Everything is Valuable to a Spy

I am a pack rat and I need help.

Okay, I didn't really want help but I guess it was getting unmanageable since writing became a career and boxes of convention books, galleys, old manuscripts, publisher manuscripts, contest entries, thousands of bookmarks, etc., started forming a line with my usual concoction of decades old books, newspaper collection, laptops, collectibles, EVERYTHING. The household looked like a messy author lived in it.

So, this year, my assistant and a friend decided to give my living condition a makeover. I agreed to it, as long as they followed my rules. One, don't bother me with shopping details. Two, don't ask me whether I like this or that. Three, don't ask me whether I want to throw this or that out unless you are really really really really not sure...because I will say keep it.

Example of what to throw: "Jenn, do you want these Power Ranger play cards and comic books that are gathering dust in the closet?"

My answer: "Yes."

Solution: If you throw them away, I would never know for the next ten years.

Example of what to keep: "Jenn, there is an old manuscript under the bed. Do you want to look at it first?"

My answer: "Yes." (even though that's the very infamous manuscript of medieval SEALs and Viking Slave Girl that will never see daylight)

So anyway, my friend and my assistant embarked on this scary journey through the last thirty years of my life...carting things away, staring at huge speakers from the eighties, shaking their heads at my still unpacked BIG BOX from the last move eight years ago (I told them there was a dead body in there), digging their way into my study (there was a pathway, didn't they see it???!) to stack away my different yearly piles, replacing my twenty-year old television sets with state-of-the-art stuff that I still don't know how to use except the On/Off, Volume, and Channel buttons...and had a lot of "fun" in an "OMG" way. It's fun for them because they got to go shopping without paying a dime, LOL...he for all the manly stuff (that TV is wayyyy too big) and she for all the girly stuff (nice dining table, but when will I ever have six over for dinner?)

My house was like some new home every night I got home from work. The running joke with Ranger Buddy at that time was which new thing I bumped into when I walked around the house. "Umm...the computer table is gone," I would announce. "There is this hutch thingie that hides everything, including the dangling cables." Or, "There is a monster television screen in the wall. The picture is so big I can see the pimples on Julia Roberts' face." Or, "I have no idea what happened to my chairs. They are soft and squishy."

I settled into my "new" house, sometimes missing certain books (which are on the shelves somewhere but I haven't figured out which shelf yet), but certainly enjoying the fact that I have a nice study to admire now. My friend told me, just like a spy, he could trace the history of my writing career by the piles I made of each book. I wrote Into Danger in the study, actually at the desk, because of the piles by the oldest computer. Then the next book was mostly in notes by the laptop by the wall. The next book was written in the living room because he could see my tax returns and book covers on the table by the old couch...and so on and so forth. I told him, "You're scaring me, now get out." Heh.

Anyway, my assistant has been doing a little bit less since the big makeover. This month, she had turned her attention to the major mess in the garage. With gloves and disinfectant, of course, because I warned her of possible dead bodies and toxic disease near that pile.

I received a phonecall on the roof yesterday. She was screaming. I had to hold the phone a few inches away so she couldn't pierce my eardrums. I thought she really did find a dead body.

"Look," she yelled. "I don't get you. You are insane!"

"What?" I asked, somewhat non-plussed. After all, that wasn't really such a big mess. ;-)

"I can take the whole collection of old jewelry stashed in boxes. I can even take the big bag of beautiful clothes your mom gave you that's now twenty years old. I can take your hat collection that you can't wear in hot Florida. I can take your $1,000,000 in coins strewn around your house. But this! This! You are just not right! This is a crime!"

"What?" I asked again, trying very hard to remember where I put my collection of old bad boyfriend fingers I had chopped off in their sleep. They deserved their punishment but I supposed a find like that would probably create some hysteria. Crossing my fingers, I asked, "What did you find now?"

"You have three boxes of Estee Lauder and Shiseido make up and perfume in your garage! All new, unused, still in their boxes! Pretty perfume bottles! Lipsticks and eye stuff. You have a thousand dollar worth of expensive make up IN YOUR GARAGE. Are you crazy?"

Oh. I had forgotten about those boxes. But I had an excuse. I didn't collect make-up; they were given to me. Of course, since I didn't open the boxes, I had no idea there were so many things in them. I had thought they were just...a few bottles of perfume, etc.

Well, I came home from work last night, all dirty from roofing, smeared with tar and dust and oil. There, on my living room table, was enough make up products to last me the next ten or twenty years. Wow, I've never seen so many cute perfume bottles outside the counters at the mall. And the lipsticks were gorgeous $50 ones that I never would have bought except with my wealthy mom around ;-). So, half an hour later, even though I was still smeared with tar and dust, I had pretty red lips and I smelled good. Then I called my assistant to tell her that my dogs all thank her for their wonderful new smell.

She screamed. And screamed.

Hmm. I wonder how expensive was the Tommy Hilfiger manly-scent thingie? Sniffing at my dogs is turning me on.

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