Ode: My Junk My Junk My Uber Junk

ALERT! I'LL MOST LIKELY BE LIVEBLOGGING THE OSCARS TONIGHT WITH WINE AND CATSNIP. YOU KNOW WHY. MY GEORGE CLOONEY, MY FUTURE HUSBAND, WILL BE THERE. AND BOY, I SO HOPE THAT FABIO DOESN'T SHOW UP AND START A DIVA FIGHT WITH HIM.

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I'm saying goodbye today to Brando's Super Bunny Wabbit. It's a big stuffed rabbit that he'd used as his wife for 18 years except that one time when he'd somehow managed to seduce Magic and begot me four beautiful puppettes. He used this rabbit so much at the wrong end, that it has a hole in its head, poor thing.

I'm throwing it away today, like some unwanted toy, and I feel guilty. It's a stinky old thing and had been just sitting there on Brando's big pillow (which is going too) since last August. I'd thought the Bad Puppy might adopt it--he'd dragged it around a couple of times--but he seemed to prefer tiny squealing things that goes :::bichik-bichik-bichik::: when they are squeezed in his mouth.

I really don't want to do it, but the mess in the house, it groweth like relentless kudzu. I don't want to look up one day and know that I've become one of those older people who have lost control of their houses. I've seen them in my repair jobs and they strike fear in my heart.

There was this lady, whose garage was so full, she couldn't open it at all. She'd called about a leak and the only access to her attic was through her garage but when I peeked through the window, all I saw was...I don't even know what I saw, just a room crammed with stuff all the way to the door. There was no way I was able to get in there and come out alive.

There was another residence belonging to two older gentlemen--I believe they were brothers--whose garage had piles and piles of magazines and newspapers. Some of them were so old they were breaking apart in my hands when I moved a few bundles so I could plug my extension cord in the wall. They weren't happy with me and wanted a discount for the damage!!!

I still remember the woman who appeared to have run out of closet room for her clothes and when she let me into her house to look at the wet spot on her ceiling, I had to literally step over little hills of dresses, jeans, shirts, towels, and blankets. They were all over the walls, on the sofas, the floors, hung on lampshades, cobwebbing the doorways to each room, hanging like disembodied ghosts, greeting me wherever I went. It was eerie and disturbing. And I felt like I was meeting Miss Havisham without the rotten food.

So. I looked around my house yesterday--and yes, the study that no one's allowed to enter--and I think it's time because I have piles of books and paper everywhere. I have a nice house but the mess is strangling it. It's either now or give in, like these people I met, and let the kudzu take over.

Brando's bunny is the symbol of my disease. I hang on to things that don't really matter. The thing is, I just let it sit there, on that pillow, day in and day out, collecting dirt and dust, as if its being there represents something pleasant in my past. Which it does, but really, I don't need it around to be reminded of Brando, right?

I feel like a madwoman sometimes, fighting between logic and sentiment. It's like being the ruler of a rebellious country, whose citizens have grown way too greedy. And being a gentle and generous queen, I find waging war against my people rather painful because I love them so much. Yet, yes, the kudzu rebels must die and those helping them, I'll have to crush them like autumn leaves in my pretty little working hands.

The next big step is to box up all those books from college and dump them. College was over twenty years ago and they aren't reusing these texts. But I love old books....old, old books are so full of old, sometimes way-out, always interesting, knowledge. Take, for instance, the old construction book I found that was printed in the 20s. That was an awesome read. Sigh. Maybe I'll keep that one.

Since I started writing professionally, I've also let paper trails taken over my life. Different versions of manuscripts--bound, boxed, strewn, slipped between notepads, filed--and they lie like so many doorstoppers around my study and garage. Why do I keep them? I have no idea. Most of them are already published books; I happen to just not think about them while I start another story, and another, and another.... Even publishers don't want them, sending back the edited versions back to me. There's a reason why they called them DEAD material, girl.

So, today, the Bunny. It hurts. Maybe tonight the books and dead materials. Actually, that's going to be an all-day project, but hey, one box a day, maybe? Then, perhaps, one fine weekend, I can proudly announce here that I've moved back into my study, in control of the that section of my country once more.

We'll talk about the bedroom rebellion then, heh heh.

What's in your life that's running you? That makes you feel out of control? That you know, if you don't do something very soon, it'll take over and overwhelm you? Do children and animals count? ;-)

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