2007-02-25 - 8:54 a.m.

...moaning on about furniture and clothes / houseguests to come...

It's a Sunday morning, and I awoke feeling alert and full of energy. I've already prepared two loaves of bread and two cups of coffee: one for me, and one for K upstairs. Ahem, I prepared the coffee for K. The bread is for later.

Once again we entered negotiations about running yesterday. As usual, I was on the side of going immediately and then proceeding with the rest of the day. This time I lost. Instead, we cleaned, reorganized, and did other housely things, and finally wound up once again at IKEA. No running. This trip was to buy a replacement pillow for K, who is not sleeping well. Alas, the IKEA pillow seems to have made things worse. He will not be running today, either. Sigh.

Yesterday was a milestone, though, because K finally unpacked his last box. Okay, so, we moved last August. I know. I know. But I may have mentioned before that I married a clothes horse, and we really don't have sufficient space for it all. The end result is that his clothing (especially the socks. My god. the socks.) wind up in a pile on the the window seat, and the rest remain in cardboard packing boxes under the built-in desk.

One reason for his chaos is that he doesn't know where to put any of his things, partially because I unpacked most of it for him, and partially because there is not enough space in one part of the room to hold everything. So inevitably they stay out in a pile, which makes me crazy because I hate searching the clean laundry for my socks amidst the huge amount of unsorted footwear for his oversized appendages.

I've finally gotten fed up with it, and have been in a re-organization frenzy for the past month. I assembled some new shelves for my things under the built-in desk, thus freeing the nook in the wall for HIS things. They are mostly in one place now, and visible.

So K pulled out the last of his clothing and filled up the nook in the wall (with T-shirts bought in ~1996, that still have the tags on them...) He put the rest of his button-down shirts on hangers, which has filled the closet so fully that we can't reach the shelves on the side. So I will cull my things once again (I mean really, I haven't worn the suit in about 8 years, so it's probably time to let the pebble go.)

I've also decided to let go of the faux-antique Queen Anne writing table that I bought as an organizing desk when I was a grad student over ten years ago. It's a beautiful table that always had a useful purpose in the past - sitting in the front hall where it would hold a phone and an answering machine, letters, bills, and other stationery. Because there is no room in the front hall, its current purpose is mostly to collect dust at the top of the stairwell. There is likely a more useful purpose for it in a different home.

So we continue in this vicious cycle of getting rid of things and then buying new things that allow us to organize the old things that we decided to keep.

And speaking of new things, the SOFA bed arrived last week. It's beautiful. It's a soft burgundy red. It holds a very comfy mattress. And it's HUGE. K says that it's actually not significantly larger than Swede, but it somehow feels bigger because of the oversized pillows. Ack. The oversized pillows. My first experience with the new sofa was trying to lean back...and getting pushed off the sofa. The back pillows are freakin' huge. So now I've gradually been removing the stuffing from them in the hopes of removing the attitude from the sofa. It's sort of working. Sad to say it, but I still miss Swede. But really, this is better - we have a sofa bed. We can actually accommodate guests now.

And speaking of guests, Bandy arrives from the yUK this afternoon, and stays for a week! He's taking the trip so that he could check up on his masters student (and ski) and talk with me about science (and ski). This somewhat explains our cleaning frenzy - although Bandy's not the type to really care. In fact, we're not entirely sure what it's going to be like, having Bandy as a houseguest. Bandy is, well, special.

He seems overly concerned about putting us out. My experience with him in the past is that he lives almost entirely on beer, wine, and ramen noodles. He lived in a tree for a year (to avoid having it cut down), which may explain some of his minimalism in living.

He was going to take a taxi from the airport, and rent a car for the week. We find this a little ridiculous because we have a car that is essentially rotting in our backyard from lack of use, and we live 20 minutes from the airport so it is no hassle at all for us to pick him up. We experienced his aversion to getting any help when he moved back to the UK last fall. K and I nearly had to fight him to take him to the airport with his things. I finally convinced him by telling him that I really WANTED to drive him because I hadn't had the chance to say a proper good-bye. So anyway, we'll see what happens when he comes this afternoon - it will be a fine line between being a host and being an overbearing relative..