sidetracked

Many have been commenting (and you know who you are!) about my lack of posts last month. The cause was my usual busy-ness, and then some, which made it impossible for me to even think about a post, or a blog, or normal human conversation... I knew I was coming out of the woods when I found myself composing a new post in my head last night. I guess enough had cleared off my brain's plate at that point.

I have been working non-stop on bringing the billing for my LSH's business in house. He outsourced the billing when he started his business, but it has been a long-running source of frustration which has only gotten worse with time. So he decided to add-on the integrated billing part of his record-keeping software -- except we found out too late that it wasn't so integrated, and we would have to integrate it ourselves.

And by we, I mean me.

Having a business in your house can be a blessing and a curse. The commute is great, but it can also be hard to break away. For the past two months, I have stumbled downstairs every morning, made a pot of coffee, and headed straight onto the computer to work on the integration. Apart from small breaks here and there to eat and yell at my kids to keep it down, can't you see mom's working and she doesn't have a moment to spare, I didn't do much else until I tumbled into bed at the end of the day. I am not saying this by way of complaint, just explanation. Time was at such a premium that it was hard for me to concentrate on anything else. Knitting, spinning, reading, chatting on the phone -- everything else took a backseat.

Add on to that my eldest son's desire to move to his own room. It only makes sense, seeing as how he officially entered teenager-dom at the end of October. The only room available, however, already housed my sewing machine and work cabinet, a guest bed, all of our winter clothing, and served as the main playroom and toy storage area. It is not such a simple move. The upside is that we are forced to wade through all of our upstairs junk belongings and get it weeded out reorganized. Since we were first married, LSH and I moved at least every three years. It was a great way to declutter on a regular basis. Seeing as how we have actually managed to stay put in this location for six years and counting, this process was long overdue.

Unfortunately I don't have any "before" pictures, because I was under the weather and missed the start of the project. But here is the half-way point in the large closet that is under our eaves; eventually it will be a work/craft area for me, complete with rocking chair to knit in:



To get an idea of how it looked at the start, imagine that you can't see the carpeting or the walls. Add in two bedframes, a cradle, two boxsprings, various baby chairs and playpens, several sets of luggage, a saddle (Primo's of course), a couple of plastic bins filled with outgrown clothing, five 4H board presentations, a large collection of wrapping paper, bags, boxes and bows... you get the idea. The rooms will eventually be painted and, with any luck, recarpeted, though I can't quite get my head around how the heck we clear out the rooms to get that done. Despite all the trips to the church's flea market and the local dump, we still have quite a bit up there.

As a result of all of this activity and undertaking, I have decided that there will be very little holiday knitting by me this year. I will drool over the creativity of others, I will sigh at the thought of making handknit socks for everyone on my list, but at the end of the day, I will do all my shopping online. Every so often, I manage to acknowledge my limits.