With my first book coming out soon, I have been very busy with writing, editing, re-writing, and all of that type of work for most of my time during the past month. I also had a novel to read for our book club (Leviathan Wakes: a fantastic book!). There has, as well, been a lot of work for the Chorale: concerts (such fun concerts!), a fund raiser, a covered dish dinner and numerous Board matters. I still have Chorale thank-you notes to write and a newsletter to produce, as well needing to write an item for my writer’s group. The time from late April to now has been very rich, but pretty crazy.

This has taken a real toll on my never-very-good housekeeping. Skip still likes sandwiches, thank heavens, and I’m pulling clean clothes out of the dryer each day and putting dirty ones right into the washing machine, then running it when I can. Of, course, this requires emptying what’s left from the dryer, and putting things away (hah!)… We will not discuss the shape my floors are in.

I feel the way I felt when I was working full time, with a 45 minute commute each way, and had a toddler running around the house.

When I had an similarly busy month last November, I needed to clear my desk. I put all my “do something with this” paperwork into one of those square plastic milk crate box things and set it under that same desk, sincerely believing that I’d surely get that dealt with in a month or so. Nope.

This morning, I took apart the pile of stuff which has sat in my “square file” for a full six months. I kept about 3 items and tore the rest up into little pieces and put them in the “round file”. This was good for my soul. It (isolating and disposing of irrelevant stuff) is an activity I highly recommend, even if it takes a six month hiatus to do.

This is retirement? I always sort of thought that retirement was when I could pull all my loose ends together and be able to live (for a while, at least) in an environment I actually controlled. Now, I have to face the reality that what makes my life chaotic is internal: it’s my nature.

Maybe that’s OK, maybe it isn’t, but I have to go empty the dishwasher now and plant tomatoes (haven’t gotten that done yet, either). I really want to get back to the story I was working on. And hang up the new bird feeders and go for a walk…. ooh, look, a chicken!

I still have that milk crate… empty now. What can I fit in it?

Happy start of summer!