What a day I have ahead of me! My husband wants me to do errands for him in a neighboring town. Since he has, at 4:45 a.m., already left for work, this does not seem unreasonable. However, as many of you know, I suffer cupboard 1 from agoraphobia and have an unreasonable response to the thought of running errands in a neighboring town. I had already steeled myself to go to the library to finish my fact checking (scary road), and to the mall, which is a pretty big undertaking. I have not gone to the mall by myself in 15 years. I did go with my boys a mere six months ago, and it seems like a very short time since then. With those two things plus the usual food shopping and post office and such already on my plate, I was probably not as gracious as I should have been when my husband gave me his list.

I also have housework to do. The usual slog, of course, but this is also the last day of kitchen week on the HGP, so I will be taking down all the pitchers and tea pots from my top shelf and cleaning out all the drawers and cupboards.

cupboard 2 Not such a big deal, with cupboards like these two. And in fact most of my cupboards and drawers are in fair condition. I will just need to take things out, wipe the cupboards down, and put things back in.

Fifteen cupboards and six drawers shouldn’t take more than an hour. I could get it all done while the breakfast loaf is in the oven or in the waiting times while putting up a batch of relish. #2 son will probably climb up on the counter for me and hand down the pots and pitchers. A minor and satisfying pair of domestic chores.

Unfortunately, there also exist areas like this drawer:

drawer

and this cabinet:

cabinet

I know. Places like this should not exist at all. This sort of thing obviously could only result from folks’ having merely opened the door or drawer and thrown things in higgledy-piggledy for months. But that is what the HGP is for, after all: bringing our homes back to blessed order and cleanliness before the holidays, in spite of what we’ve done since the last clear-out.

The Folgers cannisters from before I began buying only fair trade coffee are the perfect things for freezing cookies, and the wiggly plastic things in the drawer are for holding tacos on the plate. And yes I do need all those measuring cups.

This is the kind of thinking that leads to “before” pictures like these. I hope to have “after” pictures that show greater rationality.

I hope also to finish the housework and errands in the morning so that I will have a solid afternoon and evening to work on the wedding present table runner. runner 10 20

Here it is as of 4:30 this morning. I have not yet decided between the narrow green binding and the wider striped one, but I have hours of applique and quilting before I have to commit myself on that. I also have a Netflix or two to watch while I work on it.

It is almost 5:00 now. I know that Xanga thinks it is an hour later than that, but Xanga seems to think that I am on the East Coast. I got up to make my husband’s coffee, and stayed up to drink tea and check my email, but I think that I am now going to try to go back to sleep for an hour before I face the day.