "I love you" in my ear and oh, that was so something I needed to hear right then.

(Standard disclaimer: there is no way, because of one reason in particular, he and I would ever be an "item" and I know 100% when he says he loves me it's the Agape type of love (or maybe something closer to Storge/Philios) but to be honest? At the age I am now? I would rather be surrounded by good, loving, 100% platonic friends than to have to deal with the drama of having a lover)

* I spent some time this afternoon attempting to "Marie Kondo" my dresser.

I have a lot of clothes. Most of this is because I take care of what I have and I tend to be slow to discard things (only if it's massively stained/worn out/no longer fits). And my dresser is OLD; it is at least 45 years old because it's the one I had as a small child. (It's one of those old "UFO wood" pieces of furniture - sort of cheap wood, but real wood - birch, maybe - that my parents painted in that weird streaky "antiqued" style that was a thing in the 1970s. (it is antiqued beige; the bedframe I had as a kid matched).

So I tend to wind up with stuff stacked on top of the dresser, or, even, when times get bad for my level of organization, spilling out onto the floor. And that bugs me. And I figured: time to go through, do the fancy folds that Kondo advocates, and see if I can get all my turtlenecks into two drawers and all my pajamas into two drawers and a drawer for shorts and similar things, and re-organize my underwear.

(And Kondo-folding things takes TIME. I don't dispute that you can see things better storing them the way she advocates, and also, I think you can fit more shirts per drawer. But that kind of thing takes TIME)

It took over an hour. And even then, I wound up with eight organized drawers (four being the tiny "underwear type" drawers) and two "Drawers of Shame" where I just crammed the leftover stuff (t-shirts that are neither pajama shirts, nor good enough to merit a hanger in my closet, nor worn out enough to be tossed) and underwear that I'm unsure whether it's sufficiently worn-out to pitch (I think for a while now, if I wind up with underwear that's just old and the elastic is going, I'll just pitch it after wearing*)

(*Yes I know but: I remember being a time-and-money-broke student where buying new underwear might be an issue, or having quarters for the washers and driers in the terrible apartment laundrette, and also finding the time to DO laundry when the other five dozen residents weren't also using the five washers and dryers....)

But I did find a bunch of stuff I could pitch, and that feels kind of good. But I think I'm done. My hope was the clean the whole house today but that ain't happening.

At least I found all three of my white cotton half-slips (the short one, the intermediate-length one, the one that is slimmer-cut so it works with the straighter skirts) and I discovered that in fact, I have two black half-slips (I thought I had left one at my parents'.) And at least they are all now in one drawer. Here's hoping I can force myself to maintain that level of organization when I'm doing laundry late some Thursday evening and have to get all the clean clothes I just dumped on my bed put away.

I also discovered that I probably don't need to buy more bras over spring break (despite discarding a couple where the elastic had gone iffy) and I DEFINITELY do not need to buy other underwear for quite a while.

But yes, all discourse about "Europeans don't understand her so aren't allowed to criticize her" aside, I do think doing the Marie Kondo thing on your whole entire house requires the privilege of a TREMENDOUS amount of time - it took me over an hour to do one stupid dresser and granted, a couple of the drawers I hadn't really excavated in a while, but when some days you literally have one hour of time to do what you "want" to do - well, I don't see doing many more deep dives like that soon. Maybe I have to steel myself to it when summer comes, I don't know. It is nice to have stuff cleaned and straightened up and to get rid of all the junky stuff you don't need to keep, but....the sorting, uff da.

Maybe that's the next big thing? Tidying vacations, where instead of going somewhere fun, you just toss all your dressers and closets and everything and spend the whole week or so sorting? Maybe stay at a hotel in your town (and eat in restaurants) for the week ("like a REAL vacation!" ugh) so you can leave junk piled on the beds and you don't have to cook or do dishes...

I mean, they made "staycations" a thing during the recession...

As I joked on Twitter, if I were writing a Kondo style book, it would be called "The Life-Changing Magic of SHUTTING YOUR PIE-HOLE" because I go to far too many meetings where there are people who like to hear themselves talk even if it in no way advances the agenda of the meeting.

* So yeah. Giving up on cleaning for now. I pulled out Harvest and have made it an at-home project; I am almost done with every bit of increasing for the body, then I do the one big buttonhole (I picked up a couple of possible buttons the last trip to JoAnn's), then I can just knit plain until it's long enough....then the sleeves are next, but at least they are knitted on to the body so there will be no seaming at the end.