Coming Up For Air

I spent a few hours this weekend--it only felt like days--long, torturous days--cleaning out my 14 year old daughter's room. We are not finished. We made an excellent dent in the closet. And by "dent" I mean we came up with 4 garbage bags for Goodwill. To be fair, some of those clothes were hand-me-downs from my college age niece. She used to give my daughter her castoffs as "dress up" clothes. Now they are just clothes. Regular old "I can wear this! And this! And OMGEESH! This is legit!" clothes. Maggie's taste is a bit different from her older cousin's so naturally some of the clothes get the "thumbs down" and thus get sent to Goodwill. Except some of these clothes had been sitting in her closet for, um, awhile. Ahem.

What?!?! I've been busy, remember? Just barely keeping my head above water! How was I supposed to get into that seventh circle of hell known as my child's closet to clean it knowing that it would be a Project? (Notice the capital "P"?)

The good news is that her closet is organized and there is actually a floor. True story! I've seen it with my own two eyes. The bad news is that I can say with 99% metaphysical certitude that it will not stay that way.

I had to quit the project early to go to James' football game. The game in which he didn't get to play due to last week's concussion. (Yes, it's official. My son was concussed. He missed a few days of school and all of practice last week as well as the game. He is back to himself now and will start hitting again on Wednesday. None too soon in my book. He gets grumpy when he doesn't get to play.) The game that was played at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon. When it was 88 degrees. IN OCTOBER. Let's not even talk about how it happened to fall right in the middle of the Colts game. Thank goodness for DVRs.

Um...I digress...(Surprise, right? Shut up.)

Maggie wants her room painted. We've been promising since we moved in. Which was two years ago. Her room is very juvenile and she's been waiting patiently until we finished some other "must do" projects around this not so old house. By the by, did you catch the word "patiently" in the last sentence? I'm totally lying. If you now anything at all about teenage girls, you know that patience--delayed gratification, in particular--is not something they have a lot of. Hm. Maybe it's just my teenage girl. Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway! We cannot paint until the black hole that is her room gets cleaned up and sorted out.

It's been delightful. She tosses three things in a pile, puts one thing on a shelf and then gets sidetracked by old pictures. Then she lays down on her bed and moans "UGH!! This is soooooo boring! I'm tired! Are we almost through?!?" And as I look around the room at the 635 metric tons of detritus of a teenage girl's life I think "UGH! This is sooooooo gross! Are we almost through??!?"

But what I say is "NO! And we won't get through when you have the attention span of a meth-addled feral goat! Get up! MOVEMOVEMOVE!!"

And then ten minutes later I spy my watch and say "Oh, would you look at the time! I've got to get to your brother's game. Darn! We'll have to finish later!"

I know that I'll pay the piper and have to get back in there later. But for now, I'm enjoying not being trapped in an over-crowded, smelly, sweet-cracker-sandwiches-how-long-has-this-drinking-glass-with-left-over-and-now-dried-something-been-in-this-room kind of room.

I'm only coming up for air. I'll have to dive back in there soon so the painting can start. But, man alive! Does the air out here smell good!