Focal Point

I am avoiding the kitchen.

Actually, I am avoiding the kitchen, the garage, the upstairs bathroom, the entire third floor, and my bedroom. But mostly I am avoiding the kitchen. Which makes it hard to cook, I will admit, and since I am the primary preparer of food for the four of us, this has created some interesting and somewhat sparse meals as of late. Let's just say that our crock pot is seeing more use than it has in years and we have had sandwiches...a lot.

I am avoiding the kitchen because it is such a mess of boxes and packing paper and the ephemera of our indecision about what to keep and what to get rid of for the last ten years that every time I dare enter its space I feel unhinged, perhaps even a little dizzy. I don't know where to begin to find order in there, so I keep one section of counter cleaned up for dinner-making activities and once in awhile I make a stab at opening a box. Ah, there are my cutting boards! Hooray! But beneath them lies a sea of kitchen gizmos that we barely use and they don't fit in any of the kitchen drawers because none of the drawers are deeper than 2 inches (no joke) and then I don't know what to do with them so I close the flaps of that box and move onto another. And so it goes, such that the kitchen now contains about ten half-unpacked boxes.

I don't believe in aiming all of my crazy in one direction, so I have also pulled down the front of the wallpaper border in the living room, leaving behind the white paper backing which makes an odd stripe above the chair rail. I did the same to the powder room and I am tempted to tackle the third floor bath border as well. I move from room to room, attacking whatever suits my fancy in the moment, leaving behind a trail of missing borders, stripes of nail holes where chair rail once resided, and the occasional clean surface where once only dust seemed to live. But I have yet to get my clothing unpacked, yet to find the box that hopefully holds my winter wear and sweaters. I have patched holes in our bedroom but I cannot focus on a color to paint so it remains a patchy pink that hurts your eyes to awaken to. I took the doors off the bathtub upstairs weeks ago, yet they still sit there waiting to be discarded. I think I have ADD when it comes to my house and the only cure is to keep working, just keep unpacking and finding places for unlikely belongings and trying to make it work.

It feels like nothing is getting done, but there is one bit of respite in my unpacking despair: the front half of the formerly divided living room (perhaps what would have been known as the parlor?). In that one space we have order and calm, even an area rug to keep the chill off the floors, a table lamp to read by, and books on the book shelf. That room, right now, feels like an oasis of coziness amidst this storm of cardboard and stuff and I find myself sitting there often, just wishing the rest of the house would come to order. I focus myself on the living room as I work through the boxes and try not to make Brendan crazy with my flitting around. He's a good sport, mostly, and I think he understands my need for tangible, visual results that the unpacking of boxes does not always afford. Even if he does not understand, he tolerates me well and for that I am thankful.