Fooooocus, my wee right brain

Sunday night phone conversations:

Hannah: Hey Jen, wanna come to a Christmas caroling event thing at 7:00?
Jen: No, I know the next week or so will be busy so I think I'm going to clean my room hardcore for an hour. I really need to focus. Otherwise I'll have no clean clothes to wear. Come over after, I'll be done by then. (*****epic lie, will obviously not be done but am secretly hoping Hannah will see I'm hopeless and will keep me company during my internal struggles*****)
Hannah: Okaaaaaay.

Later...
Sheena: Blah blah blah, I'm home! blah blah blah
Jen: Blah blah blah, yay! Blah blah blah.
Sheena: What are you up to?
Jen: I'm trying really hard to clean my room. So far I am making piles of recyclables with two paper piles: to be shredded and not to be shredded.
Sheena: Have you ever actually finished cleaning your room?
Jen: Yes, once, when I subletted while I was in France.

Sheena used to sit in my room and watch my lame attempts at organisation and structure (comparable to watching a single ant attempt to carry a concrete slab - painful). But at least I had company so didn't wander off looking for attention or socialisation.

After an intense almost two hours, this is what my bedroom looked like (and to give myself some credit I had cleaned the kitchen earlier):

First thing to note is that my ceiling is slanty and awesome. Second is that I have a skylight. Both of these features combined make my room suited for royalty of the most purest, bluest bloodline.

You will also notice that my room is still "a smidgen" messy. But looks can be deceiving. Since I took that photo I have removed TWO piles of stuff to recycling bags downstairs. If you are my family, I suggest you save the image and zoom in to see your Christmas presents. HINT: it is NOT the can of chickpeas which is residing under my laundry rack. Those are there because they were hiding in my backpack when I was unloading groceries into my cupboard. Wee bastards tricked me and eventually ended up upstairs! Oh, you crazy chickpeas! Hearty laughter!

My room would look much less cluttered were the laundry rack not there, but I'm saving the world (and my clothes) by hanging my clothes to dry. Your future, currently unfertilised grandchildren can write letters of gratitude to my estate in 95 years.

Notes of success: my garbage can, which you can see part of, is getting full, but is not quite full. Once I asked an at-the-time-on-good-terms ex-boyfriend what I sucked at. I like constructive criticism. He gave me some crap about being perfect and beautiful (yaaaaawn - clearly I'm not perfect, I eat the inside of my mouth and bite my nails off until they sting in throbbing pain - but other than that and the odd comma splice...) Eventually I pulled out from him that I would let my garbage in my room get overly full (very true) and leave empty food boxes in my cupboard (also very true).

Success no. 2 comes with a space you cannot see in the photo, between my bed and nightstand. The wee space was full of books and miscellaneous papers. It's all cleaned out now, though some still on the floor - but different areas of floor than before. Really important things, like my $7.00 "The Complete Guide to Boston's Freedom Trail". Clearly I need this right on hand while laying in my bedroom in Charlotte-not-Boston-town, PEI.

But why are you telling us this? We don't care!

This is actually a public service announcement in support of right-brained individuals who can't accomplish large tasks. Small is okay. Breaking up large tasks into small tasks is also good. Saying, "Jennifer, do your laundry," or, "Ms. Maki, put your books on your bookshelf," is good. Saying, "Clean you room!" makes the cogs in my right brain grind to an overwhelmed hault. Particularly with PEI's waste management program. In my childhood my parents would shut me in my room with a giant garbage bag. This was actually a poor idea because they would always want me to go through old magazines and throw out the ones I didn't want. They eventually realised I am physically incapable of doing that because I just neeeeeed to read them in order to determine if they should be thrown out - all 195 issues. Flash forward (weeeeeeeeeeeee! - that was fun!) to present day PEI, and not only do I struggle with the distractions of the wonderful, magical things I have in my room (I found a Bahama Breeze billfold I stole out of LOVE!), but I have to SORT all rubbish into compost, waste, recycling bag no. 1, and recycling bag no. 2.

Frickin' impossible, aye?

In other non-related news, I took apart bits and pieces of one of my bikes yesterday to clean a season of grime off wee bitty parts. They are sparklin', but there is a good chance foreign curse words and mass frustration will erupt from my soul when I try to reassemble. Wish me luck.

(Secret PS: I would like rubber boots for Christmas but would like to get them early - like in 7.5 hrs when I go to work - because it is raining lots and I forgot my boots at work and they have holes in them anyway. Thanks, Santa! I LOOOOOOVE YOU!)