The waters are receding.  They aren't gone fully yet, but it's getting so much better.  Also, the chickens seem to be fine.  Hallelujah, praise the chicken gods!!  Also, I have a terrible head cold and yet, for the past two days, I've worked my ass off getting shit done with my hubbers.  

If you've been reading my blog at all lately, or since 2020, you'd know that we moved in with my mother (or rather, we all moved together) into a house.  It was the right thing to do at the time (even though in 2020, I thought I was going to go insane living with her) financially, as well as for her because she's literally crazy and needs someone watching her.  But you'd also know that our plan is to GTFO of here ASAP.  And now, we have moved forward with one of our steps for doing so: we got a storage unit.  But not only did we get a storage unit, I am purging EVERYTHING that I can, too.  So that way the storage unit won't even be that filled (well, that's the plan, anyways).  Saturday, I purged about 90% of our kitchen storage in the garage AND I donated it the next day to a woman who came and got it all.  Then yesterday (Sunday), we cleaned out about half of our basement (or just about half), which is saying a lot, as it was literally almost completely full.  

Now, my mother is a hoarder.  She buys 1,000 of the same thing, for no apparent reason.  I grew up doing the same exact thing, because it was all I knew.  I am sure her mother before her did the same thing and so on.  But I've been changing since 2018, because we lost everything we owned and became homeless.  I had to learn how to build our lives back up, but without all the chaos.  As it turns out, I did good with some things and not so good with others.  One issue I have is with boxes.  I save them.  Why??  I have no idea.  But after our basement flooded (like a river) a week ago, I learned that cardboard boxes, unless you're moving to a new house, are stupid to keep for any reason.  And all must be burned.  Oh, I will take a pic of the boxes I have in my backyard drying and waiting to be burned.  It's insane.  So our basement was filled with a large amount of boxes.  Some filled with items, but most were filled with more empty boxes.  I am soooooo done with that.  I will break them down the moment I get them and burn those fuckers to ash.  

But back to my mother's hoarding issues: my basement is also filled with 50 twin sized comforters and sheet sets, 500 coffee cups, and in the garage I think I literally found 6 mixing bowls and god knows how many pots and pans.  She's one person.  Who apparently needed SIX mixing bowls (plus the couple I keep in the kitchen).  Oh, and the loaf pans??  Good grief.  She loves to collect.  Now, I used to collect books.  And in this moment, I still have a good amount of books, but I used to have boxes upon boxes upon boxes of books.  Like, too many to read in one lifetime.  It was insane!  I loved collecting them, though.  I learned that from her.  Funny, yet she always shamed me for being just like her.  Must be projecting the shame she felt for herself being a close hoarder onto me.  It's so dumb how humans do that to others.  Why?  What purpose does that serve?  I mean, I get it, it makes them feel like they aren't the ones doing the thing they feel ashamed of, but still.  Why are humans so self-serving?  

Anyways, part of my overwhelm from my last post was based on the fact that I don't get help to get this shit done.  My husband either always has a migraine or is too busy or I am just feeling too bad to get shit done myself, and it never gets done.  So the idea that we have 1,000 things to do, but not a real timeline in which they would get done was just weighing heavily on me.  But, on Saturday, we started the process and now we have a storage unit (which we will be moving to a new one very soon for price reasons) and now, when we decide to move, most of our stuff will be in storage already and we won't even have to take it with us.  Yay!  

And now, we're buckling down financially and we'll be looking for a new home, hopefully by the beginning of the year.  Or sooner, if something become available.  

Now, all that water needs to fucking GTFO of my basement so we can seal it, so hopefully no more water comes in, and we can get to work on my hubby working from home (which he'll do soon--we even figured out that he may get to work home around 4 days a week) and to get my store going.  I am soooo jazzed to start making clothes again (I have so many ideas for awesome shit), as well as my sculptures and miniatures.  I am raring to go.  I just need the space to do it in!  I would like to make enough money to have an office, but we'll see about that.  

But in sad news, we've decided that my elderly dog (well, dogs) don't have much more time go.  We let our last dog go far too long, until he could barely walk by himself, until we put him down.  And now our 14 year old black lab is soooooo terrified of being alone that he's destroying walls and doors and whatnot, as well as losing bladder and poopchute control.   He has dementia, like his brother did, and hardly ever asks for attention, and is only focused on food (just like his brother was).  We know it's not going to get better, but only worse.  So we decided to wait for our 17 year old chiweenie to give out (or maybe not that long, if our lab gets worse) and we'll have them both put down.  Recently, the vet told us we'd have to put our chiweenie down soon, due to the lens in his eye coming loose, giving him excruciating pain.  But the lens dropped down into the bottom of his eye, and it stopped hurting him.  So while he's almost completely blind, he's doing mostly okay (minus all his other health issues).  But his collapsing trachea is getting worse, which causes him to cough a lot more than usual.  So, we'll see.  And our girl, our sheltie, has a mass on her tummy that's attached to her muscle that may prove deadly eventually, which our vet is sort of worried about, but I hope not.  She's only around 10.  I hate that dogs live for such a short period of time.  I wish they were like parrots and other birds that live to be 40.  But still, that doesn't seem long enough either.  We've had our lab since he was 3 months old.  And our chiweenie was around 5 when we found him.  And it's all just flown by.  Time is cruel to adults.  When you're a kid, time crawls.  When you're an adult, it's like a bullet train.  

Well, they could have lived elsewhere.  They could have died already, being hit by a car or hurt by another animal or person.  Instead, they lived a good life with us.  So that's all I can ask for, right?  To know they were taken care of and loved immensely.  And we got to enjoy every fucking second of it.  I can't cry because I have a horrible cold and my sinuses will explode if I do.  So, I will just leave it there.  

Today will be a day of rest from all my stress.  I will create instead.  I have some projects I am working on, just for myself, just for fun.  I got a huge sketchbook from 5 Below and it's so freaking floppy that it's almost impossible not to destroy it when storing it or moving it around.  So I am going to reinforce both the front and back covers and decorate it.  I am excited to start using it, but I can't until I do this.  I just need to find a freaking hole puncher!  Which I can't, because I just moved all my art stuff to our basement "office", which is flooded still (we keep sucking it up and it keeps coming in, although less so, finally) and I can't remember where I put it (I have more than one, but I can't find anything in there, even though there's not very much).  Oh, maybe it's in my drawer in my room?  We can only hope.  

If you're decorating a spiral bound cover, you can cover under the spiral part by marking where the spirals are, and hole punching where x and y meet (width vs. spirals) and then cutting lines from the hole to the edge and popping them in.  It's kind of genius.  But I need to do it with both cardboard and the cover paper (pretty scrapbook paper), but without a hole puncher, I can't do shit.  Ugh.  (if you're reading this and confused by my directions, just state so below and I will show you step by step pictures)

Oh, I also need to finish cleaning my room.  But that my be fun.  I also need to burn lots of cardboard, but it needs to dry first.  So that's for another day.  

Yesterday, my mother was being bossy AF.  But I'll continue that in my next post.