even after five days off, the pathology continues.  i decided, somewhere in there, to begin on digging out of something like a decade’s worth of effluvia in this house, and throw things into garbagte bags.  haven’t quite got the bags out the door, exactly, but a couple of weeks ago i swept off a jam-packed shelf of old toiletries and such that i haven’t opened in years and won’t. i think that box actually went out and i have an empty shelf in the linen closet.

so this week, when i didn’t find the time to put away the laundry again, i decided i’d just wear the closet down and then load up what i don’t wear into garbage bags, and so that’s what i’ve done today, the latter.  at least a decade, somethings two decades, things i hadn’t worn when i brought them here, and now they’re all in garbage bags thrown into the walk-in closet that used to be known as my studio.  i can’t face actually getting rid of them right now but their contents are out ouf my closet and i have room in my closet.  to put away the laundry.  i put out two drawersful, too, all the old victoria’s secrt stuff from the 80s that i couldn’t bear to part with, i’ll never be that girl again, after all.  i wouldn’t even want to be.

so i feel virtuous, if a bit lost.  i wish there were services one could hire to come in and go through everything with you--i haven’t the ability to hire one to go through without me and i haven’t the ability to do it myself, except this one unit a week, which has now slipped to a month.  lord, i wish i could get this warehouse back on track, it looks like a much older lady than me lives here.  i want to be cleared out, separated, dealt with, my life.  as it is, i’m still fighting the urge to make portraits of everything…

and that’s what i’ve done this five-days.  that’s it.  i cooked after-thanksgiving and spent a couple of days at the yarn studio.  i knit and knit and knit, a hanne falkenberg design that i’m loving.  i realized that this is the first time off i’ve had in a year, since all the time i wasn’t working there were no vacation times, just endless time.  it really does make a difference and this five days has stretched on and on, lazily.  this afternoon i need to attend to some basic things for tomorrow, and go to the store to get sandwich bread, which i’ve been threatening to do for a couple of days.  yesterday i didn’t go out at all.  and for the first time i can remember, i was neither counting the remaining minutes nor trying to figure out what to do with them.  it was simply time off!

and in three weeks, i’ll get another huge block of it!