This is the last day of my teetotality experiment. What I learned is that these are the times when I really, really felt the sacrifice:

• Out for dinner with the husband. Ordered food. Sitting there. Want something interesting to drink and get me in the mood.
• Xopher brings an interesting beer home. Damn.

Less so, but still annoying: Sometimes while cooking dinner. Already happy to be cooking dinner, but want to accentuate it, celebrate, treat myself, and take the edge off my hunger. This though is the kind of mindless filler-drinking I wanted to stop.

Tomorrow I’m having a big beer. Hopefully will drink more mindfully going forward.

I unmucked this barn all by myself. It was as high as the foundation. Over lunch hours and weekends. You just chip away at it and it gets done. I never did it all by myself before. And most of the time I wasn’t feeling at all well rested. X always says, many of the greatest things in history were done by people who weren’t feeling at all well at the time. Well, here’s one for the books.

Spied a hawk from my office window yesterday.

The kitchen inventory continues!

The frequently used utility drawer:

The less frequently used utility drawer:

I have Marie Kondo to thank for the fact that things are not much, much worse than they are.

And who or what do I have to thank for some of the plastic things you see here… none other than the Kitchen Kaboodle! When I started my first job, in 1990, and had my first apartment, people on the street corners downtown used to hand out fliers, and I used to take every one of them, because everything was new and exciting to me. One outfit was selling kitchenware through these fliers. Just what I needed – I had a new apartment, and I needed EVERYTHING! One week it was ovenware, another week it was knives, and one week it was the Kitchen Kaboodle! An array of plastic utensils – literally an array, as it also came with a handy plastic stand, labeled “Kitchen Kaboodle.” The stand is long gone. Many of the items are gone… from my possession, that is; plastic is never gone. And some of the items are still in my possession. Very happy memories.

From a few nights ago. It made such discrete lines of color.

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you

Head kept.

If you can meet with sleep and with insomnia

And treat those two impostors just the same

—

I feel like my whole life is work and trying to sleep.

Three things you can’t make yourself:

• Happy
• Sleep
• Thin

I’m doing a Dry April. Observation so far: it’s boring waiting for food to come without enjoying a drink. Don’t tell me to order something non-alcoholic; I hate drinking calories. I think of beer almost like a foodstuff. I like the complexity of wine. Never cared for most cocktails. Not interested in having a root beer or mocktail out of boredom. Also, I think beer and wine complement food, whereas sugary drinks don’t. (Hence not into cocktails.) Will just try harder to make conversation.

Cupboard #1. Found an unopened bag of popping corn bought from the boy scouts years ago. I never make popcorn. Yet I’m embarrassed to say I’ve been known to buy $7 bags of gourmet organic local pre-popped popcorn in fun flavors. Anyway I said I should really make popcorn some time. Then I said dude it’s Saturday afternoon, make some damn popcorn. I looked up online how to make popcorn. I made it. It was delicious. I mean, addictively delicious. I said, why do I never make popcorn? It takes almost no time. It’s relatively healthy. It’s relatively cheap. I mean it’s effectively free once you’ve bought it from the boy scouts and it’s sitting in your cupboard.

This is just one out of three shelves, representing a little taste of my kitchen:

	Cupboard, Food Items	In progress
1	Hannaford diet drink mix, peach tea, unopened
3	Hannaford diet drink mix, raspberry lemonade, packets
1	Crystal Lite, pink lemonade, packet
1	Non-fat dry milk powder, bag, 8 quarts worth	x
1	Dried lentils, bag
1	Dried red kidney beans, bag
1	Dried black-eyed peas, bag
1	Grits, bag	x
1	Popping corn, bag
1	Vitamin C drops, bag
1	Ghirardelli baking chocolate, bar	x
1	Roasted cocoa nibs from Hawaii, bag	x
1	Dried currants, bag	x
1	Xanthan gum, bag	x
	Almond flour	x
	All-purpose flour	x
	Cake flour	x
	Vital wheat gluten	x
	Elbow macaroni	x
	Organic cane sugar	x
	Rye flakes	x

 

I somehow got it into my head to take an inventory. Of everything. In the house.

I started with the mudroom, probably the most difficult room, as it is partly full of Xopher junk, much of which I can’t identify. I am not inventorying stuff on the counter; I feel that, since it is soon destined for the basement, once my seedling trays take over the counter, it doesn’t count as mudroom inventory.

I’m never doing the basement, or Xopher’s office, as these are his domain. It was hard enough doing the shared space which is the mudroom.

We’ve got about 250 separately enumerated items in that room, that room which didn’t exist a few years ago.

The categories include:

• cleaning supplies
• items in daily use
• outerwear
• wildlife feeding
• hardware
• goat supply
• goat medicine
• goat wound care
• goat shearing equipment
• vegetation
• lighting
• miscellaneous liquids
• furnishings
• dye equipment
• biking
• stockpiled items
• uncategorized