Hello, Readers. I know I’m supposed to be blogging about endometrial hyperplasia and hysterectomies and Canadian health care but honestly, NOTHING IS HAPPENING. I’m still taking the progesterone. I didn’t have a period when I should have but the nurse says it’ll happen. I’m trying to be patient. The PMS passed after a couple days and today is just another day. Nothing much else to say on that subject for now.

I don’t even want to talk about the state of the health care industry on either side of the border. The whole subject just pisses me off. I have friends in the states who can’t go see doctors when they need to because they can’t afford the office visits. I have other friends who have worked their whole lives–only to have to to pinch pennies and argue with insurance companies to get the medications they need. I have friends here who don’t have family doctors or–like me–don’t like some aspect of the care they are getting but don’t have a choice in the matter because of physician shortages. It’s all about politics and money. We are sitting here in the most affluent countries in the world and we are not entitled to the health care that’s here. I don’t want to talk about it.

So….a brief hiatus of sorts from those subjects and I’ll file this under “About Me.”

Um yeah. Along with the mental fog there is this issue of physical clutter. I am a clutterbug. My husband is a clutterbug. Admitting you have a problem is the first step, right? HA! Yeah sure.

We both collected things before our relationship. I collected vintage stuff–pottery, post cards, linens, valises, tin trays–lot’s and lot’s of “shabby chic” although I now admit it was all way more shabby than chic.

Hubby collected man-toys: paint-ball paraphernalia, video games, computers, parts, accessories. He also had some sporting equipment, bicycle gear and heaven knows what all else. What he did not have was furniture. It’s a guy thing, right?

When we moved in together the first few months were chaotic. The apartment is small. No really. It’s SMALL. There are two closets and both of them are laughably tiny. We had dressers aplenty so clothing storage wasn’t been too much of an issue but everything else….

I had so much dish- and glass-ware it didn’t all fit in the the kitchen….

Oh and paper–we both had file cabinets chick full of VERY IMPORTANT PAPERS. VERY. IMPORTANT. PAPERS. I cannot stress enough how VERY IMPORTANT were all of our papers. Whatever to do with all of this stuff?

We piled it, we stacked it, we squirreled it away. Trouble is–non of it would STAY away. I was always leaking out of everywhere–spilling out of cupboards, cascading out of closets, overflowing from the file cabinet. We could never find the thing we wanted when we wanted it. It was making both of us crazy.

Eventually, all the stuff and collectibles we had both been so fond of in the past began to lose their appeal. Every time I had to drag down all the vintage pitchers to dust the cobwebs off them, I liked them less. Likewise Hubby had quit going to paintball and every time he had to shift those boxes out of the closet to find a pair of shoes, he began to see a problem also.

We made some attempts to weed out some unwanted stuff–old clothes went to various thrift stores; we sold my carpet steamer on Craigslist.com (no carpets here.) Largely however, we continued to hang on to our “valuables.”

About a year ago I had a meltdown about it.  I think I had it in my head to invite some people over around the Christmas holidays but I could never get the place exactly tidy and clean–the way you want it to be before you actually let people in, ya know?

“We need to DEAL WITH THIS!”

We promised ourselves we would deal with it as soon as we got back form our holiday visit to Hubby’s family.

Stay tuned…..