a "bag lady" day

After the anxiety of yesterday, I delibrately made it a Chill Day today, doing a lot of reading. I have two on-screen sources these days: the AgingCare.com support forum, where I can sympathize and cheer on my fellow caregivers, and Flipboard, a site + app where one can browze a gazillion articles on practically every topic under the sun. I receive their "10 for Today" emails, scan the articles presented, and tag the email with a star if I want to return to it at a later date. I have a ton of Forum and Flipboard notifications tagged, so I have a LOT of reading material at my fingertips.

There is a bit of irony to this, if you know me at all: I was one of those people who refused to get a Kindle, refused to listen to Any Audiobooks Ever, because Real Books were the best and only "real" source of reading, didn't ya know! Now most of my reading is on a screen, and I'm looking forward to "retraining" myself to read Real Books over this upcoming Mercury Retrograde. Think of it as NaNoReMo, if you will.

When I started to feel a little restless, I picked up where I left off in my Huswifery: creating an alternative organizational system for all of our bags. Despite the "ban" that was enacted in California a few years back, there are still plenty of plastic bags to go around, especially if you take home anything from a restaurant to eat later. First I got all of the bags together in their various "categories," then I played a little Bag Tetris to slot everything in reasonably well in the bottom shelf of one of our below-the-counter cupboards. (For those who don't know, Tetris is a very simple-yet-addictive video game where you take variously shaped 3D puzzle pieces and try to slot them together with as few gaps as possible...and the rate at which you receive said pieces gets faster over time!)

When I was done, we had one bunch of Target bags ready to be returned to the store for reusing, one bunch each of Walmart and Ralph's bags in progress, the aforementioned "Thank You" bags for takeout ready to be reused for trash bags in the master bathroom, various newspaper bags ready to be used for litter box clearings, and an array of paper bags neatly tucked in the corner, to be used for whatever I can come up with. Finally there is our embarrassingly small collection of actual reusable canvas-with-insulation lunch bags. Perhaps this last bunch will grow as the other categories shrink with use.

Afterwards came some more reading, then dinner for the Queen Mother and myself. (Himself had another day of tending to Club business down in San Diego.) Next on my project list will be to reorganize the shelf above the bag shelf, along with the silverware drawer and junk drawer above them. I acknowledged today that organizing and reorganizing things does seem to help quiet my sometimes nervously chattering mind, so I will keep going and see what happens.

Tomorrow Himself and I plan to go to another "retirement planning" seminar to take advantage of the free dinner. I'll let y'all know if I hear anything remotely interesting. ;)