It's Gripe Day! An Official Holiday for Gripers!

You ever have those days when you keep telling yourself how good you have it, and how grateful you should be for your life, and you don't believe it? A day when all you want to do is bitch and gripe? Well this is that week for me. My hormones are raging and this feels very much like major PMS. I almost wish it were, since that would give me a REALLY good explanation for gaining weight while totally depriving myself of everything I wanted to eat on the cruise. It could be PMS, since one of the side effects of peri-menopause is having no earthly idea when Mr. Monthly is going to show up.
Add to that the fact that I'm ready to pack a suitcase and leave this cluttered pile we call a townhouse behind, all the while looking longingly at houses in my book on minimalist decorating with clean tables and no knick-knacks, and no excess furniture. So I called my friend, Dawn. She's known me for 24 years, and has heard this belly-aching story more than once. She and I worked out a plan. She's coming over the next two days, and we are going to tackle the clutter.
She is an expert on clutter busting. The fact that she doesn't do it at her house doesn't mean she's not an expert. Everyone knows it is a lot easier to organize anyone's house but your own. We are starting with my bedroom closet. It's a walk-in that can no longer be walked-into because my husband refuses to throw away anything. Won't he be surprised when he gets home tomorrow.
I hope she can help me with closets and drawers. I don't care what he keeps as long as I have a place to keep everything out of sight. When the clutter fills the hidden spaces and spills over into spaces I SEE, it's time for drastic measures. I considered hiring a bulldozer and a dump truck. I considered fire. Then I settled on seeking help from my friend and making our local thrift store very happy. Of course, I agreed to pay her for her services. But some of it we will trade out as she gets first dibs on the junk. She loves my hand-me-down clothes as she and I can wear the same size.
I had a submission accepted while I was on the cruise. It's for a writers calendar and I wrote a short ditty about writing they liked. They offered to pay me, give me free calendars, advertise my writing website, and list me on their website as a contributor. Here's the catch. They wanted a bio, no big deal. They wanted a photo of me in my element. She explained it like this...one garden writer was photographed in the garden, a wildlife writer in the forest. Must not be posed. Must be candid. Must reflect your personality. Well I appointed my son to the camera and task at hand. He followed me around and we tried all kinds of situations and he snapped away. I reviewed and vetoed them all. Oh My God, do I look like that?? What if I hold my head higher? Will that hide my neck? Wait, let me put on more makeup! He was getting so frustrated with me. Finally I said, let's do it at the kitchen table. I write about Southern women. Where better than sitting at the kitchen table? So he took twenty at the table and I vetoed them all, then went back and settled on the best of the worst, which the calendar editor loved. I'll just be very selective about who I tell about the calendar.
I started my book today. It's about the haunted house we live in back in the 70's. I wrote the first four chapters of the rough draft. So far, I like it. When you write it and it even scares you to write it, you figure it's working. I'm excited about it.

And my life goes on...