A Tale of Two Carts

Organizing is what you do before you do something so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.
— A. A. Milne

Getting organized is a sign of self-respect.
— Gabrielle Bernstein

Organization isn’t about perfection; it’s about efficiency, reducing stress and clutter, saving time and money and improving your overall quality of life.
— Christina Scalise

Did I say I was feeling more writerly? Well I lied. At least for the past week I lied.

Last week I did a lot of shopping, I got my presents all wrapped, I got the tree up and decorated, did crafts with the grandbaby, and did pretty much everything except write, bog posts not withstanding.

Tis the season to be busy, fa la la la la, la la la la

My office has become the storage place for all things Christmas. It’s a little hard to get it organized when you’re buried in a sea of gift bags and tissue paper. I sit at my desk maybe once a day to check Facebook, maybe do a bit of surfing, and dream of the holidays being over so I can get serious about organizing the piles of books and papers all over the place.

One of the worst paper collectors is the stand beside my small filing cabinet. This stand is an old telephone stand I picked up at a thrift store. It has a basket on the top to hold my blank printer paper, and an overflowing basket on the bottom shelf that holds my papers to be shredded. I have my shredder sitting beside it, the idea being that I’d shred papers as I discard them. Which would be a great plan if I ever adhered to it.

Anyway, one of the ads that popped up during one of the games I’m fond of playing, was for this neat metal cart from Staples. It was about the same size as my telephone stand, but it had three shelves that had three inch sides to them. You know, like this one:

It came a LOT earlier than my confirmation email said it would, but I didn’t have time to put it together. Turns out, this was a good thing because a few days later I saw an ad for an even better cart. This one had baskets and a file drawer.

After hemming and hawing and measuring the available space, I went ahead and ordered it. It should be here tomorrow, but it’ll still have to wait until after Christmas before I have time to put it together.

The fact that this new cart is like, three times the cost of the other one it kind of a moot point for me. This one has a file drawer. And the baskets pull out like drawers. And because it’s made out of mesh, I can see what’s in what drawer.

Of course the down side to that is I can’t hide my chocolate in it, but hey, you can’t have everything. ;-)

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

This is going to sound weird, but I kind of miss writing all those flash stories for NaNo. In fact, Friday night I was missing it so much I started thinking ahead to next Christmas, and how I wanted to do a Christmas story advent calendar – a scene or page or something a day leading up to Christmas. So with this in mind, I started downloading Christmas story prompts. Nine pages of prompts.

Now I had in mind a longer story that I could serialize in the calendar, maybe a novella or novelette. But many of the prompts were geared to be really short, like flash or micro flash, and then I got the idea of doing a themed anthology of Christmas stories for next year’s book flood anthology.

What the heck has gotten into me, thinking so far ahead, getting all organized . . . I hope it sticks with me.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 992+518+1256=2,766
Total = 2,766 words

I managed to get all the blog posts up on time, which is a minor miracle in itself because last week was a busy week.

EDITING:
Oh, seriously. Did you miss the part where I said it was a busy week? I did have to edit Friday’s story, but that’s as far as it goes.

WHAT I’M READING:
One of the days last week was so grey and dismal and warm, that I plunked myself in my recliner and finished reading Treasured Find, by Nancy Corrigan, on my Kindle. Although I had a slight problem with the hero’s domineering personality, it was just part of the kind of shifter he was, and didn’t detract from the story itself. This is going to go on the list of books I want to get the rest of the series in when I get a new Kindle.

GOALS
The blog posts were done, and up on time, so I guess that means I did better. My over all total word count for blog posts was up, anyway.

Elemental Spirit is still in mothballs, and realistically it’s going to stay there until after Christmas at least.

Doing a freefall exercise to start my day seems like a good idea in theory, but the truth of the matter is by the time I remember I was going to do that my morning is pretty much gone. Maybe it’ll go better once I get the office organized again.

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Start planning ahead for next year.
2. Get my office organized.
3. Make time to write.

Write on.