Corners

Inspirational song: Light Up (Styx)

Purge Week continues unabated. It's still awesome. Not quite as much made it into the trash as the last two days, but some did, and a lot of things were sorted and organized and moved out of the way. Sadly, I tried taking the full trash bag to the can in the alley, and found all this rain had swelled the wood fence so badly I couldn't get the gate open. That made me feel like I took a step backwards.

Today's big event was kicked off with shampooing the living room rug. While all the furniture was pulled back off of it, I determined it was time to make some placement changes that I've been considering. Chairs had gotten swapped around over the winter, and it was making the room unbalanced and dysfunctional. In the three days we have been alone, Saoirse tipped over my large philodendron that was on a tall stand twice (both times toward the window, so minimal damage). The chair on wheels by the window had to move, and the swivel rocker on a circular base had to leave its position tilted all cattywampus halfway on the rug in the corner. I swapped two plant stands so the pothos in the screen corner was high like it used to be, with a larger plank for the vines to grow on. Once I was done, I sat and stared at my handiwork for a good half an hour. The room feels so much more balanced and functional, especially now that I've cleaned out two more corners of their clutter and chaos. I have miles to go, but the progress is noticeable now.

I have been getting better about taking my supplements along with my prescription meds, and it appears that I'm back to even on whatever it is that makes it possible for me to have a sense of smell. (Is it zinc? I feel like it's zinc.) Mine had been useless for so many years I'd forgotten what it was like to smell things from a distance (like all the allysum on the front porch). In all the cleaning and changing I did, I introduced a new smell that I am working on identifying. Likely suspects are the Kirkland brand of laundry soap that I also used on the rug, the Palmolive antibacterial dish soap, or the Arm and Hammer cat litter in the new upstairs cat box (different from the kind we usually use.) Maybe it's a combination of some of the above. Whatever it is, it lights up pleasure centers of my olfactory system as brightly as a stack of pages covered in fresh mimeograph ink. Heady and delicious. I think I will stick with all three of those new things, just in case.