Last October my Grandmother (Grams) turned a whopping 80 years young, and one month later she finally retired.  With retirement came the cleaning out of her massive office.  It was like a second apartment where she kept and displayed many family photos, collectibles, plants, things people often brought her from their travels, and so. much. more.  I’m not going to go as far as to call my grandmother a hoarder because she’s far from it.  But simply put, she likes to keep things.  She hates messes but she’s perfectly fine with organized clutter.  You know, neat piles.  Which has worked for her for many years, but since she recently moved everything from her office of fifteen years to her already quite lived in apartment… well… it was overwhelming to say the least.

A couple of weeks ago I received a panicked phone call from Grams that bordered on the side of death-con five and could I please for the love of all that is holy, help her find a way to coexist with the mountains of stuff.  I reassured her that she had come to the right place, explaining that I harbored a very intimate relationship with my label maker, and I could be there in a couple of days.  Long story short, we’ve had two big cleaning sessions so far.  Mere drops in a soon-to-be incredibly neat and tidy ocean (whatever that means), and we’ve a long way to go yet.

But!  Point being, all of the reorganizing and cleansing new beginnings and so forth have inspired me to apply some of those methods at home.  Last week I tore into our bedroom closets.  Filling trash bags with clothes and shoes to donate and completely restyling our closet space.  By the time I’m finished, every closet in our house will be 100% functional to our needs and no longer used as “dump or hide-away” space.  In order to get to that goal line however, it requires things like containers and separators and other neatly organizy gadgets.  Which loosely translates to three trips to Ikea in one week.  I KNOW.  But as insane as Ikea can be (oh GOD, we were there on Saturday.  SATURDAY. IN. IKEA.), those Swedes sure know how to structuralize their shit.  Also?  They apparently have a sense of humor.

Now ask me how many of those bins we bought.

My boss/dad is in Mexico.  Specifically some private beach condo thing that has an infinity pool with hot tub and post card views.  No exaggeration.  In fact, here are two cell phone photos my boss’s/dad’s best friend posted to his Facebook yesterday afternoon:

*Yeah, I kind-of hate them, too…

Now I’m not begrudging the boss any time off because the man works like a mule and deserves it.   But when he is gone, my work load in the office gets to levels of “not fun” that make me want to take up sniffing glue.  Because I’m having to pick up slack where needed, I had to be in my office this morning at 7:00.  Which means I had to get up at an hour that I thought only existed in myth.  Which also means that I walked Sugar before sunrise.  In the 18-ish degree weather.  A task I was intending to accomplish in about two-and-a-half minutes.

Cool thing about this freezing weather in parts of Texas that aren’t prepared for it: generators are exhausted from all of the extra power usage and as a result, the state of Texas is going through regularly scheduled rolling blackouts.  To conserve power.  So that we don’t have actual, long term blackouts.  Causing things like space heater stores and Starbucks to close.  Which in turn would cause rioting at a rate of devastating proportions.  We first world-ers can’t handle normal functioning without our coffee chains and immediate comforts.

Where was I?
Right!  Rolling blackouts!

So here I am outside the electricity powered gate of our property in the freezing cold when one of these blackouts hits (which at the time I knew nothing about… thanks for the head’s up, power companies).  And the gate?  She has no manual override.  And since this is not Star Wars and I have no Tauntaun to cut open and crawl into for warmth, I might have experienced a brief moment of internal panic.  Because let’s face it, I’m a giant pussy and I need my space heaters and Starbucks.  One of my (and Sugar’s) favorite neighbors walked up at the same moment, arriving home from his daily morning stroll (fucking masochist).  And right then he, along with the current employee stationed at our property’s front gate decided that the only way to open the gate was to detach it from the mechanical arm.  Which required tools.  That were inside the property.  Behind the gate.  That won’t open.

Dear God, why are there never any Tauntauns around when you need them?

I looked at the gate.  I looked at my neighbor.  I looked at the gate again and said, “I think I can squeeze under it and get some tools out of our house.”  The neighbor just blinked at me.  “No, really,” I said.  “I can fit through that.”  So I handed him Sugar’s leash, pancaked my backside down on the ground, reached up to grab the bottom of the gate and pulled myself through.  After much celebration and confetti, I ran home to get the necessary tools to remove the gate’s arm.  When I walked in through the back door, Rhonda was standing in the kitchen holding a candle.  Naked.  It was almost cult-like and yet so beautifully awesome that were she actually performing some sort of strange ritual in our kitchen, I’d have ingested all the punch she could serve.  Unfortunately I had no time for naked chanting or whatever it is naked cult people do in their kitchens.  And poor Rhonda was given no time to comprehend my verbal spewing, “Wrench set!”  “Flashlight!”  “WhatTheHell,You’reNaked!”  “Dammit, I have to run!”

By the time I got back, a good handful of neighbors had arrived on scene and together we managed to get both gates detached and open.  At which point they dubbed me the hero of the day.  And then we ate Robin’s minstrels, and there was much rejoicing.