Every day is backwards day

Yesterday afternoon, I felt like I was choking. Allergies, you ask? Stress and anxiety? All those things are present, but that was not the problem. The problem was the physics of fashion. When I pulled my shirt away from my neck, I discovered my shirt was on backwards. 

That happens to me more often than I care to admit. It's one of the downsides of not doing laundry properly using a washer and dryer. On the plus side, these long-sleeved Eddie Bauer t-shirts have lasted more than fifteen years,  long past the point at which they could improve with age. However, on the downside, the cotton jersey is super-stretchy when wet, and now that I'm washing the shirts in the tub and hanging them to dry, the necklines are so stretched out, it's hard to tell the front from the back, especially in the dark when I'm dressing. 

I'm trying to think of ways to reuse, repurpose, or recycle these cotton knit t-shirts. I thought about cutting them up into narrow strips to knit with, although it's been years since I knitted and I no longer have knitting needles. I thought, hey, I could braid the strips into long ropes. These colors would look great in a rag rug. Then I realized if they ever got wet, they would stretch like unbaked pizza dough. Then I thought, well, maybe birds would like this soft cotton knit to line their nests. The problem with that is selling the idea to the birds. Thanks for brainstorming with me. Let's keep working on it.

I've reached a reflection moment in my packing process. I've boxed up everything I don't use daily. Now I see that most of my possessions rarely get used. Is that how I should be living? Maybe all I really need is a backpack. I looked at the labels on the boxes: summer clothes, summer sheets, sewing machine, art supplies, dishes, IBICO machine, books . . . I know I will need these things eventually, if I move into a new apartment. It's a little unsettling, though, to reflect on how little I really need. Has my life been one long acquisition excursion? I feel so privileged, and so ridiculous. 

One thing I am vowing: If I move into a new apartment, I will not build furniture. If I need shelves, I will put planks on bricks, like we used to do in college dorms back in the day. No more sawing and screwing together contraptions I will just have to unscrew and send to the dump. I have unscrewed thousands of screws, undoing the evidence of my seventeen-year building spree. When I first moved here, all I needed was a jigsaw, a drill, and a measuring tape, and I was off to the races. I filled every empty wall with terraces of shelves. I chopped up planks of pine as if they grew on trees. My little jigsaw chewed through sheets of half-inch mdf like ants on birthday cake. I was a builder! 

Now I am an un-builder. It feels strangely I-warned-you to be unscrewing all these screws, feeling them get hot enough to burn my fingers, as I coax them out of holes in wood and walls. I left behind a few gouges in the walls, oops, sorry, Mr. Love Shack Landlord. I have been bandaging the holes with that patching plaster that comes out purple and turns white as it dries. So festive, in a melancholy way.

Speaking of launching myself on the mercy of the universe, I thought I had a line on a Freecycler who expressed interest in taking the scrap wood that occupies a substantial part of my living room. She finally surfaced to email me that her phone had been gunnysack and when is a good time to come over. I thought, right on! But today, no communication about pickup plans. It's raining, it's cold . . . I'm thinking she's bailed on the idea of getting free stuff. I have another person in line for the wood, but darn it, if you say you are going to come over to pick up this precious garbage I took time to advertise on Freecycle (photo and everything!), by golly, you should get off the darn Zoom and follow through. Free things don't grow on trees! Or, wait. What? 

My family hired a lawyer to help us clarify what to do with Mom's will and estate. She wouldn't answer our questions until we paid her a retainer. We paid the retainer, she answered our questions, and the upshot (from my limited perspective) seems to be, we didn't really need to hire her. If that is true, I take my hat off to her. That is one cocky approach to making money. Imply that you have the answers, demand a retainer, and then tell the client, well, you really didn't need me, you could have done this yourself. It's like Dorothy and the Ruby Slippers. We had the answers all the time, all we had to do was click our heels together three times and say Lawyer? We don't need no stinking lawyer. 

This is just my opinion. I'm writing to find the humor in a situation I don't understand. I'm a hack writer, I admit it! Please don't judge me too harshly, and if you are a lawyer, please don't take this personally. Again, I'm trying to be funny. Yes, I confess, sort of at your expense—because it's amusing (to me) to poke fun at familial and societal norms and expectations. But this is not about you. Notice you are not named. Everything I write is about me. And the Chronic Malcontent remains anonymous, thanks to my tight-lipped Twelve Step friends who will never spill the beans. 

Speaking of spilling some beans, I gave my official notice to Mr. Landlord today. Come the end of April, if the planets align, I will officially be homeless.