A Pause…
Posted on | February 4, 2010 | No Comments
Taking some downtime from writing to continue the previously mentioned PURGE of stored household items and clothing. It’s a much bigger task than I could have imagined!
Hope to have some new photos to share by the end of the weekend of the completed (fingers crossed!) addition to the cottage. It’s such a lovely space.
The weather got hot and humid and I got a smidge grumpy about the balancing act of sorting, organising, listing, donating, and making stacks of things to list on ebay. The cottage is air conditioned — the studio is not. And I am working in the studio most of the time. Hmmm — not a happy little gal in the heat.
Bear with me — I’ll be back soon!
Newsletter-ish Kind of Day
Posted on | January 26, 2010 | No Comments
Thought I’d shake things up a bit on this blog by occasionally placing it in a newsletter format to share a potpourri of funny, serious, or just plain quirky stories from around the world. Here goes!
Between a frock and a hard place. (vintage clothing boutique tours)
Dead at 47??? (examining ageist stereotypes)
Southern fried chic: Old-fashioned chicken is in again. (and several recipes are in the article!)
Green Property: The House That Costs 60 GBPounds A Year To Heat.
Australia ‘must plan new city’ to cope with population . (we’re booming ‘down under’)
Woman Collides With Picasso. (how mortifying is that?)
Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm. (serious issues to examine)
One Load Down, Many More To Go
Posted on | January 20, 2010 | 4 Comments
Progress HAS been made — but there is still so much more to do! Happily though, the first load of donations has filled the back of my station wagon and is ready to go off to the Salvation Army tomorrow afternoon.
Entire back of station wagon is FULL!
It has been a bit startling over the last 3 days to open up box after box and find untold amounts of clothing, shoes, bedding, and decorative items — but those are all now things that someone else will be able to use. There are dozens more boxes to go through and I plan to stay on task until I have thinned out at least 2/3 of the contents of the studio and we can actually use it for the purpose that it was built!
Baby Ginger sometimes accompanies me on these little daytime adventures, but he just gave me a look this morning when I asked him if he wanted to go to the studio. He does understand what I am talking about and knows those words well since that’s where he sleeps every night. But here is the look that he gave me…
You're kidding - right? You want me to get OUT of bed again?
and then he drifted straight off to sleep in his little bed — a recycled French wine box.
Baby Ginger asleep in his French wine-box bed
Drifting In A Sea of STUFF
Posted on | January 18, 2010 | 6 Comments
It was never meant to go on for this long — the procrastination about getting inside those boxes in the studio. They contained all of the items that we packed to put into storage when we left Melbourne 3 years ago and moved to the country. The cottage has been complete for awhile now — 6 and 1/2 months to be specific — and I am only just now getting around to summoning up the intestinal fortitude (and energy!) to attack the vast sea of STUFF.
The Cleanest Corner in the Whole Darned Building!
Truthfully, although there are some valid ‘excuses’ since I was heavily involved with getting my last 2 books launched into the world during all of those six months, I could have begun this process long before now.
I’m being very brave and posting photos so you can see what I am up against!
The Sea of STUFF to Sort Through!
Daunting — it was seriously, hyperventilatingly daunting to walk inside of that 54 square meter/580 square feet all-one-room building and see boxes stacked half-way up to the ceiling in places and opened boxes that had been partially unpacked and then shoved aside.
Many was the time that I had walked in there, taken a look around, and walked straight back out because i didn’t even know where to begin! Then I’d share that sensation with Mark and he would nod his head with widened eyes and say, “I know!”
So while Mark finishes the new diningroom/study addition on the back of the cottage, I have begun to take nibbles from the gargantuan task of sorting out and deciding what to keep, what to donate, what to give away to friends, and what to sell on ebay. I’m definitely in a less-is-more frame of mind because I feel that if I haven’t had any pressing need for those things over the last 3 years, I have probably forgotten well over half of what is in there and those items, for the most part, can now safely be ‘re-homed’ elsewhere.
Off to the studio to get dusty for awhile!
DONATE – Doing It ‘Just Because’
Posted on | January 15, 2010 | No Comments
Clean water, abundant food, a secure roof over my head — all of the things that we take for granted. And most of the people of Haiti have none of those at this moment.
Médecins Sans Frontières aka Doctors Without Borders is at http://www.msf.org/ and they now have my 2nd donation in less than a day.
There are aid agencies flying food and water in from all over the world, but the tens of thousands of injured people lying on the ground have no one to treat them and the few doctors and nurses on the scene are simply overwhelmed.
We watched a news report here tonight in Australia that said that the medical staff at the hospital is always, always too few for too many and the hospital’s Chief of Staff said that he usually had only 150 medical personnel to treat the island’s residents on the best of days. Right now he has less than 20 medical personnel.
It is sickening to hear some of the commentators and so-called ‘preachers’ in the USA and elsewhere mocking the gravity of this situation and making breathtakingly ignorant statements about why the people of Haiti should not be assisted. I, for one, consider them to be beneath contempt.
These are personal choices, but if your heart has been touched by the plight of the Haitian people, we should offer whatever help we can, freely and without hesitation, because it is the right thing to do — plain and simple. It’s one of those ‘just because’ moments in life that might literally mean the difference between life and death.
Tags: catastrophe > charity > donation > earthquake > Haiti > homeless > Médecins Sans Frontières > MSF > tragedy
Deborah Harmes, Ph.D.
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